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Is Higher Education value for money?

By on May 16, 2013 in Academic Libraries, Public Policy, Research, Society, Trends and Statistics

The UK’s Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and the consumer organisation Which? has published the 2013 survey of the student academic experience at English universities.

The first survey, in 2006, coincided with the introduction of HE fees and the surveys aim to discover whether students are getting a ‘better’ academic experience in the light of increased fees.  The report concludes that there is “no apparent relationship between the fees students are being charged and what they receive”.

Background

  • Although students are paying more, universities themselves are not receiving additional money – student fees are simply filling the gap left by reduced centralised government funding.
  • Student fees trebled in 2012.  The average fee charged is now £8500+
  • Contact with academic staff has hardly increased, despite higher fees
  • Diverse student experience in terms of teaching format and contact hours and the perceived gap in helpful upfront information to help students choose the appropriate course

Key findings – choosing the right university

  • 32% of students might have chosen a different course if they had known what they know now
  • 21% of students thought information provided by their institutions was ‘vague’; 9% thought it was ‘misleading’
  • 29% of first year students think their course is ‘poor value for money’

Student workload

  • The average weekly workload is 30 hours per week
  • Women and mature students study more than men
  • 14% of the 10,000 students who said their course was worse than they expected said the course had not been challenging enough

Contact time

  • No significant change in the amount of contact time or proportion of small group teaching
  • Students paying less than £8000 received same amount of contact time as those paying more
  • Other factors important to students include their satisfaction with the quality of teaching as well as they amount of face-to-face time
  • Significant differences in contact time between subject areas and institutions
  • Students recognise the importance of small group teaching and the amount they receive contributes to their satisfaction levels
  • Contact time has risen by just 20 minutes per week since 2006

The report is available for free download from the HEPI website.

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Using social media tools to disseminate academic research

By on December 4, 2012 in Post, Research, Social Media

There are many reasons for taking the measurement of academic impact seriously, particularly in the current economic climate. Nicola Dandridge, Chief Executive of Universities UK and speaking at The Future of Academic Impact conference, reminded the audience that the public perception of academia tends to focus on the most visible aspect – namely undergraduate teaching and fees.  How can we increase the public perception of the value of academic research and its contribution to the economic and social wellbeing of the nation and beyond?

One aspect of improving the visibility of academic research was covered in a breakout session exploring the value of the ‘top five’ social media tools in supporting academic communication.

Know your audience

Each tool can bring your tool to different audiences.  It is therefore important to understand both the demographic of your chosen tools and the potential audiences of your work.

Twitter

With a global audience of over 100 million, Twitter is a realtime information network which encourages sharing of links and posts and facilitates conversation and feedback.  By using metric tools or the statistics of URL shortening services (e.g. Bitly), it is easy to measure the increased traffic to your blog generated by tweeting.

By mentioning your collaborators and using retweets and hashtags appropriately you can significantly increase your own visibility.  You can also use the ‘favourite’ button as a simple bookmarking tool.

Facebook

By far the most popular social network, Facebook offers an alternative tool to help drive traffic to your blog and other outputs.  It also has the potential to ‘go viral’.  50% of all Europeans use Facebook regularly.  The drive to monetisation by Facebook does mean that to appear in the newsfeeds of all of your ‘likers’ you may have to pay a small fee.

Pinterest

An image driven tool, Pinterest enables content creation and social sharing.  Although not particularly well-used by academics at the moment, use is increasing e.g. as a ‘visual ideas board’ for research interests.  It’s also a great way to disseminate visual outputs of your research.

Google+

Although not particularly well-used, a particularly valuable feature of Google+ for academics is the Google Hangouts option, which enables group collaboration and chats and the ability to record these sessions.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is evolving into a business focused social media site that enables sharing and discussion as well as another platform to showcase achievements.

Social media tools can help open us research and reach new, interested audiences.  “It’s not about where you publish, but who you reach.”

The breakout session was led by Amy Mollett  (@amymollett) and Joel Suss (@joelsuss).

Research libraries in the 21st century

By on May 22, 2012 in Academic Libraries, Research

Although the purpose of academic and research library collections remains the same – to support the creation and dissemination of new knowledge – the nature of collections is moving away from ‘local’ to collaborative and multi-institutional.  New forms of scholarship are transforming user expectations for broad, barrier free collection discovery and access.  Libraries must transform their approaches to meet new user demands.

The Association of Research Libraries’ (ARL) briefing paper for research library leaders sets out to draw a ‘big picture’ of the future of research library collections.

Key findings – the research environment

  • Publishing output will continue to increase
  • Global/interdisciplinary research will grow
  • The value of personal collections will increase
  • Open content will proliferate

Key findings – the future of libraries

  • Researchers must understand intellectual property frameworks – libraries can provide support
  • Other new roles for research libraries include: digital preservation and data management experts and as supporters helping researchers collaborate even more
  • There will also be roles to support the open content movement, for example as publishers as well as IP rights advisers
  • Metrics about value to the research community must be improved
  • Research libraries will need to maintain linked, digital content in order to enable discovery and future use.
  • Resources will increasingly be allocated to the development of tools, an activity well suited to inter-institutional collaboration.
  • There will continue to be moves to providing just in time services rather than building just in case collections

The report is available to download from the ARL website.