External Engagement

Abertay University has been confirmed as the host institution for an international conference that brings together policymakers, practitioners, and academics to share best practices on initiatives to widen access to higher education.

The European Access Network (EAN) annual conference, scheduled for 11-12 June 2024, will draw hundreds of delegates from across the world to engage in discussions on key issues related to widening access, with a focus on developing new policies that promote inclusivity in higher education for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. Delivered through the AbLE Academy, we are collaborating with SCAPP (Scotland’s Community for Access and Participation Practitioners) to organise and deliver the 2024 EAN conference.

The conference theme is ‘New Beginnings for European Access – Designing Equity, Transitions and Student Success’. Further information can be found on the conference website.

The European First Year Experience Conference (EFYE) 2023 was hosted by Abertay, marking the first time a Scottish university took the opportunity to host the conference. Held between 27th to 29th June 2023, with the conference theme "Discovery and Design for Academic and Social Success”. The theme focused upon:  

• Discovery – Personalising approaches to success

• Dialogue – Creating opportunities for collaborative learning and communities.

• Digital – Embracing technologies to support student success.

• Decolonise – To engage all students for a global perspective.

A vibrant and diverse community of 330 delegates from 24 countries attended the EFYE Conference to exchange knowledge, share experiences, and explore innovative approaches to enhance the first-year experience for students. Participants comprised educators, researchers, administrators, and other professionals dedicated to student success and well-being.

Visit the EFYE Conference website, where an array of valuable resources from the conference are available.

In June 2023, Abertay University hosted the European First Year Experience Conference.  In the first keynote of that event, Abertay’s Dean of Teaching and Learning launched a call for Scotland to create its own first year experience network. 

The rationale for this call was that:

• National networks existed in other nations and this could offer a legacy for EFYE as this was the first time that the conference had been hosted in Scotland; 

• All Scottish universities were present at EFYE, through the 60+ Scottish attendees of the 333, which indicated a collective interest in this area of the student experience;

• Retention and student experience were key issues for all universities and collective insights needed to be shared; 

• This would offer a legacy community for the QAA enhancement theme on resilient learning communities and provide a focus for that stream of work to continue in the future.

The Scottish First Year Experience (SFYE) Network launched in August 2023 and welcomes new members who seek to collaborate and learn.  The first year of a student’s experience may be year 2 or 3 of a degree through articulation and direct entry processes, so we seek to be a broad church that embraces many challenges and ideas.

Staff and students who work at student organisations, universities and colleges are all welcome to help steer this partnership as we all seek to improve the first-year student experience, whenever that is. 

Please contact scottishfye@abertay.ac.uk for more information and to join the network

Staff and students are encouraged to engage in pedagogic research which is research into effective teaching, learning and assessment.  Pedagogic research is a key strategic priority area within our Learning Enhancement Strategy 2020-25 with a desire for staff to be evidence-informed, reflective practitioners and involve students as partners in enhancing the student experience.

We have a Pooled Excellence Group in “Effective learning and pedagogy” which brings together those interested in pedagogic research from across the university.  Staff taking our Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice conduct action research into their own practice and the Abertay Learning Enhancement Academy supports staff research projects either within their own discipline or across the university. 

If you are interested in collaborating with colleagues at Abertay on pedagogic research, please contact able@abertay.ac.uk.

Jack Hogan and Julie Blackwell Young were delighted to be awarded a SEDA Research and Evaluation Small Grant in 2023.  This grant is to enable the team to evaluate the approach taken to support academic and professional staff in designing and delivering online microcredentials for first year students at Abertay.  This work will allow us to develop our staff support for blended and online learning in general as well as produce resources for the sector in good practice in supporting staff development for this kind of provision.

The Enhancement Themes are a Scottish sector initiative led by the Scottish Higher Education Enhancement Committee and facilitated by QAA Scotland.  The sector decides on a theme, which usually runs for 3 years, and all Scottish institutions take part in theme related activities and receive funding from QAA Scotland to carry out institutional work around the theme.  The most recent theme was “Resilient Learning Communities” which ran from 2020-23 focusing on “meeting the changing needs and values of an increasingly diverse student community and a rapidly changing external environment” (Enhancement Themes website, 2023).  Enhancement Theme work at Abertay is led by a cross-institutional team and initiatives such as the new microcredential suite and funded projects (EnAbLE projects) have come out of the current work.  Please contact able@abertay.ac.uk for further information.

Using Enhancement Themes funds, we have funded six projects in 2022-23 on the themes of resilient learning communities.  Projects must include students as part of the team and the funding is used to pay these student researchers.  Therefore, these projects are part of Abertay’s ethos to partner and co-create with students.  The successful projects are:

• ‘Walking, talking and the blended campus: Exploring the potential of informal walking groups for enhancing the learning community’ by Fiona Stirling, Julia McLeod and Andrea Cameron.

• ‘Comfortable in my skin: Examining the impact of using avatar skins in the virtual classroom on student satisfaction, engagement, and sense of community.’ By Julie Gawrylowicz, Sam Conway, Andrea Szymkowiak and Robin Sloan.

• ‘Enhancing and enabling student carer experience and retention’ by Alison Duffy, Ken Scott-Brown, Richard Ogston, Elley Petrie.

• ‘Securing a digital campus with students as partners’ by Jamie O’Hare and Lynsay Shepherd.

• ‘Levelling the playing field: Supporting student success in mathematics for games’ by Craig Stark, James Threlfall, David Green, Kean Lee Kang, Erin Michno-Hughes, Jagdeep Ahluwalia and Nikolay Panayotov.

These projects are currently completing but some outputs have already been shared at national conferences and webinars e.g. the 2023 Enhancement Themes Conference and the Peer Learning and Support Network.

A key feature of the Scottish sector Enhancement Themes is cross-sector working and one way this is achieved is through creating collaborative clusters.  Collaborative Clusters are groups of institutions who have put together successful bids to fund work across the sector relating to theme priorities.  Abertay has been involved in collaborative enhancement themes projects for many years including leading the Personalised Approaches to Resilience and Community (PARC) project which has been running through the 2020-23 Enhancement Theme.  Other collaborative projects Abertay has been involved in include:

• Enhancing Programme Leadership

• Programme Leadership: Strengthening resilience, supporting learning communities

• Decolonising the curriculum in the time of pandemic

• Exploring the potential of micro-credentials and digital badging

• Open badges in the Scottish HE sector: The use of technology and online resources to support student transitions

• Student Transitions: Student Biographies on the first year experience

Abertay University leads the QAA project Personalised Approaches to Resilience and Community (PARC). This was part of the QAA’s enhancement theme on resilient learning communities and has taken on a life beyond the period of funding.

The focus of the project has been on how the use of student diagnostics can improve student success. Partners from across the UK have joined the initiative and further details about Personalised Approaches to Resilience an Community can be found here.

At Abertay, the formative student diagnostic has been embraced within our first year microcredential initiative as we enable students to build the academic and social foundations that will lead to their future success.  The reflective tool helps students identify the microcredentials that they may wish to study in year one.  Further information on the microcredentials work can be found on these AbLE Academy pages.

The PARC work continues to attract interest nationally and internationally and examples of presentations are available on the link above.  If you want to become involved, please just let us know as our membership is inclusive and continues to help the PARC community to learn. To get involved please email Professor Luke Millard, l.millard@abertay.ac.uk.