Through our consultancy provision, we support institutions and students’ associations to develop their student engagement in individual and specific ways. By working in this way we have recognised particular elements of student engagement being common priorities for a number of institutions. We have selected five of these elements and are beginning work with institutions to find solutions to challenges within them.
Earlier this semester we released our Consultancy report which included information our first four Priority Themes. We have since added one Theme and we are keen for interested practitioners throughout the whole sector to contact us and through working with us on their own challenges, we will develop a range of support mechanisms to support them.
This work will explore the key challenges and opportunities within each of the Priority Themes, identify effective practice, and develop tools for use throughout the sector.
Our Consultancy section of the website contains much more detail about each of these themes. We have listed them below with a brief description of the purpose of the Theme, numbered but in no order of preference or importance:
Theme 1. Engagement of International Students
Building on Students Without Borders, a joint project with NUS Scotland, this theme will explore different approaches to involving international students.
Theme 2. Departmental level representation
Exploring institutional decision-making and quality management at the departmental level (e.g. faculty, sector, school), this is crucial to connecting course and institutional-level functions.
Theme 3. Engaging students with additional support needs
This project will consider how existing tools to involve students in their learning and teaching can be extended to include students with additional support needs in wider representation and quality processes.
Theme 4. The link between student engagement and staff development
Through working at the institutional and sector level, we aim to explore how student engagement can be an effective topic of the training and development programmes available to staff.
Theme 5. Accreditation and reward
This theme will support a group of institutions looking to accredit course rep activity.
Staff and student officers keen to be a part of any of these areas of work are invited to contact Simon Varwell simon.varwell@sparqs.ac.uk or Stephanie Millar stephanie.millar@sparqs.ac.uk, both sparqs Development Advisors.
Please visit our Consultancy pages for more detailed information about each of the Priority Themes.
