Discover and share good practice for smarter working universities

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Social media: “Teaching in HE needs all the innovation it can get”

By encouraging his students to have course discussions on Twitter, Lee Dunn from the University of Glasgow started integrating new technology into his teaching. He shares why he did it and reflects on how that's worked out.

The right tools for the job: harnessing the power of student voice through HearNow

In this blog Jo Clarkson, Market Research and Insight Manager at the University of Warwick, shares how the HearNow project increased students’ feedback while minimising survey fatigue. The project by gathering students’ opinions as ‘snap-shot’ sentiments through technology and Gamification raised the number of active users from 200 to 13,000 with an average of 50% response rate.

Exploring institutional practices in the post-digital age

The 15th annual Academic Practice and Technology conference included discussions around student engagement and digital provision and provided an opportunity to expand on ideas that can improve the link between students and institutions. Steve Dawes writes on the Association for Learning Technology blog about how the event showed that there is still a willingness to use digital technology to help students individually as well as part of a group.

I-MAP project, November 2012

The i-MAP project set out to review the new programme development and launch processes within universities and to determine if there was any scope for improved efficiency. It recommends early financial and market scrutiny during the development of programmes to increase the proportion that achieve strong and sustained market appeal.

Analytics in higher education

Universities already collect vast amounts of data about their student populations, but often this is underutilised. This Universities UK report, written in partnership with Civitas Learning and Jisc, sets out the case for better use of analytics in higher education through effective implementation of appropriate technology and techniques.
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Technology is redefining learning but ‘one size will not fit all’

Technology has the potential to radically reshape teaching and learning, but this post on HEFCE's blog argues that the different circumstances of each institution, discipline, and student must be recognised.

How lean can nurture the relationship between educators and students

At the University of Winchester, academics are working with professional services to improve the student and staff experience. Dr Tammi Sinha, one of the academics in the HE continuous improvement unit, describes the benefits of lean approaches from the perspective of an educator.
picture credit: McCoy-Wynne

Teaching and learning technology: driving student efficiency

Technology can help professional and academic staff do their job more efficiently but it can also produce efficiency gains for students. Lucy Haire looks at what universities are doing to introduce technology to improve teaching and learning for students.

From manual to automatic: developing learning analytics at Aston

After Aston University carried out a project to identify students at risk of withdrawal or non-progression, they realised they needed to move from manual analytics to a more comprehensive learning analytics system. Following a partnership with Jisc to develop such a system, they are already seeing the benefits, as James Moran explains.

The UK Higher Education Learning Space Toolkit: a SCHOMS, AUDE and UCISA collaboration

This toolkit has been produced by three higher education organisations to help their members share best practice and work more effectively when creating learning spaces. It is intended to serve both as a practical guide and as a source of inspiration in the design of spaces that delight and motivate students, as well as meet their functional needs.