Category Archives: Blog

SPARQS Conference 2017

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SPARQS hosted its annual conference on on Thursday 23rd March,  under the theme ‘Celebrating The Impact Of The Student Voice On Quality Enhancement’.  Shirley-Anne Sommerville, MSP and Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science, opened the conference, followed by highly interesting and engaging keynote sessions including NUS Scotland President Vonnie Sandlan, Adam Gajek from the Europen Students’ union, and Rebecca MacLennan from the Scottish Council for Development and Industry.

Vonnie Sandlan, Adam Gajek and Rebecca MacLennan
Vonnie Sandlan, Adam Gajek and Rebecca MacLennan

Continue reading SPARQS Conference 2017 →

Welcoming and Supporting International Students

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By Sidonie Ecochard

The Scotland sector-wide event Welcoming and Supporting International Students took place at the University of Strathclyde on March 1st 2017, in partnership with QAA (Scotland). The event aimed to share and discuss the recommendations of the report commissioned by QAA (Scotland), International Students Transitions into Scottish Higher Education: A Scoping Study. Irene Bell gave a presentation on the report she authored, giving a brief summary of methods, findings and recommendations. She described the feeling shared across the sector and backed by data that “international students are well supported in Scottish Higher Education, but we could still be doing better, and we need to be doing better”. Indeed, international students number have more than tripled worldwide since 1990, rising from 1.3 million to 5 million students in 2014 and currently representing 22% of the student body in Scottish Higher Education institutions. To improve international students’ transition, the report includes recommendations for both policy and practice, among which: Continue reading Welcoming and Supporting International Students →

Edinburgh Napier International Students Moodle Community Page

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Enrol on the new Moodle page

Supporting international student transition onto Edinburgh Napier programme

By Sidonie Ecochard, Research  Assistant, DLTE

Visit and share with international students our new Moodle Community Page, Edinburgh Napier International Students Community, designed with ENSA and ENSA Student President Rojan Subramini. Our page includes basic information for our incoming international students, which we hope will ease their arrival stress and help them settle in their new city. Continue reading Edinburgh Napier International Students Moodle Community Page →

HEA conference – effective systems for transition and student success

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By Sidonie Ecochard, Research Assistant, DLTE

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It was a great honour for our team to be offered a funded place to present at the HEA conference Ready for retention: effective systems for transition and student success. This invitation-only event was hosted by the University of South-Wales’s Pontyridd campus on the 6th and 7th July 2016 and dealt with issues surrounding the themes of transitions, retention, and student engagement in Higher Education.

Continue reading HEA conference – effective systems for transition and student success →

QAA Event – Navigating transitions: transition skills

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The information event on the Enhancement Theme Student Transitions Navigating transitions: transition skills was hosted by the QAA Scotland in Glasgow on Thursday 5th May. The event opened with welcome talks reminding us of and highlighting the importance of the current Enhancement Theme to improve student retention, progression and completion. The rest of the event was dedicated to presenting the QAA research and innovations on Student Transitions.

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Event facilitators Elaine Smith and Barry Beggs, encouraging discussions and feedback

The QAA team on Student Transitions identified 8 key transition skills, further broken down as per their function to students – skills to study, or to navigate change:

Navigating change

  • self-efficacy
  • self-management of expectations
  • social skills for embracing diversity
  • dealing with stress
 Skills for academic study

  • critical self-reflection
  • independent learning
  • critical thinking
  • academic and information literacy

Continue reading QAA Event – Navigating transitions: transition skills →

Launch of the International Students Transition Scoping Project

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Student Transitions Word Cloud standard page

By Sidonie Ecochard, Research Assistant, DLTE

We are proud to announce the launch of our university wide scoping project, on the theme of international students transition! This project aims to identify all the provisions supporting international students transition at ENU, and best-practices in particular. Continue reading Launch of the International Students Transition Scoping Project →

Spring new beginnings for the transition theme team!

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By Sidonie Ecochard, Research Assistant, DLTE

As Edinburgh is slowly progressing towards spring, our transition theme team is also experiencing its early spring changes! We have now officially moved to our new office on the seventh floor (room B.7.37) and I will be replacing the irreplaceable Imi Dencer-Brown as the team’s research assistant.

Spring is also the time of year for our fresh crop of transition case studies for the QAA and we would like to thank all the participants for their time and contribution. It has been a great opportunity for us to investigate the interesting and diverse practices implemented at ENU to support our students. Although not all the case studies collected will be submitted for publication onto the QAA website, the others will be redacted and added to the ENU Learning, Teaching and Assessment Resource Bank. Continue reading Spring new beginnings for the transition theme team! →

Theme Leaders’ Group Meeting and Institutional Team Meeting

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By Imi Dencer-Brown, Research Assistant, DLTE

December 1st saw the final Theme Leaders’ Group Meeting of 2015, followed by lunch and the Institutional Team Meeting with representatives from all Scottish Universities at the Carleton Hotel, Edinburgh. This event was a great opportunity for Edinburgh Napier’s team representatives to meet with each other and share practice within the University as well as having the opportunity to ‘buy and sell’ our own ideas and wishes as a University for student transitions in 2016.

Napier was strongly represented with a team of 9 students and staff from across the University: Maxine Wood and Jenny Dean from Napier Students’ Association were present, along with Rojan Kumar (NSA vice president), Liz Gunn (ELRAH), Paddy Perry (School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Care), Tom Campbell (School of Life, Sport and Social Sciences), Heather Owen (Business School), Imi Dencer-Brown (DLTE) and our theme team leader Julia Fotheringham (DLTE). Continue reading Theme Leaders’ Group Meeting and Institutional Team Meeting →

Coming from College Welcome Day

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Our Coming from College Welcome Day was an innovative induction experience for Direct Entry students held on 4th September 2015 at Sighthill campus.

(Thanks to Greig Kelbie, Maxine Wood, Imi Dencer-Brown, and Katrina Castle for providing the information for this post).

Through a variety of interactive workshops, the Coming from College Welcome Day aimed to provide 200 new direct entrant students with activities enabling them to go on and make the most of their university experiences. In particular, the NSA and University wanted to create a sense of community for new direct entrants and to provide them with a positive all-round student induction experience.

The background
The organisation of this event was part of the NSA’s ongoing work around the QAA’s Student Transitions Enhancement Theme. Continue reading Coming from College Welcome Day →

Our feedback from the QAA Student Transitions conference in June

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The QAA International Conference on Enhancement and Innovation in Higher Education was well attended by Edinburgh Napier University Staff and Students alike, with 13 presentations and 5 posters over the course of the three days.  While the sun sparkled on the Clyde outside the venue showing Glasgow in its very best colours, our colleagues and students sparkled inside sharing their practice, their research and their reflections of student transitions.   Congratulations to everyone for ensuring that Edinburgh Napier were so expertly represented.  What’s more – given that there were around 600 delegates over three days it’s rather amazing to see that we are quite so well represented in the photo gallery from the conference which you can link to at http://enhancementthemes.ac.uk/conference/conference-resources 🙂

There is absolutely no doubt that our students rose to the challenge of presenting at an International conference (a first for most of them), and if there was any stage fright – it didn’t show.  Continue reading Our feedback from the QAA Student Transitions conference in June →