Leadership Foundation

Leading the Student Experience

The following research projects and stimulus papers have been commissioned:

• Leading and Managing Assessment and Feedback, Strategic Challenges
• Leadership for a better student experience: What do senior executives need to know?
• Leading the Student Experience: Academics and Professional Services in Partnership
• Delivering Employability through Higher Education: Philosophical and Practical Challenges for University Leaders
• Making the road while walking: leadership lessons for sustained co-creation and curriculum innovation
• Changing Student Union Leadership

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Leading and Managing Assessment and Feedback, Strategic Challenges
Dai Hounsell and Sue Rigby, University of Edinburgh
Stimulus Paper, March 2013

The paper introduces a framework for strategic educational change in universities, and illustrates its applicability to assessment and feedback through three institutional case-examples.

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Leadership for a better student experience: What do senior executives need to know?
Paul Ramsden
Stimulus Paper, May 2013

This paper will provide a background for senior university managers who seek advice on leadership for learning and teaching, providing a resource for institutions’ professional development activities as well as tools for individual leaders. There will be a section on how teaching and student engagement in higher education shapes student learning experiences and outcomes; and on how leadership at different levels influences teaching and academics’ commitment to a high quality student experience.

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Leading the Student Experience: Academics and Professional Services in Partnership 
A joint LH-HEA project: A research team based at Newman College has been selected to carry-out this study.
Research project, June 2013

This research project commissioned by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and the Leadership Foundation is intended to add to the current literature on approaches to leadership, change management, and enhancing the student experience in the higher education sector. The research will build on recent Leadership Foundation work, amongst other studies, to deliver a greater understanding of collaborative models for developing partnership and team-working between academics and professional services. The aim is to assist all staff to deliver seamless support for students given their different learning contexts and diverse needs. Of particular interest are the challenges that arise in relation to building effective partnerships and teamwork, the activities and behaviours that lead to success and the models that have the greatest impact across an institution.

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Delivering Employability through Higher Education: Philosophical and Practical Challenges for University Leaders
Professor Steve Olivier, University of Abertay Dundee
Stimulus Paper, July 2013

Drawing on cross-cultural practices and comparisons, the paper will initially present data on what it is that universities deliver in respect of an increasing focus on delivering employable graduates to society. The second part of the paper will be more philosophical, examining the contribution of graduate attributes to the employability agenda. This will entail an examination of what it is that universities do and ought do. Part of this section will delve into the role of universities in creating and sustaining a 'curiosity imperative', perhaps but not necessarily at the expense of instrumental employability agendas. The Popperian notion of treating knowledge as provisional, in the context of inculcating the graduate attributes, will be examined. From this will follow a discussion of what universities can realistically contribute to the economy.

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Making the road while walking: leadership lessons for sustained co-creation and curriculum innovation 
Paul Willis, Leeds Metropolitan University
Stimulus Paper, October 2013

The paper associates progressive leadership in universities with the development of a co-creation culture that places students at the heart of curriculum design and teaching on a sustained basis. Co-creation here recognises explicitly the knowledge that students bring to the class room and the productive role this can play in developing curriculum content, learning methods and assessment design. This also promotes the view that co-creation can expand the pool of knowledge held traditionally by universities and other institutions of higher learning and transform the learning experience into something of extended value, impossible to replicate through conduit models. The challenge to HE leaders is that this also demands an educational infrastructure that is situationally sensitive, self-adjusting and pre-disposed towards self-organisation.

By discussing their experiences with different cohorts of students, the authors move from the conceptual to the practical by highlighting how co-creation can be realised through a structured programme of facilitated stakeholder engagement. Rather than presenting a sanitised version of events, they juxtapose the benefits of the co-creation process with the challenges, strains and tensions that it places on students, staff and the institution. This leads to a set of recommendations designed to guide university leaders that may be contemplating similar initiatives in the future. A wide range of issues are discussed including where (and how) to start; the implications for staff training and development; specific support for students; organisational accountability and the make-up of project teams; the impact on existing systems and processes; maintaining appropriate academic standards; appropriate modes of assessment; what to do when it goes wrong; cost, time and profitability.

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Changing Student Union Leadership
A joint LF-NUS project: A research team based at Surrey University has been selected to carry out this study
Research project, December 2013

There has been an increased emphasis on student engagement and representation in recent years within both higher and further education. Within this landscape students’ unions have come to assume an increasingly important place. Nevertheless, little is currently known about the effectiveness of different models of student leadership and representation or the impact that student leadership is having on the student experience more generally. A particular issue has also been identified around gender and student leadership positions in higher education students' unions. The aim of this project is to look into: 1) the perceived nature of the student role 2) the extent to which changes in the relationship between students’ leaders and senior managers within HEIs represent a genuine partnership 3) the social characteristics of students who assume leadership roles.

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For further details about the projects contact:
Eleni Stamou, Research Manager
T: 020 3468 4829