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Leadership of the Student Experience

Higher education is now acutely aware of the need to develop a strategic approach to the student experience that supports the institution’s corporate strategy. This means that the institution must define measures of success for the student experience, set out an agenda for action and establish a mechanism for monitoring progress. But how do you assess the success of your method? Benchmarks and targets are set but all too often we become too close to the topic and lose the ability to really assess the results. An outside view from someone who is immersed in the needs of higher education and the students can be a key asset, providing options and alternatives to current strategy. This critical friend can help support, advise, inspire, review, facilitate or just be an independent sounding board.

Institutions are being challenged as never before to consider their fundamental role, position in the market, organisational structures, relationships with other providers, and partnerships with others, as well as a range of policies and processes. This is causing institutions to reflect on how they operate and are structured – particularly how they engage with other institutions and organisations to deliver value to their students and other stakeholders. This raises the profile of collaborations, alliances and mergers (CAM) in the sector.

Options For Supporting Higher Education

The Leadership Foundation is now able to provide consultancy support to help institutions develop the leadership of their student experience. We have drawn together a team of consultants – several of whom work in student experience roles in leading institutions – to advise and support you in thinking about how your leadership of the student experience can be enhanced.

The issues that our consultants can provide support on would be completely tailored to your requirements, but typical issues might be:

Helping you consider about or review your institution’s strategy to ensure it has the quality of the student experience as a major driver
Supporting your thinking about the development and review of academic planning and academic quality so that it contributes to a distinctive student experience
Advising you on the establishment and maintenance of procedures and systems which will deliver the highest standards of teaching and learning within academic programmes
Helping you engage with students so that they can play an active part in shaping their learning experience
Facilitating the various parts of the institution that contribute to the student experience to work together more effectively

At the heart of a successful approach is listening to students, analysing what they are saying, and creating strategies that are based on that evidence. Our consultants will be able to work with you on this in a number of ways:

Reviewing your approaches for the student voice in your strategy and advising on ways that it could be enhanced
Reviewing the implementation of your strategy to identify lessons learned and practical ways in which it can be made more robust
Facilitating groups of leaders in your institution to come together to identify ways in which your student experience can be enhanced
Reviewing the data that you use to measure the success of your strategy to ensure that it is robust and meaningful
Bringing together groups of students to provide feedback on the experience they have received in order to identify the issues that need to be picked up and taken forward

The Audience

Typically this type of consultancy would be for individuals, groups or teams engaged in developing the student experience strategically, operationally or as part of a review.

More information is available in the Leadership of the Student Experience Brochure.

Contact us for an initial conversation

If you would like to have an initial, completely confidential, discussion about your thoughts, aspirations and options for the future, please contact:

Tom Irvine, Director of Consultancy
T: 020 7849 6915
E: tom.irvine@lfhe.ac.uk

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