Category / Impact

FHSS Research Seminars 2017-2018

BU research, Events, Fusion, Impact, international, Knowledge Exchange

The Faculty of Health and Social Sciences Research Seminar Series will be starting again soon.

We noted that the best attended seminars last year were those involving a range of presentations in a one hour slot. These bite-size selections of research topics were great in attracting an audience from across disciplines and created a fun, friendly atmosphere.

To build on this we will be running monthly Research Seminars with 2-3 presenters at each session. These seminars are open to everyone, so whether this is your first venture into research or you are a veteran researcher please feel free to come along and share your experiences.

Seminars will be held between 1 and 2pm at the Lansdowne Campus on the following dates:

18th October 2017

15 November 2017

17 January 2018

21 February 2018

21 March 2018

18 April 2018

16 May 2018

20 June 2018

Details of presenters will be announced via the blog.

Any questions please feel free to email me at: ckillingback@bournemouth.ac.uk

Conference on the impact of complications and errors in surgery held at BU

BU research, conferences, Events, Fusion, Impact, Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team, REF Subjects, Research Ethics, Uncategorized

Things can go wrong in surgery, and dealing with the consequences of complications and errors is part and parcel of a surgeon’s life. Last week a conference was held at BU’s Executive Business Centre which explored the impact that adverse events have on surgeons and examined how these effects can be ameliorated. Eminent presenters from across the UK shared insights from their surgical careers and personal experiences, presented the latest research in the area, and considered how better support and training could be provided for surgeons.

The conference was organised by the Bournemouth Adverse Events Research Team, a joint research venture between psychologists at BU and surgeons at Royal Bournemouth Hospital, who are currently researching the impact of complications and errors which inevitably arise during surgery on surgeons.  Professor Siné McDougall, one of the research team, said: “Today is about trying to think about what we can do to support surgeons. When things do go wrong, the focus is rightly on patients and their family. However, surgeons are also dealing with their own feelings, particularly if they have made a mistake which they deeply regret.”

It was clear that the conference had touched on a key issue for surgeons.  This was summed up by the keynote speaker, Professor Sir Miles Irving, Emeritus Professor of Surgery at Manchester University, who said “The proceedings were excellent and clearly demonstrated that you have latched on to a problem which has the potential to become even more significant if not addressed.”  The Bournemouth Adverse Events Team is looking forward to continuing research in this area which will address this issue.

European angst over Tourists: Do Codes of Conduct Help?

BU research, Impact, Research news, the conversation

After recent media exposure about overcrowding at tourist destinations and local-tourist conflict, destination authorities have sought to introduce codes of conduct across European tourist destinations. From Hvar in Croatia,  towns near Amsterdam, and Venice, there is a belief that the tourism system, like the financial system, is not working for everyone. Local residents are starting to feel like they’re receiving less than they’re giving. Therefore, authorities have stepped in with codes, with the aim to assign rules to make tourists more sensitive to local residents and protect natural, cultural, historical and other resources.

Tourists planning to go to the beach

Venice Code of Conduct

Michael O’Regan, PhD from the Department of Events & Leisure, is exploring whether these codes work, and whether the introduction of these measures really protect tourism resources. Taking a critical approach, Michael argues that such codes work at different levels, from marketing strategies, as local politicians and businesses gain reputational capital by scapegoating tourists to their role in smarter governance models. Read more on the Conversation UK.

Link: http://theconversation.com/tourist-codes-of-conduct-are-a-bad-idea-heres-why-82676

HE Policy update w/e 25th August 2017

EU, Funding opportunities, Fusion, Impact, innovation, international, policy, Research news

Immigration, International Students and Brexit

The government have commissioned a series of assessments and reviews of the impact of immigration policy and Brexit via the Migration Advisory Committee:

  • Call for evidence and briefing note: EEA-workers in the UK labour market – we will be responding on the HE questions via UCEA and UUK and we are considering a regional response, please let Sarah or I know if you have evidence that would be relevant to this – it is looking at EEA migration trends, recruitment practices and economic and social impacts.
  • a detailed assessment of the social and economic impact of international students in the UK. We would expect a call for evidence for this to follow. Looking at both EU and non-EU students, the MAC will be asked to consider:
  • the impact of tuition fees and other spending by international students on the national, regional, and local economy and on the education sector
  • the role students play in contributing to local economic growth
  • the impact their recruitment has on the provision and quality of education provided to domestic students.

The Commissioning Letter from Amber Rudd says: “The Digital Economy Act provides a unique opportunity to improve understanding of the migration data and as part of this work the Home Office will be working with the ONS and other Government departments to improve the use of administrative data. This will lead to a greater understanding of how many migrants are in the UK, how long they stay for, and what they are currently doing. The ONS will be publishing an article in September setting out this fuller work plan and the timetable for moving towards this landscape for administrative data usage”

As well as the post-Brexit future of students, the letter also makes reference to the Tier 4 visa pilot which was launched last year and included a handful of universities. Amber Rudd says “the pilot is being carefully evaluated and, if successful, could be rolled out more widely”.

The pilot covered masters courses at 4 universities:

  • Masters course for 13 months or less at the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of Bath or Imperial College London.
  • Participating in the pilot allowed students to:
    • stay for six months after the end of the course;
    • submit fewer evidential documents with their applications – e.g. previous qualifications and documents relating to maintenance requirements

A deluge of other data and reports gave also been published:

  • The Home Office has published its second report on statistics being collected under the exit checks programme – Exit checks data.
    • For the 1.34m visas granted to non-EEA nationals and which expired in 2016/17, where individuals did not obtain a further extension to stay longer in the UK, 96.3% departed in time (that is before their visa expired)
  • A National Statistics update has been published which gives a breakdown of all the data
  • Additional analysis by Office for National Statistics (ONS) on international students, has been published
  • The Centre for Population Change has published the findings of a survey it carried out in March 2017 in partnership with the ONS and UUK. The survey looked at the intentions of graduating overseas students and found:
  • The majority of students do not intend to stay in the UK for more than a year after finishing their studies (and those that stated they intended to stay were not certain of their post-study plans, particularly non-EU students).
  • Fewer than one in ten international students plan to stay in the UK indefinitely and find a job.

According to UUK:

  • Exit checks data shows that student overstaying is at worst 3% and much of the 3% of undetermined outcomes may be due to individuals leaving via routes where there are no exit checks currently (such as via the Common Travel Area). This means student visa compliance is at least 97%, far higher than previous (incorrect) claims.
  • The Home Office exit checks data provides a more accurate picture (than the International Passenger Survey – IPS) of what non-EU students do after their initial period of leave to study
  • The ONS report suggest that the IPS is likely to underestimate student emigration – therefore any implied student net migration figure is likely to be an overestimate
  • The ONS also commits to working with colleagues across the government statistics service to utilise all available administrative systems to further improve migration statistics. They have also asked for UUK’s input to this work.

Widening Participation

A survey of access agreements has been published this week by the Office for Fair Access. In their press release OFFA note that every university has committed to working with schools to help increase access to HE. The report also notes that universities will focus on improved evaluation of the impact of financial support and an evidence based approach more generally, a specific focus on White working class males and BME attainment, and more support for mental health issues.  The amount universities spend on widening access will rise.

Responding to the survey, UUK Chief Executive, Alistair Jarvis, said: “The enhancements in support provided by universities has helped to increase the entry rate for disadvantaged young people to record levels. All UK universities work hard to widen participation and support disadvantaged students throughout their time at university. It is right to expect a continued focus on support for disadvantaged students to make further progress in closing the gap between different student groups.”

Industrial Strategy

The formal outcome of the Industrial Strategy consultation is still pending. However, there has been a reasonable amount of activity in the meantime and we thought it might be helpful to do a round up.

Clusters – The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) have set up a Creative Industries Clusters Programme, starting in 2018, to facilitate collaboration between the industry and universities. The pre-call announcement sets out the plan for at least 8 research and development partnerships, each led by an HEI, and a Policy and Evidence Centre. Calls will apparently open in October 2018.

Sector deals – As part of the Industrial strategy green paper, the government announced that there were 5 sector reviews taking place and suggested that they would welcome more.

Other organisations are setting up consultations and other reviews to respond to the Industrial Strategy, such as:

The interim findings of the industrial digitalisation review are interesting – they are working on a final report for the autumn of 2017:

  • It highlights a need for more leadership – with “much stronger marketing and messaging” and proposed the establishment of a Digital Technology Institute and Digital Technology Networks
  • It discusses issues with adoption rates for technology, particularly among SMEs and suggests better support for businesses via LEPs and other organisations, work on skills through interventions such as an Institute of Digital Engineering
  • Innovation – the interim review suggests looking at additive manufacturing and AI – and creating new industries in autonomous operations, but also providing kite marked content for businesses.

Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund – Innovate UK are running the Industrial strategy Challenge Fund – in April 2017 they identified 6 “core industrial challenges”:

Interesting reading

JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

65111                                                                                 65070

Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter                        |                       policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

Research Impact – a new toolkit developed by the Health Foundation

BU research, Festival of Learning, Impact

I just wanted to draw attention to the following new toolkit developed by the Health Foundation.

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Communicating your research – a toolkit

The Health Foundation’s new communications toolkit for research helps researchers to increase the influence and impact of their findings in health and health care. It includes guidance, templates, support materials and links to help develop a communication strategy, package findings for different audiences and engage stakeholders to extend influence and widen impact.

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Many thanks

Clare Killingback

FHSS Impact Champion

Fair Access Research project (FAR) webpages are launched

BU research, Centre for Excellence in Learning, Fusion, Impact, policy, Student Engagement, student research

The FAR project webpages have now been published.

BU’s pioneering Fair Access Research project has brought together students, SUBU, professional, service and academic staff from across the university to develop and expand expertise and reflexive practice in the field of fair access to higher education.

Each member of the team has brought different knowledge and experiences to a series of innovative research projects exploring what it means to be a ‘non-traditional’ student in the 21st century. FAR has inspired new ways of thinking about fair access and widening participation through this ‘whole institution approach’,

The team has explored all the different stages in the student lifecycle developing an understanding of the challenges some students face in accessing or succeeding at university, how university is experienced by diverse groups of students and how the university can support them in the optimum way when they are here.

Explore the five themes of the FAR programme on the webpages at https://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/project/fair-access-research-and-practice-far/

 

Outreach

Admissions

Experience 

Continuation 

Ways of Working

 

 

Contact principal investigators Dr Vanessa Heaslip or Dr Clive Hunt for further information

Dr Elvira Bolat is awarded Academy of Marketing Research Fund 2017

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research, Events, Featured academics, Festival of Learning, Impact, Research news

Dr Elvira Bolat from the Department of Marketing at the Faculty of Management has been awarded the prestigious Academy of Marketing Research Fund.

Her research titled ‘From Compassion to Defence: Exploring Service Brands’ Trust Repair Mechanisms across Traditional and Digital Media’ is the sub-project of the Faculty of Management’s QR-funded project on Trust Repair in the service sectors, led by Dr Julie Robson. 

Using integrative content analysis and emotional text analysis, Dr Bolat’s project will explore the trust repair process and trust repair mechanisms used in the context of traditional and digital media, within selected high profile trust erosion cases in the service sectors. Dr Robson (Department of Marketing, FM), Professor Juliet Memery (Department of Marketing, FM) and Dr Caroline Jackson (Department of Leisure and Events, FM) are acting as mentors for the project and advising on the contextual setting of the study.

Moreover, this project supports Dr Bolat in acquiring new skills in quantitative analysis of qualitative data and deepening understanding and use of language processing software.

Dr Bolat comments: “Academy of Marketing is one of the biggest international organisations to support marketing scholars and to be one of the few recipients of this prestigious funding scheme is an absolute honour. This also helps our QR project to extend its impact and reach.”

To find out what other projects are recipients of this year’s Academy of Marketing Research funding scheme, access: https://www.academyofmarketing.org/research/amrc-research-funding/

Trust Repair team has delivered a successful Festival of Learning 2017 event on 11 July titled ‘Lies and Scandals: Whatever happened to Trust?’ and received an overwhelmingly positive feedback from the audience. Once of things that came out of this interactive event is a powerful impact media has on stakeholders’ interpretation of organisational transgressions and, therefore, on ability of brands to repair trust damage. Hence, this sub-project will help in extending scholar’s and practitioners’ understanding on role of both traditional and digital media play in repairing trust towards brands.

This grant is a very positive recognition of BU’s standing internationally and nationally within marketing and consumer behaviour research and contributes towards a growing impact generated by Influences on Consumer Behaviour research centre.

To connect with Dr Bolat, email at ebolat@bournemouth.ac.uk or tweet at @Elvira_MLady

To follow Trust Repair project, tweet at @TrustRepairBU