Meeting Student Expectations 5: Transition and Retention

Last week I outlined, over the four previous blogs, how the experience for students in the twenty-first century has changed due to markitization, changes in information technology, changes in the world of work, and a decrease in mental well-being. For all these reasons, therefore, we need to make changes to the…

Continue reading

Meeting Student Expectations 3: Transforming the World of Work

In the previous blog I spoke about the way in which digital technology was affecting the day to day lives of students, and their engagement with learning and teaching. It is not only the individual student’s engagement with technology, however, that is being affected by the digital revolution. The whole…

Continue reading

Meeting Student Expectations 2: Access to Knowledge

Over the last ten to twenty years we have seen an unprecedented growth in the use of mobile phones and online technologies. Students today exist in a very different world, and have very different experiences, not only from our own student days, but in most cases from our own contemporary…

Continue reading

The Icing on the Cake

The end of the 2017-18 academic year here in Swansea has been something special, especially for those of us who put the experience of our students at the heart of all that we do. In June we were told that we had the Gold TEF award, providing recognition for all…

Continue reading

Congratulations on a Gold TEF

Later today we are going to celebrate, as a community, the award of a Gold TEF to Swansea University. This is an incredible achievement and something that everybody, across the institution, both staff and students, should be very proud of. We were somewhat disappointed to be awarded a Silver award…

Continue reading

Celebrating STEP4Excellence

Towards the end of last week, a small crowd gathered in the new Taliesin Create in order to mark the end of STEP4Excellence and to celebrate all that it had achieved over the last three years. As we gathered, there were those who asked exactly what it was that this…

Continue reading

Educational Technology in Texas and Swansea

Over the last two weeks I have been travelling across Texas with a few colleagues from Swansea looking at the way in which Universities across the state have been using and developing educational technology in their programmes. It has been a real eye opener and a very informative trip, with…

Continue reading

Do we offer our students value for money?

On Wednesday morning I attended a HEPI/HEA Parliamentary Breakfast Seminar at the House of Commons on the issue of value for money in higher education. Apart from the fact that it was, amazingly, my first ever visit to the House of Commons, which was really interesting in itself, the event…

Continue reading