Indie Okoye, Student Ambassador, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences

Going to UNC Charlotte University was a really great experience and part of me wishes I could stay because the experiences and the opportunities they gave to their students were just amazing. Not just from an educational standpoint but also from a social standpoint. It felt like they were working to create well rounded human beings that could integrate into society well but also leave university with the prospect of a work placement or even a great well paid job to match their degree.

On a social standpoint they offer so many different ways of integrating into society, confidence building and other things like that. From the over 350 societies, clubs and other events like The International Festival and social gatherings, they invest so much money and time to ensure that each student reaches their full potential.

What I found really amazing was through all this support that was offered you still found students that would give their free time to give back to their community. HCAP (Hispanic College awareness programme) are an amazing society that works without pay to support and increase the number of Hispanic students in Higher Education. This is something that I feel Kingston could really learn from. We have a huge volunteer department but educating their students about it more could enhance the number of students who participate.

From an educational standpoint they offer a lot of support to students including both the SoS (Students obtaining Success) and BEST (Building Educational Strengths and Talents) Programmes.

The SoS programme supports students that are on academic probation, giving them the chance to lift their grades and recover their academic situation.

BEST Learning Community works with first generation students and minority students supporting them through University life. These two programmes were my favourite because I fell that really captured what students really need to know to be successful in their university experience but they offered so much more to really support the student.

What should Kingston University do to improve student experience?

I believe that Kingston needs a better and stronger mentor programme. They need to cater to a lot more students from many different backgrounds and life experiences. I think they need to look at enhancing the social aspect of the university for the students investing in their future, and I think that will relay on to the academic side. I think things like a greater student union and activities for the students. More money needs to be spent to help students gain a rounded experience ready to work in society. It feels like Kingston runs on the mentality that you go to school then go home with nothing in-between to really create a well-rounded human being.

With the increase in tuition fees more needs to be given back to the students because not a lot is given at the moment. I also believe that teachers need to be supportive. In UNC Charlotte I found that teachers went the extra mile to support the students. Teaching was a 24-hour job. They completely focused on supporting students. Kingston may not be able to completely deliver this line of support but I feel something along the lines of this teacher support should be offered.

My plans for the future haven’t changed, I still believe Kingston University is a great university and I would like to stay and finish my education and go on to do my Masters maybe at Kingston. I

wouldn’t go to America because I feel our education is a lot stronger and better. In all my experience was amazing, I met so many amazing and new people and I am so happy I got the chance to experience what American university is like.

Dr Neil Williams, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing

On paper the University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) is very similar to Kingston University. It has 23,000+ students with about half living at home; funding is dominated by teaching-related income and it is very committed to widening participation. On

arriving at the 1000-acre campus the similarities end. The student union building is huge, there are many restaurants and meeting places for students, the sports hall seats 9,000 spectators and they are building an American Football stadium at a cost of $100 million.

Such spectacular student facilities contribute enormously to a greater student engagement with the university. Kingston will never be able to match these resources, but I am sure improved sport and recreational facilities would increase student engagement. In contrast, the scientific teaching laboratories and classrooms that I saw looked “tired” compared to the facilities we have in the Eadweard Muybridge and John Galsworthy buildings. It is this mixture of similarities and differences that made the trip so informative. I was missing Induction week during my visit and it was interesting to note that it is managed very differently at UNC Charlotte. Dr Dennis Weiss, Dean of Students, told us about SOAR

(Student Orientation, Advising and Registration) and how they include parents in the process as well. Multiple, small-scale residential 1 ½ day university inductions are held throughout the summer, well in advance of the start of term. This has the advantage of spreading the burden of enrolling freshers and avoiding long queues. Another successful induction program was UTOP, a well-attended, five-week summer residential programme for minority students.

I was particularly impressed by the wide range of central, student support offices and associated programmes, even if some had rather contrived acronyms (PRODUCE Producing Readiness of a Diverse University Cohort in Education!). I attended a number of

sessions on the work of The University Centre for Academic Excellence (UCAE), headed by Catherine Blat, this covered:

• Tutorial Services, providing tutoring in introductory maths, science, business and foreign languages;

• Skills workshops, and a 10 week Freshmen seminar programme for students on probation.

• Supplemental Instruction (SI), which uses small Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) sessions to help keen students improve their grades “in challenging courses such as science or engineering”;

• BEST (Building Educational Strengths and Talents) which focuses on students who are the first in their family to attend college by providing study seminar classes and a Learning Community.

• SOS (Student Obtaining Success) programme. A Peer Mentor scheme for students who are on academic probation. Mentors are trained to identify academic barriers to success and develop an action plan for the student.

• Another successful mentoring scheme, SAFE (Student Advising for Freshmen Excellence) is run by the Dean of Student Office.

This is open to all students but again is focussed on reaching out to students from underrepresented groups. There are examples of mentoring and supplemental teaching at

Kingston, however my impression is that the scale of the offering and the uptake by Charlotte students is much greater. We had the chance to talk and listen to students involved in each of the programmes. They spoke very passionately about being mentors

and it was illuminating to find out what spurred them on to take on these roles; some did up to 6 hours of mentoring work a week. One reason for their success is that these programmes are well established and have slowly developed over 10+ years. When asked about how they managed to recruit so many mentors, they replied that recommendations from academic staff and well established recruitment and training before the academic year

starts, were key factors. Many of the schemes were successful as they were up and running from week 1 of the term and there was close integration with the Colleges (Faculties). Another critical component to the success was significant staffing resources; the centre has 8 permanent professional members of staff, plus grad assistants, tutors, SI leaders, mentors and student office assistants.

Ted Elling, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, demonstrated the extensive evaluation of these schemes. The results of these evaluations have been instrumental in sustaining many of these programmes. We were also lucky enough to listen to a Learning Community programme research presentation hosted by Cynthia Wolf Johnson (Associate Provost for Academic Services), where the reasons for their success were probed by Kim Buch and Daniel Bonilla from the Psychology department. Learning communities of students have proved successful in improving grade point averages and progression rates.

One fundamental difference is that where at Kingston we might modify the curriculum, teaching or assessment in a module to tackle low grades and poor progression, at UNC Charlotte it seemed that the module is less likely to be changed; instead support mechanisms tend be invoked. Also a lot of the academic skills covered by UCAE are taught in academic skills modules and dealt with in PDP sessions with personal tutors. However, I think Kingston could gain a lot by recruiting more mentors and PAL leaders and using Learning communities to support students who find various transitions at University challenging. Perhaps a university centre to provide training and funding for this type of activity would be a good idea.

I think Kingston could also make use of the principle of academic probation, where students who are failing in semester one are identified and required to engage with one of the activities of the ACAE. This may be a 10-week seminar scheme aimed at getting them engaged with the university and classes on a variety of academic skills, or a scheme such as SOS, where student mentors and staff help develop a personal action plan for the upcoming

semester.

*Lyrics by Ryan Adams

Craig Umenyi, Student Ambassador, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing

The trip to Charlotte was a great opportunity to see how the university experience differs outside of the UK. What really surprised me was the wide range of different extra-curricular schemes and programs on offer and how popular these appeared to be with students. There were various mentoring programmes where first year students were regularly helped and assisted by students in the academic years above. Not only did it surprise me how many

students participated in these as voluntary mentors but perhaps more so, how well those being mentored responded to this and embraced the support, both academic and personal, that their mentors provided. The SOS (Students Obtaining Success) program impressed me particularly, with mentors aiming to boost the academic grades of mentees which are currently below a 2.0 GPA and if this were to be maintained, would see them fail. This

programme has an extensive evaluation and research elements, including feedback from mentees and mentors, which helped inform focused action plans and targets set for mentees. Much of the extra-curricular activities I came across were also voluntary and

I was genuinely surprised at how passionate students were, not only about schemes such as this, but also about the societies they belonged to.

A program which we learned much about was UTOP (University Transition Opportunities Programme). This is a five week experience event held over the summer where incoming first year student live on campus and participate in a range of activities and workshops to

familiarise them with the university and what it entails prior to enrolling. Students invited are from ethnic minority backgrounds that are unfamiliar with what university entails e.g. first-generation university students in the family. The research results provided by UNC Charlotte show that those who participated were more likely to complete their university degrees and finish with a higher academic grade compared to ethnic minority students who did not.

Anecdotal feedback from students suggested that the social aspect of this also greatly helped by ensuring that they knew people once they arrived on campus to start their first year. I personally feel this is a great programme and could really be beneficial to students,

particularly first-generation university students who may not have anyone close to them to inform them of what to expect at university. We collectively acknowledged this would be

difficult to perform at Kingston University, with most students not sure of what university they

will be attending until they receive their A-level results in late August. However, a one week programme prior to freshers week could be easily accomplished I believe.  Getting the most out of the student experience and having an extra-curricular and social presence within the university is heavily emphasised and appears as though these types of activities are not only

preferred by employers but almost expected. I personally feel as though the undergraduate degree system in the UK (with the final year being so heavily weighted towards final degree

classification) does not encourage students to do more than simply get a degree and therefore many undergraduates come out of university still lacking the inter-personal and life skills needed in the workplace.

With so much done towards building well-rounded, well-educated adults, it wasn’t a shock to find the university placed a large amount of effort into promoting career-based help, especially sourcing work placements and internships as well as encouraging students to

think about their prospective careers from early on within their first year. Career fairs are also common where local and national employers will come to meet students who could become potential employees. This could be done at Kingston University, but a lack of dedicated staff makes this extremely difficult. Career workshops where students can discuss these matters are very time restrictive.

An increase in concentrated effort and resource in regards to this would help although incoming budget cuts would make this difficult. I think it would take a culture change from the university and more importantly, students to encourage the building of CV’s beyond education and part time jobs. I do however feel that in my personal experience, the Faculty of Business and Law do a very good job in sourcing employability opportunities but more needs to be done to encourage students to take up work placements and internships during their degrees so they come out of university with the necessary knowledge, skills and experience to get their desired jobs, particularly in this increasingly competitive jobs market. I also think that although it would be difficult to hold our own career fairs at the university on a scale as large as UNC Charlotte’s, career fairs elsewhere in the country could be more heavily marketed and promoted around the university.

I think the trip has definitely made me think further about doing more extra-curricular activities, whether that be volunteering, new roles around the university or increasing time spent working on the student ambassador scheme but this is extremely difficult whilst being a third year student in the UK.

David Banfro, Student Ambassador, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Computing

After being invited to attend the UNC Charlotte tour in September I was more than curious as to what our partner university in the United States had to offer. We arrived in Charlotte on Saturday evening and we began our activities on Sunday morning. Once we had settled into our hotels and acclimatised ourselves with the area which didn’t take long, we were invited to an introductory lunch at the University on Sunday evening. We were picked up by the university Minibus and chauffeured to the university campus which was less than a 10 minute drive away. Once we reached the campus I was immediately struck by the sheer size of the campus.

We were informed that the whole site was just under a 1000 acres and that more buildings were due to be developed. The site had a feel of a new city centre just being opened with the pavements clean and the air surrounding the campus being quite fresh. The buildings were red bricked and new, and statues of former sport stars and Charlotte city legends were dotted around our route into the campus. As we drove into the campus we bypassed a huge

plot of land that was being developed for a 30,000 all seated American football stadium which would open in 2013, adding to the immense size and scale of the university. We met the alumni and staff members for the first time shortly afterwards and I was immediately struck by the level of hospitality and warmth we received from the UNC Charlotte staff. After we had been formally introduced to the staff we were invited by one of the students to watch a movie that night in the student union.

The student union by itself was impressive, fitted with its own cinema and four fast food restaurants, shops and an Apple store. They also had a Student Union shop which contained a Barnes & Noble bookstore alongside memorabilia of the university including

t-shirts, sweaters, hats, scarves and many other clothing items.  And as we watched Steven Spielberg’s latest’s film in the 210 seated cinema, I was quietly excited and intrigued as to what more Charlotte had to offer.

For the next five days we were picked up in the morning by the university minibus and we were always greeted warmly by a member of staff who would be looking after us and chauffeuring us to and from different meetings during the day. Two members of the

university faculty stood out for me in particular; Dennis Weiss and Dr Sam Lopez and we had the pleasure of being in their presence for the duration of our trip. Dr Lopez in particular had a fantastic rapport and closeness with most of the students on campus which if I am

honest I have not seen from many staff members at Kingston. He organised many meetings and social evenings so that we could meet the students and integrate into the university life. I remember him taking us to an El Salvadorian restaurant on the outskirts of Charlotte where we were treated to good food and hospitality by the students. Another meeting Dr Lopez organized took place the following morning when I and a member of the KU staff, Rebecca

Lees, were asked to attend a learning community class. So without really knowing what to expect myself and Rebecca made our way over to the Lynch building. We were greeted by Terence who I later discovered was the Resident Coordinator for Hawthorn Hall. Terence

led us into the classroom where we met Tanya the coordinator for the group that day. We were soon introduced to the group which consisted of about fifteen students who were in the preparation stage before beginning the freshmen year. Once everyone had settled down Tanya took up her seat at the back of the room and three of the students led the group through a fifteen minute session on leadership. The session was completely student led and followed up by quick quiz on the presentation. Every student was fully engaged and involved in the quiz before eagerly participating in leadership games and activities. Every activity the group covered was done together and nobody was left isolated and alone. There was a genuine spirit of friendship and camaraderie between the students. Tanya finished the session with a five minute talk on leadership and looking out for each other, the session finished with socialising and students hugging each other. When I asked one student what made for the unique atmosphere he replied “we’re in this together, we are a team although some of us may take different pathways we’ll stick together because together were unstoppable!”

Reflection

So in summary, never have I been received with such warmth and kindness as we have been given by the students and faculty at UNC Charlotte. Since our arrival in Charlotte we were treated to a real Southern welcome. We have been greeted, chauffeured, pampered, doted on and fed by the staff and students at the university. It surprised me what lengths the University had gone to, to make our stay a comfortable one. From the moment we met the

staff on Sunday they have made us feel more than welcome and have showed us the real meaning of Southern hospitality. We have been treated to good food movies, tours, and outings by the university. Before arriving in North Carolina I was aware of the term

Southern Hospitality, but I never envisaged how friendly it would actually be. I only hope we can replicate the same atmosphere of warmth when UNC Charlotte students and faculty arrive in Kingston. The visit to UNC Charlotte has definitely strengthened my belief that university is more than just a place for learning and graduating. In my opinion university is where you form relationships, rules, and build the foundation for your life. So just by

looking at the examples of friendship hospitality teamwork and selflessness that I saw at UNC Charlotte, I can truly say that I am glad to be a KU student as I see many of the same values on our campuses and I look forward to implementing some of the Charlotte programmes at Kingston. Thank You UNC Charlotte

Tim Linsey, Academic Development

As part of the UNC Charlotte study tour I followed my own technologies enhanced learning track for most of the visit. I got a fascinating insight into Charlotte’s use of technologies to support learning, covering both central departments (Centre for Teaching & Learning; Office of Disability Services; Office of Classroom Support; Students Union) and faculties / Schools (College of Health and Human Services; College of Engineering; College of Liberal Arts & Sciences – Department of Physics & Department of Earth Sciences & Geography; College of Education), including participation in staff development workshops and also joining a cross institutional panel to exchange experiences in addressing accessibility issues. There were many similarities in the types of learning technologies being used including a core VLE (based on Moodle), desktop video conferencing, electronic voting systems and interactive podium screens for example. I was impressed by the widespread use of student interns and the in-University part-time student employment opportunities. Examples included the use of a student team (4 interns) working as part of the ‘Learning MD’s (Multimedia Developers) programme to support staff in the development of video resources, and secondly a team of 11 students involved in the building, deployment and support of classroom podiums.

Staff development in technology enhanced learning was focussed in the Centre of Teaching and Learning (http://teaching.uncc.edu/ ) with a strong programme of events and I particularly liked their fortnightly podcasts recorded by teaching fellows and other academics (see http://teaching.uncc.edu/podcasts ), and we will look to establish something similar. I attended 3 very good workshops and of particular interest were two of the workshops that were run centrally and led by faculty academics including a session on the use of short videos in teaching sessions delivered by an academic from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences teaching in New Media for Communication Studies.

Secondly was a fascinating session delivered by an academic from the College of Education entitled ‘Workshop: Engaging the Millennial Student in Learning’. This workshop focused on who the millennial student was rather defining them by their use of technology. This included discussion on the impact of ‘baby boomers’ as parents.

I am also following up with Kingston colleagues with regard specific areas of collaboration that were raised on the visit including areas of engineering and geography. In addition I had discussions over piloting the use of Kingston’s One Community environment to support both Kingston University and Charlotte students on exchanges. I have provided a very brief overview of the staff that I met and the departments that I visited but please contact me if you would like to follow up on any aspect of what I have covered above.

Becky Lees, Principal Lecturer, Faculty of Business

The UNC Charlotte study tour coincided with the KU induction week, and at first I was hesitant to miss such an important week in the academic schedule. The first week of the KU semester is vital for enabling students to get to know each other, the campus and the staff involved in their teaching programme, and important in developing a sense of course identity and belonging. New undergraduates to UNC Charlotte don’t enrol on a course and don’t even have to declare a discipline to follow when they start their studies as the US education model is quite different to ours. Therefore the concept of identity is fostered in other ways by both academic and non-academic methods. As a fact-finding mission, I hoped the trip to UNC Charlotte would inform us about their initiatives to build such a sense of identity through the transition and support programmes they have introduced and the visit lived up to

its expectations. Some ideas that we may be able to adapt and adopt at KU include the concept of the Learning Communities and Academic Probation and Early Warning.

Learning Communities

As part of the discipline based sessions I attended, I sat in on a class that was part of the Business Learning Community programme. This initiative is open to students who live on campus and have an interest in Business, and creates a community of students who live, study and revise together. All students are located in the same residence building, and along with formal classes, have compulsory mentor-led study groups that meet every week in their halls of residence. This is an intensive and integrated approach to building a sense of belonging and identity driven by an academic perspective, but with social and networking benefits.

The class I attended was led by a group of three students who gave a short lecture, held a quiz (that they wrote and whose questions were subsequently used in a formal class test) and ran a whole group activity. The class was facilitated, and concluded by the tutor, but really this was a ‘backseat’ role. Whilst such class activities are not new, the depth of integration with activities outside the classroom seemed to encourage a higher level of

student engagement within the teaching session. UNC Charlotte claim that students participating in such learning communities have a better general attainment and progression record than non participants. Whilst this model is not directly transferable to the UK model of HE, there are elements that we can build on to improve the student experience. As a first step, these could include using peer mentors to facilitate out-of-class study groups, with Studyspace support.

Academic Probation/Early Warning System

UNC Charlotte require all students who are not ‘in good standing’ with the university to be placed on academic probation. This is an intensive one-semester programme of advising and tutoring opportunities for students who need to improve their GPA or else they face suspension. At KU, this type of initiative could be directed quite formally at repeating students. The Early Warning System they employ is an integrated approach to monitoring the early academic engagement with students heavily supported by a non-academic advisor and extensive data analysis using both current and pre-university qualifications data, undertaken by a central academic office. Student activity is evidenced by information including attendance and in-class tests. At KU, there are many courses on which there are opportunities for such monitoring, but the administrative burden can be prohibitive

especially in monitoring a large cohort of students and access to data can be difficult. Again, the academic probation programme claimed to improve a student’s GPA by around 0.9 points and such interventions could be beneficial in retaining a larger proportion of our repeating students. In conjunction with a pilot of an Early Warning system, we could reduce the number of repeaters in the first place if we could identify, early on, those students at risk of falling behind.

The staff at UNC Charlotte could not have been more accommodating or sensitive to what we hoped to achieve during our visit, and these initiatives certainly provide some food for

thought in adopting different models of student support and transition programmes. Their return visit in 2012 should provide many further opportunities for networking and discussion of the implementation of ideas gleaned from our visit.

Marion Webb, September 2011

I had three main priorities for this visit. The first was to discover more about the variety of mentoring schemes in place at UNC Charlotte to support students once they were enrolled on UNCC courses. I wanted to bring this knowledge back with a view to introducing mentoring schemes for a large number of first year students as part of Kingston’s Access agreement.

Learning points from Charlotte’s mentoring schemes are:

• A Mentoring Committee brings together representatives from all schemes. This would be helpful at Kingston to ensure that inappropriate overlaps are avoided.

• Mentoring schemes need administrative support

• Student clubs and societies are a useful source of recruitment for mentors

• Mentors at Charlotte all receive three days’ training. This training involves topics such as “How to interact with a lecturer”, managing conflict and facilitation skills. It is also recommended that one day of the training should focus on employability skills.

• The Careers Service employs a number of “Peer Career Assistants”.

These assist at careers events, check students’ CVs, manage the Careers social media sites and make presentations to students.

• The Careers Service uses employers and alumni to act as mentors

• Many mentorship schemes contain an observation component.

Mentors are given feedback on their rapport with their mentees, ways in which they provide feedback to students and ways in which they check understanding. It would be helpful for

Kingston’s mentoring scheme to ensure that an observation protocol was established.

I was also interested in the Learning Communities which have been in operation at Charlotte for ten years. These are small groups of students and staff who work closely together with the aim of promoting a sense of belonging and thereby aiming to improve the students’ chances of academic success. Some of these exist within disciplines such as Psychology and Business (and the recently completed evaluation suggests that these subject based communities are the most successful in terms of retention and results) but others focus on themes or groups, such as first generation students. I observed a BEST (Building Educational Strengths and Talents) session for first generation HE students. This was led by a PhD student from UNC Chapel Hill who used a range of drama exercises to encourage these first year students to act out issues around stereotyping. The students participated with enormous enthusiasm (I participated too but slightly less enthusiastically). One of the principles around learning communities is that they should involve experiential learning techniques, such as problem-based learning and they incorporate extra-curricular (“co-curricular”) activities, such as going on “retreats” or volunteering.

Following my work with the Outduction project (http://www. outduction.ac.uk/) I have a particular interest in working with student interns. At UNC Charlotte a variety of internships exist. Some of these are under the banner of “49erships” which are non credit bearing

where students work a minimum of 80 hours a semester in a career related position (placement) to gain professional experience.

Other internships are credit-bearing and the students are assessed by assignments based on their placements, which could take place over the summer outside of teaching time. The Careers Service at UNC Charlotte stresses the importance of “Occupational Literacy”

which is a combination of understanding careers and the demands of various jobs with self-awareness. Interestingly, the Careers Service listed the skills that US employers value as Verbal Communication, Strong Work Ethic, Teamwork, Analytical Skills, Initiative. These are

similar to our KEYS but I did sense that there was less obligation on staff to incorporate these skills into the curriculum.

My conclusions are that many of the ideas from UNC Charlotte could be adapted for the Kingston context. We already make use of student mentors but need to increase recruitment considerably. We could certainly increase our use of student interns and students

generally employed on campus. The Learning Communities model already exists within the APPL groups in Nursing and it would be exciting to see this spread perhaps though personal tutor schemes.

successful in terms of retention and results) but others focus on themes or groups, such as first generation students. I observed a BEST (Building Educational Strengths and Talents) session for first generation HE students. This was led by a PhD student from UNC Chapel Hill who used a range of drama exercises to encourage these first year students to act out issues around stereotyping. The students participated with enormous enthusiasm (I participated too but slightly less enthusiastically). One of the principles around learning communities is that they should involve experiential learning techniques, such as problem-based learning and they incorporate extra-curricular (“co-curricular”) activities, such as going on “retreats” or volunteering.

Following my work with the Outduction project (http://www.outduction.ac.uk/) I have a particular interest in working with student interns. At UNC Charlotte a variety of internships exist. Some of these are under the banner of “49erships” which are non credit bearing

where students work a minimum of 80 hours a semester in a career related position (placement) to gain professional experience.

Other internships are credit-bearing and the students are assessed by assignments based on their placements, which could take place over the summer outside of teaching time. The Careers Service at UNC Charlotte stresses the importance of “Occupational Literacy”

which is a combination of understanding careers and the demands of various jobs with self-awareness. Interestingly, the Careers Service listed the skills that US employers value as Verbal Communication, Strong Work Ethic, Teamwork, Analytical Skills, Initiative. These are

similar to our KEYS but I did sense that there was less obligation on staff to incorporate these skills into the curriculum.

My conclusions are that many of the ideas from UNC Charlotte could be adapted for the Kingston context. We already make use of student mentors but need to increase recruitment considerably. We could certainly increase our use of student interns and students generally employed on campus. The Learning Communities model already exists within the APPL groups in Nursing and it would be exciting to see this spread perhaps though personal tutor schemes.

The Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE) is approved by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). This enables nurses and midwives who have completed the course, together with the additional requirement of a teaching practice portfolio, to record their qualification on the NMC register. The requirement for nurses and midwives to achieve recorded teacher status is laid out in the ‘Standards to support learning and assessment in practice’ (NMC, 2008). The standards take the form of a single developmental framework, which includes outcomes for mentors and practice teachers.
The ADC works in partnership with the Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences to address the quality assurance and quality enhancement issues relating directly to nursing and midwifery staff.
As part of the quality processes, the NMC undertakes an annual review of programmes delivered by the Faculty, and this year the PGCLTHE was included in the review. The reviewers’ visit took place on 1–2 February 2011, entailing scrutiny of documentation and processes, visits to clinical practice areas, and interviews with a range of stakeholders. Verbal feedback was extremely
positive, particularly in relation to standards of teaching and the responsiveness and accessibility of academic staff. The reviewers concluded that all risks were controlled, and scored the provision as ‘good’ in all six aspects, with a commendation for partnership working with local stakeholders.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to this outcome. The PGCLTHE will be revalidated in the 2011/12 academic year, and we hope to work with staff and course participants to build on this success and to continue to serve the specific needs of nursing and midwifery staff.

One of the challenges we face is to encourage our students to engage in the many opportunities open to them as they undertake their courses. We need to encourage them to appreciate how the different activities they can do, both within and outside of the taught curriculum, can facilitate them in achieving their full potential.
To help students to plan and articulate their personal development, the ADC has worked with the PDP champions group and Bradford University to create a new website for students – http://developme.kingston.ac.uk This offers links to a range of activities and resources, including a skills audit tool aligned to the KEYS framework.
Please visit the site and leave your feedback. Please also show the site to students, or create a link to it from StudySpace.
Stephanie Aiken s.aiken@kingston.ac.uk

In February last year, the Faculty Student Engagement Group agreed that the ADC would chair a working group to address the list of recommendations proposed in the report on the Course Representative Scheme (CR scheme).
Representatives from all faculties met to share practice and to agree an action plan. As a result, a revamped scheme has been implemented this year to address issues around publicity, recruitment and training. To support this, a range of publications have been written and distributed, and can be found on the Learning and Teaching webpages. We have also explored how
University schemes (eg volunteering; PAL; student ambassadors;
ASC advisors, including the CR scheme) that currently promote student engagement could be enhanced by utilising a common strategic approach to their development, recognition, implementation and evaluation.
We have focused attention on providing customised CR training at Kingston College (a partner institution) with a view to rolling out such training with other partners in the future. Kingston College colleagues involved in the Institutional Audit meetings earlier this year gave a very positive account of our work together, and this was highlighted in the fi nal report as evidence of good practice.
We are committed to providing our CRs (and other students involved in University schemes that support students) with skill development opportunities to show our appreciation of their commitment, energy and enthusiasm. The first such opportunity was the chance to attend ‘An audience with Nick Hewer’, who started in ran his own PR company but more recently became
known for his role in The Apprentice. Anecdotal feedback has been positive. Students described his address as inspirational.
Nick Hewer recognised the added value of the extracurricular work such as that of CR afford students, and indicated that this kind of experience was just what employers look for; that it would enable students to stand out in the job market.
This semester we are planning to offer employability-related workshops that will enable the Course Representatives to capture and capitalise on the evidence of their capabilities as part of the PDP process and with a view to securing future employment.
Jane Gay, Academic Development