NUS secures funding for ICT and learning project

Added on 04/03/2010

We are pleased to announce that we have secured £30k funding for NUS from HEFCE for a UK-wide project on student perceptions and demand for ICT and how new technologies are integrated into teaching and learning.

The project will feed in to the high level Online Learning Taskforce, chaired by Dame Lynne Brindley, that Aaron Porter is a member of. Integrating new technologies into teaching and learning is an issue that we are hearing more and more about as we visit campuses across the country and we are pleased that we will be able to support officers and also help shape the national response to this.

The NUS/HSBC Student Experience Report showed that 69% of students used the internet for their studies on a daily basis and the vast majority of students using their Virtual Learning Environment, and yet these are still often used passively as a way of downloading notes rather than being used as an integral part of their learning. As Chair of the JISC Board, Sir Ron Cooke, said in his 2008 submission to the Denham Review of higher education “We lag behind (the rest of the world)  in generating and making available high quality modern learning and teaching resources.”

The project will seek to explore these areas through a number of methods:

• One-day symposium for 60 students’ union officers and union staff
• Several half-day events aimed at students, primarily course reps
• Survey of FE students’ union officers to gauge prospective student demand
• Focus group of FE students
• Online discussion forum for course reps

Please get in touch if you have any additional questions.

Action on higher education cuts

Added on 11/02/2010

As you may be aware, following Peter Mandelson’s grant letter in December last year and the pre-budget report which outlined massive cuts to higher education, HEFCE have circulated a letter to institutions outlining precisely what will be cut. There is a £449 million reduction in funding for the 2010-11 year from what had previously been assumed and planned for. These cuts are radical and will have very real and potentially drastic consequences for students and institutions. Set against a backdrop of record levels of applicants and the uncertainty over the outcomes of Lord Browne’s fees review, higher education is clearly entering a very difficult year.

• Distribute as appropriate internally
• Contact NUS for advice or support on the implications of suggested or proposed cuts in your HEI
• Advise NUS of any planned or intimated cuts so that we can monitor the overall situation

National Student Survey 2010 Launched

Added on 12/01/2010

The 2010 National Student Survey is here and launched on 11th Jan 2010. In 2009 the total number of students who responded to the fifth annual National Student Survey 2009 increased by over 3,000 to 223,363 students; this gives an overall response rate for the UK of 62% and in some institutions as many as 86% of eligible students have chosen to get involved to make an impact on the future of higher education and this year we want to make that figure even higher.

In 2009 the overall satisfaction of students dropped for the first year since the Survey began, going from 82% to 81%. Assessment and feedback remains the area of greatest dissatisfaction with 65% satisfied in England and Wales, 62% in Scotland and only 60% in Northern Ireland.

But now, it’s over to you: the results of this massive project are available to students’ unions by visiting the NSS results site to break down by student group or subject. Students’ unions can also compare these results

with past data for their institution from when the survey began to track changes and developments over time. You can use the NSS result s to gauge student opinion, support your campaigns, identify best practice and look at areas for change and action and compare and contrast student opinion at a local and national level.

What do students really think? View the NSS 2009 Results or find out how to use them

Need help to breakdown your results? Contact your regional NSS Ambassador

Need inspiration on how to promote the survey? Follow the links in the side bar of see what the winner of the 2009 promotional competition did here.

Students studying abroad and the European Higher Education Area

Added on 04/01/2010

We are pleased to launch the NUS Guide to studying abroad and the European Higher Education Area, supported by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills. This Guide aims to provide students’ unions with information to support students studying abroad, questions to ask institutions on possible structural challenges such as recognition of credit, and highlights the benefits of students studying abroad and how they can publicise these to students. We have also included some useful information targeted at students that you may wish to turn into information sheets. Additionally, the briefing includes information about the European Students Union (ESU) which NUS is a member of along with national unions of students from across Europe.

The NUS Student Experience Report shows that students receive many benefits from studying abroad including greater confidence, becoming more self-reliant as well as improved employment prospects. Ministers of Education from across Europe have been coming together since 1999 to create a European Higher Education Area which has student, graduate and university staff mobility at its core. The Ministers met recently in Belgium at a Summit as part of this “Bologna Process” and highlighted the benefits and importance of studying and working abroad and set the challenging aim of that 20% of those graduating in 2020 should have studied or trained abroad.

You can download the guide in PDF form: here.

New Course Rep Benchmarking Tool

Added on 11/12/2009

We were very pleased to launch the AMSU/NUS benchmarking tool for course rep systems at the NUS National Course Reps Conference in Birmingham in December 2009. We believe that the tool will enable students’ unions to measure the effectiveness of their course reps system and identify areas in which they could improve it.

We believe that enabling both students’ unions, and also staff within institutions, to be able to benchmark their course rep system will be key to driving up the quality of student engagement. This benchmarking tool is the first in the series of tools to facilitate self-reflection for how students’ unions and institutions engage students. The tool is based on the different stages in the lifecycle of student representation as identified in the CHERI Report on Student Engagement (2008).

Using the tool it is assumed that to be in one category you will have achieved all of the previous stages, for example, to be a “developed”system you will have achieved what is described in the “first steps” and “developing” definitions and so on throughout the tool. We also recognise that different unions will have different resources to be able to support their rep system, although we hope that we have kept the descriptions broad enough to encompass this.

We hope that you will use this tool to consider the structures within your own institution and how you would rate them. If you keep a record of this over time you will be able to track the developments and improvements in your system. Also if you share this information with NUS and AMSU we will be able to point you in the direction of other unions that consider themselves further along the scale so that you can contact them to find out how they have made it work in their institution. You can download it here.