Yearly Archives / 2018

Research Impact – parliament and policy

The parliamentary outreach service are running an event aimed at academic researchers who would like to engage with parliament for their research to inform policy making.

Here are the details:

Want to have an impact in the UK Parliament?  Discover how your research could broaden debate and better inform our democracy

Book a place at Research, Impact and the UK Parliament at Plymouth Marjon University on Wednesday 21 March 2018 at 1.30pm.

At our 3 hour training event, you will learn:

  • How to contact MPs and Members of the House of Lords from Parliament’s Outreach & Engagement Service
  • How to work with Select Committees from a clerk of a House of Commons Select Committee
  • How Parliament has been cited in REF 2014 impact case studies from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology

“This event was excellent – well organised, highly relevant, focused, all speakers strong, content highly practical” – RIUKP Attendee

Tickets cost £40 and include afternoon tea. If this fee is a barrier to your attendance, please contact us; we may make exceptions in some circumstances.

 

Book your place at Research, Impact and the UK Parliament now.

SRA academic applications – closing date this Friday

Fusion Investment Fund

A reminder that the deadline for academic applications is Friday 26th January 2018.

 

Academics are invited to submit applications for this years’ SRA programme.  Application deadline is 26th January 2018.

The programme is funded by the Fusion Investment Fund and the scheme continues to focus on supporting departments reach co-creation targets whilst supporting students to undertake research under the guidance of an experienced academic that is directly related to their career path and/or academic discipline.  Each department has its own allocation of funding and we encourage collaboration between departments for this scheme.

The academic applications will be assessed against the following criteria which you will need to demonstrate within the application form:

  • Student-centred
  • Co-creation and co-production
  • Fusion
  • External engagement
  • Impact
  • Cross-Faculty

This scheme is for successful students to work for 30 hours a week for a total of four weeks in June/July 2018.

The SRA programme is coordinated via RKEO.

Academics will apply for the funding via an application form. A Faculty based panel will review all staff applications and decide which applications to continue to the student recruitment stage of the scheme.  The application deadline for this round is 26th January 2018.

Approved academic applications will be advertised as SRA positions to students with student applications being received, processed and managed centrally within RKEO and distributed to the relevant academics after the closing date. Academics will be responsible for shortlisting, interviewing and providing interview feedback to their own candidates. Successful students will need to complete monthly timesheets, signed by their supervisor for payment.

These SRA vacancies will be available to taught BU students only, where SRA applicants must be able to work in the UK, be enrolled during the time of their assistantship and also hold an average grade of over 70%.  Staff are permitted to have multiple SRAs.

If you have any queries, please contact Rachel Clarke, KE Adviser –  sra@bournemouth.ac.uk

There’s no such thing as a bad metric.

BRIAN, Guidance, Publishing, Research assessment, writing

Lizzie Gadd warns against jumping on ‘bad metrics’ bandwagons without really engaging with the more complex responsible metrics agenda beneath.

An undoubted legacy of the Metric Tide report has been an increased focus on the responsible use of metrics and along with this a notion of ‘bad metrics’.  Indeed, the report itself even recommended awarding an annual ‘Bad Metrics Prize’.  This has never been awarded as far as I’m aware, but nominations are still open on their web pages.  There has been a lot of focus on responsible metrics recently.  The Forum for Responsible Metrics have done a survey of UK institutions and is reporting the findings on 8 February in London.  DORA has upped its game and appointed a champion to promote their work and they seem to be regularly retweeting messages that remind us all of their take on what it means to do metrics responsibly.   There are also frequent twitter conversations about the impact of metrics in the up-coming REF.  In all of this I see an increasing amount of ‘bad metrics’ bandwagon-hopping.  The anti-Journal Impact Factor (JIF) wagon is now full and its big sister, the “metrics are ruining science” wagon, is taking on supporters at a heady pace.

It looks to me like we have moved from a state of ignorance about metrics, to a little knowledge.  Which, I hear, is a dangerous thing.

It’s not a bad thing, this increased awareness of responsible metrics; all these conversations.  I’m responsible metrics’ biggest supporter and a regular slide in my slide-deck shouts ‘metrics can kill people!’.  So why am I writing a blog post that claims that there is no such thing as a bad metric?  Surely these things can kill people? Well, yes, but guns can also kill people, they just can’t do so unless they’re in the hands of a human.  Similarly, metrics aren’t bad in and of themselves, it’s what we do with them that can make them dangerous.

In Yves Gingras’ book, “Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation” he defines the characteristics of a good indicator as follows:

  • Adequacy of the indicator for the object that it measures
  • Sensitivity to the intrinsic inertia of the object being measured
  • Homogeneity of the dimensions of the indicator.

So, you might have an indicator such as ‘shoe size’, where folks with feet of a certain length get assigned a certain shoe size indicator. No problem there – it’s adequate (length of foot consistently maps on to shoe size); it’s sensitive to the thing it measures (foot grows, shoe size increases accordingly), and it’s homogenous (one characteristic – length, leads to one indicator – shoe size).  However, in research evaluation we struggle on all of these counts.  Because the thing we really want to measure, this elusive, multi-faceted “research quality” thing, doesn’t have any adequate, sensitive and homogeneous indicators. We need to measure the immeasurable. So we end up making false assumptions about the meanings of our indicators, and then make bad decisions based on those false assumptions.  In all of this, it is not the metric that’s at fault, it’s us.

In my view, the JIF is the biggest scapegoat of the Responsible Metrics agenda.  The JIF is just the average number of cites per paper for a journal over two years.  That’s it.  A simple calculation. And as an indicator of the communication effectiveness of a journal for collection development purposes (the reason it was introduced) it served us well.  It’s just been misused as an indicator of the quality of individual academics and individual papers.  It wasn’t designed for that.  This is misuse of a metric, not a bad metric. (Although recent work has suggested that it’s not that bad an indicator for the latter anyway, but that’s not my purpose here).  If the JIF is a bad metric, so is Elsevier’s CiteScore which is based on EXACTLY the same principle but uses a three-year time window not two, a slightly different set of document types and journals, and makes itself freely available.

If we’re not careful, I fear that in a hugely ironic turn, DORA and the Leiden Manifesto might themselves become bad (misused) metrics: an unreliable indicator of a commitment to the responsible use of metrics that may or may not be there in practice.

I understand why DORA trumpets the misuse of JIFs; it is rife and there are less imperfect tools for the job. But there are also other metrics that DORA doesn’t get in a flap about – like the individual h-index – which are subject to the same amount of misuse, but are actually more damaging.  The individual h-index disadvantages certain demographics more than others (women, early-career researchers, anyone with non-standard career lengths); at least the JIF mis-serves everyone equally.  And whilst we’re at it peer review can be an equally inadequate research evaluation tool (which, ironically, metrics have proven). So if we’re to be really fair we should be campaigning for responsible peer review with as much vigour as our calls for responsible metrics.

Bumper stickers by Paul van der Werf
Bumper stickers by Paul van der Werf (CC-BY)

 

It looks to me like we have moved from a state of ignorance about metrics, to a little knowledge.  Which, I hear, is a dangerous thing.  A little knowledge can lead to a bumper sticker culture ( “I HEART DORA” anyone?  “Ban the JIF”?) which could move us away from, rather than towards, the responsible use of metrics. These concepts are easy to grasp hold of, but they mask a far more complex and challenging set of research evaluation problems that lie beneath.  The responsible use of metrics is about more than the avoidance of certain indicators, or signing DORA, or even developing your own bespoke Responsible Metrics policy (as I’ve said before this is certainly easier said than done).

The responsible use of metrics requires responsible scientometricians.  People who understand that there is really no such thing as a bad metric, but it is very possible to misuse them. People with a deeper level of understanding about what we are trying to measure, what the systemic effects of this might be, what indicators are available, what their limitations are, where they are appropriate, how they can best triangulate them with peer review.  We have good guidance on this in the form of the Leiden Manifesto, the Metric Tide and DORA.  However, these are the starting points of often painful responsible metric journeys, not easy-ride bandwagons to be jumped on.  If we’re not careful, I fear that in a hugely ironic turn, DORA and the Leiden Manifesto might themselves become bad (misused) metrics: an unreliable indicator of a commitment to the responsible use of metrics that may or may not be there in practice.

Let’s get off the ‘metric-shaming’ bandwagons, deepen our understanding and press on with the hard work of responsible research evaluation.

 

Elizabeth Gadd

Elizabeth Gadd is the Research Policy Manager (Publications) at Loughborough University. She has a background in Libraries and Scholarly Communication research. She is the co-founder of the Lis-Bibliometrics Forum and is the ARMA Metrics Special Interest Group Champion

 

 

Creative Commons LicenceOriginal content posted on The Bibliomagician reposted here with permission. Content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Looking for a different way to disseminate your PhD research?

PG research

Do you want to showcase your PhD? Raise the profile of your research? Be in with the chance of winning over £500 worth in prizes?

If the answer is yes to any of the above then the 3MT® might be the opportunity for you.

The 3MT® competition cultivates students’ academic, presentation, and research communication skills.

Presenting in a 3MT® competition increases capacity to effectively explain research in three minutes, in a language appropriate to a non-specialist audience.

Eligibility: Active PhD and Professional Doctorate candidates who have successfully passed their transfer milestone (including candidates whose thesis is under submission) by the date of their first presentation are eligible to participate. If your Viva Voce will take place before the date of the University final (7 June 2018) you are not eligible to enter the competition.

Eligible applicants should submit a fully completed application form, to the Research Skills and Development Officers at PGRskillsdevelopment@bournemouth.ac.uk by midnight on Monday 5 February 2018.

We look forward to receiving your application.

ERASMUS 2017: Promoting autonomy for people with dementia using ICT applications

The end of 2017 brought about the start of the second successful ERASMUS funded project for Dr Ben Hicks (psychology lecturer and member of ADRC) and Professor Wen Tang (Head of Creative Technology Department). Working alongside European partners from Slovenia (Alzheimer’s Slovenia), Greece (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Spain (Alzheimer’s Castellon and the University of Valencia) and Turkey (Alzheimer’s Turkey), the two year project aims to develop an e-platform that raises awareness and promotes the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to enhance the autonomy of people with dementia and their care partners.

The first meeting was held in Castellon, Spain, at the Universitat Jaume 1 on the 18-19th December 2017 and was attended by Ben and Natalia Adamczewska (ADRC). Over the course of two days, the proposed research plan and outcomes of the project were discussed in more detail and tasks were assigned to each of the European partners. This included establishing an Advisory Group of people with dementia, care partners and practitioners to inform the development of the project as well as conducting a review of best practice within this field.

Although it is only early days, there was a real buzz around the meeting, as the partners discussed the project and the potential beneficial impact it could have for people living with dementia across Europe. The second meeting for the project team is planned for April/May 2018.

If you would like further information on the research please contact Ben on bhicks@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

REMINDER: ADRC presents NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) Wessex Seminar this Wednesday

Funding opportunities, Guidance

You are cordially invited to this lunchtime seminar which is open to all BU staff.

Please feel free to bring your lunch.

Wednesday 24th January 2018

1 – 2 pm

B407, Bournemouth House, Lansdown Campus

The NIHR is the UK’s major funder of applied health research. The NIHR develops and supports the people who conduct and contribute to health research and equally supports the training of the next generation of health researchers. The NIHR CRN Study Support Service helps researchers set up and deliver high quality research to time and target in the NHS in England.

We are fortunate to have two Research Delivery Managers from the NIHR CRN  Wessex, David Higenbottam and Alex Jones  coming to BU who  will be presenting a seminar about the network, funding opportunities and forthcoming strategic plan for 2018, followed by Q & A session.

Please email Michelle O’Brien (mobrien@bournemouth.ac.uk) if you are planning to attend.  See you there!

Biographies

David Higenbottam
Has worked in research since 2012.
2012 – 2014 South Coast DeNDRoN Network Manager.
2014 – to date Research Delivery Manager for Divisions 2 and 4 (Division 4 includes dementia as one of its specialities).

 

Alex Jones
Worked for Hampshire & Isle of Wight CLRN from July 2013 – April 2014.
Division 5 Assistant Portfolio Manager then Portfolio Manager April 2014 – December 2017 (Division 5 includes ageing as one of its specialities).
Currently Acting Research Delivery Manager for Division 5.

Wessex CRN
The Wessex CRN was formed  in April 2014, its geographic footprint is Hampshire & Isle of Wight, Dorset and South Wiltshire. It comprises 12 partner NHS organisations and 10 clinical commissioning groups. Research specialities are spread across 6 Divisions.

SPSS Training in early 2018 – Book now to secure your place

Training

At the core of all quantitative research at BU are skills with mathematics and statistics.

In these introductory two-day workshops, we will learn the fundamental concepts of statistics and quantitative analysis with the help of SPSS.  This is a hands-on programme with statistical analysis designed to help you make the most of the SPSS application to aid your own research and facilitate support of student researchers. You will not need any previous experience with SPSS or statistics.

The RKEO ‘Statistical Analysis with SPSS’ two-day programmes are aimed at faculty staff who would like to learn more about quantitative statistical analysis for their own research purposes or are supervising students undertaking a quantitative research project.

The introductory 2-day programme is designed to assist faculty staff who have no prior knowledge of quantitative statistics and do not have experience with a statistical application like SPSS, or who do not routinely work with this type of data.

Depending on attendees prior experience, planned content includes the following:

  • Introduction to SPSS and statistical analysis.
  • Managing and manipulating data in SPSS.
  • Introducing null hypothesis significance testing and p-values.
  • Normality testing.
  • T-test analysis.
  • ANOVAs
  • Correlation and Regression (time allowing)

The course comprises two sessions:

  • A two day beginner session – 12th and 13th February 2018
  • A two day intermediate session – 23rd and 24th April 2018

Please book onto the session which is most appropriate for your needs or both. If you are unsure of which route is best for you, please contact the session facilitator, whose details are given on the internal booking information page.

Each session is limited to 20 attendees but there will be a reserve list maintained so that demand for future sessions can be demonstrated.

These sessions are for BU academics and researchers only.

Students who are studying for a PhD/MRes should not use these workshops, but rather book places on the dedicated PhD quantitative analysis and SPSS workshops via the Doctoral College Researcher Development Programme.

 

HE policy update for the w/e 19th January 2018

Student Engagement

A quieter week policy-wise following the cabinet reshuffle.

New minister – new set of priorities?

Our new minister has been fairly quiet as he settles in and thinks about the many priorities – we expect that the PM wants him to focus on the “major review” – and despite pressure he has refused to get drawn into a discussion of details. He gave a formal response to a parliamentary question earlier this week:

Q – Wes Streeting (Labour): To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish the (a) scope, (b) timetable and (c) membership the review panel for the review of university funding and student financing announced by the Prime Minister in her speech to the Conservative Party Conference in October 2017.

A – Sam Gyimah (Conservative, new Universities Minister):

As stated in the Industrial Strategy white paper published on 27 November 2017, the government is committed to conducting a major review of funding across tertiary education to ensure a joined-up system that works for everyone.

As current and significant reforms move into implementation, this review will look at how we can ensure that the education system for those aged 18 years and over is:

  • accessible to all;
  • supported by a funding system that provides value for money and works for both students and taxpayers;
  • incentivises choice and competition across the sector;
  • and encourages the development of the skills that we need as a country.

The government will set out further details on the review in due course.

And the minister spoke at Queen Mary University of London this week in a date agreed while he was still at the Ministry of Justice – clearly the subject matter had moved on given his new appointment. The discussion was covered by Wonkhe – it seems to have been a balanced and reasonable set of responses from someone who is thinking carefully before leaping into the fray.

Of course there has been plenty of advice for the new minister – from calls for him to get stuck into Brexit discussions to defend research funding, mobility etc. (he did vote remain, after all), to questions about the freedom of speech agenda and BME students at Oxbridge (he was one).

UKRI

John Kingman has been named as the permanent chair of UK Research and Innovation, officially taking the role in April. He has been acting as the interim chair to date to support the shadow running and new set up of the organisation. The Commons Science and Technology Committee are required to ratify his appointment. Also reported in Times Higher.

Freedom of speech

The debate over free speech continued in the Parliamentary Joint Human Rights Committee this week. NUS VP Doku has called for the number of events with freedom of speech issues to be published to quantify if the ‘issue’ is government rhetoric or genuinely needs tackling. Wes Streeting (MP Ilford North and former NUS President) claims the challenges are “overstated” and that Prevent has had the greatest impact on freedom of speech. He continued that no platforming, under NUS policy, was only used to prevent racism and fascism.

International Students

The Home Affairs Committee published Immigration policy: basis for building consensus calling on the Government to make it a clear and stated objective of public policy to build greater consensus and trust on immigration as part of major overhaul of immigration policy making. Read the short summary.  The report does not consider specific policy options for EU migration. The Committee will examine these once the Government publishes its forthcoming White Paper on immigration.

Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP commented:

  • “The Government has a responsibility to build consensus and confidence on immigration rather than allowing this to be a divisive debate. But that requires a transformation in the way that immigration policy is made as too often the current approach has undermined trust in the system.
  • The net migration target isn’t working to build confidence and it treats all migration as the same. That’s why it should be replaced by a different framework of targets and controls. And frankly the system needs to work effectively. As long as there are so many errors and so many problems with enforcement, people won’t have confidence that the system is either fair or robust.”

The Report recommends:

  • An Annual Migration Report setting out a three-year, rolling plan for migration.
  • Clearer and simpler immigration rules, underpinned by principles and values – including the contributory principle, supporting family life and safeguarding security
  • Replacing the net migration target with an evidence-based framework for different types of immigration that takes into account the UK’s needs. There should be no national target to restrict the numbers of students coming to the UK, and at a minimum the Government should immediately remove students from the current net migration target.
  • An immigration system which treats different skills differently. There is clear public support for the continued arrival of high-skilled (not just highly paid) workers who are needed in the economy. Immigration rules should allow UK businesses and organisations easily to attract top talent, with restrictions and controls focused more on low-skilled migration.
  • Immigration plans should be linked with training plans to increase domestic skills in sectors and regions where there are skills gaps that need to be filled through migration.
  • A national integration strategy and local authority led local integration strategies

The report also notes:

  • “In calling for more international students to come and study in the UK, universities must be mindful of local impacts of large numbers of students and work with local authorities to help manage pressures on housing and public services. Universities should be expected to consult local authorities on future student numbers in their area.”

Mayoral pressure

The Financial Times ran an article noting how seven cross-party metro mayors have united to press the Prime Minster to provide a ”more open and welcoming message” to overseas students. The mayors have also written to the Migration Advisory Committee. The FT quotes the letter:

  • “As the UK prepares to leave the EU, it is important that any future immigration system acknowledges the vital contribution international students make to regional jobs and growth. This includes projecting a more open and welcoming message for international students.”

The letter combines last week’s HEPI report showing the huge net financial benefits international students bring with HESA data illustrating a downturn in international student numbers. The FT critiques the letter which uses 2016/17 data stating most students would have applied for their courses before the Brexit result was not known. What the FT fails to consider is that a lower conversion rate between application and enrolment does support the premise that Brexit has caused a fall in student numbers.

The Migration Advisory Committee is due to report to Government in September 2018, however, think tank HEPI is campaigning for an earlier response.

Widening Participation

Grammar Schools- A Financial Times article More grammar schools and lower tuition fees are not the answer covers the cabinet reshuffle (the widely reported demise of Justine Greening for blocking the PM’s school agenda) and draws on Education Policy Institute research:

  • On grammar schools, EPI analysis is very clear — more selective schools might deliver a small exam grade benefit to those who gain entry, but at a cost to those (poorer) children who do not pass the entry test. More grammar schools are therefore likely to worsen the country’s social mobility problem.

Meanwhile A Guardian article aiming to criticise Damian Hinds suggests that Theresa May is still determined to push grammar schools through

BME withdrawal – The Guardian considers the influence of social cultural and structural factors in Why do black students quit university more often than their white peers? The article quotes the Runnymede Trust (think tank) 2015 report: “University institutions have proved remarkably resilient to change in terms of curriculum, culture and staffing, remaining for the most part ‘ivory towers’ − with the emphasis on ‘ivory’.”

Admissions – In Robin hood and the America dream a Dorset born educator and careers advisor compares the HE admissions differences between Finland, America and the UK, and contemplates their social mobility implications.

STEM

A National Audit Office report: Delivering STEM skills for the economy has been published this week. It suggests Government initiative to improve the quality of STEM provision and take up of these subjects and rectifying the skills mismatch has met with some success. However, it pushes for Government departments to create a joined up vision sharing their aims, and a co-ordinated cross departmental plan, the delivery of which can then be examined for value for money. The report notes that the STEM gender gap continues.

Technical education

The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee continued its examination of the economics of higher, further and technical education across two sessions. The first session considered the differences between UK education provision and comparable economically advanced countries (e.g. Germany). The panel discussed how FE could be enhanced, which countries integrated FE and HE effectively, and methods of encouraging lifelong learning. The narrowing of subjects after GCSE was also criticised. The following session address whether HE was currently prioritised over technical education, and whether this produces individuals with the necessary skills. Apprenticeships and T-levels were discussed in detail.

Enterprise and Entrepreneurship

The QAA has published Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Education: Guidance for UK HE Providers. The guidance says

  • “all students should have an opportunity to engage with Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, and to align it with their subject(s) of choice. This will enable them to identify and seek out new opportunities; have higher aspirations in their careers; be resilient; and better adapt to change”.
  • “Learning about and experiencing Enterprise and Entrepreneurship while at university can have several benefits. It gives students alternative perspectives on their career options and ultimately, the confidence to set up their own business or social enterprise.”

The guidance aims to inform, enhance and promote the development of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Education and includes description of good practice.

Consultations

Click here to view the updated consultation tracker. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations.

Other news

Full on: In the brave new world of accelerated degrees and intensified courses a Wonkhe blogger talks about working and studying (MSc) full time. She says universities can make studying more accessible to employees and employers by:

  • Teach modules in intensive blocks, e.g. 3 days, rather than spreading across a whole term
  • Provide assignment information well in advance of deadlines, ensuring no deadline clashes between other modules on the same programme
  • Sharing reading lists, presentations and essay topics well in advance of a module beginning – so the employed student can start reading and have an overall understanding of the subject area before attending lectures.
  • Careful structuring of the courses are important, as is the option to switch to part time study
  • Access to robust pastoral care and academic check ins

On the employer side the blogger notes that planning a balanced workload with her managers and knowing when key work deadlines fall within her academic calendar. She also recommends employers take a personalised approach to their employees study/work balance. For some this could me changing their hours or work pattern for all or part of their course.

  • “Studying is challenging. Working is challenging. Doing both at the same time certainly isn’t a walk in the park. However, employers and universities can help employed students to make it work.”

The Smart Machine Age: A Financial Times article describes the changes associated with the smart machines age and the skills graduates will need to develop.

  • Smart technology is already moving beyond manufacturing into the service industries and the professions, such as medicine, finance, accounting, management consulting and law. Businesses will reduce their headcount, because humans will only be needed for jobs that technology will not be able to do well: involving higher order critical, creative, and innovative thinking and/or emotional and social intelligence.
  • When they graduate, a student’s multidisciplinary skills should contain at least the following: scientific method; root cause analysis; unpacking assumptions; critical thinking purposes and questions; insight processes; design thinking; premortems; and after-action reviews .They ought to have emotional and social intelligence; the ability to collaborate and to know how to learn and develop their cognitive and emotional capabilities.

Graduate Recruitment: High Fliers have published The Graduate Market in 2018 noting a 4.9% decrease in the number of jobs available for 2017 graduates. They state this is the first drop in 5 years. The decrease was sharpest in the financial and banking sectors. Part of the blame was, of course, attributed to Brexit effects. Press coverage: The Times, The Guardian and The Telegraph (who note supermarket Aldi is now offering graduate salaries comparable with law and investment banking starter salaries).

Political inventions: It cannot be disputed how often HE has featured in the news in the last year. A Times Higher article reports on a (PA Consulting) Vice-Chancellor survey which reality checks the press, suggesting that some of the furore was politically motivated and often without genuine substance.

Woodgates, PA’s head of education, sums up that university leaders felt under siege.

  • “Before the [2017 general] election, universities were still seen as one of the jewels in the crown of UK plc, and suddenly we seem to have moved to a world where nothing is different but the political narrative is that universities are a bit of a problem: they don’t provide value for money, their teaching quality is not very good, and vice-chancellors are overpaid.
  • Most of our respondents felt that this is fundamentally politically driven by the fact that Labour did well courting the youth vote and the Tories have responded to that, but there was also a feeling that the sector hasn’t done a very good job of responding to that and needs to be more proactive.
  • The sector has got locked into a position of responding to a political narrative rather than asserting their own narrative about the value they add: in relation to research, but also in relation in education, [and] the fact that they are very important players in social and economic development.”

What students want: The Guardian ask students what they would like the Office for Students to focus upon

Antisemitism on campus: Communities Secretary Sajid Javid announces £144,261 of funding for a new programme to support universities in tackling antisemitism on campus. The programme will be delivered by the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Union of Jewish Students and will involve 200 students and university leaders from across the country visiting the former Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is expected that the 200 university student leaders who visit Auschwitz-Birkenau will then go on to deliver activity that engages a further 7,500 university students.

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said:

  • “We all have a duty to speak out in the memory of those who were murdered during the Holocaust and all those, today, who are the subject of hatred and antisemitism. Holocaust education remains one of the most powerful tools we have to fight bigotry. The Holocaust Educational Trust has been hugely successful in teaching school children about where hatred, intolerance and misinformation can lead. That’s why I am proud that the government will fund this new programme to tackle antisemitism, prejudice and intolerance on university campuses.”

Josh Holt, President of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) said:

  • “ UJS are very grateful that our partnership with HET is being recognised and supported by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The resources committed today will enable a substantial expansion of student and university leaders receiving the education and training needed to combat antisemitism and prejudice on campus. Sadly we have seen a distressing increase in swastika graffiti, Holocaust denial literature and politicisation of the Holocaust on some UK campuses. We are determined to combat this and welcome this significant contribution to our longstanding work bringing students of all faiths and backgrounds together to create cohesive campus communities.”

The new programme will be jointly funded by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Education, building on the Holocaust Educational Trust’s highly successful ‘Lessons from Auschwitz’ programme for school students.

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Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

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

RKEO Calendar survey reminder

It’s been four months since the 2017-18 RKEO calendar landed on your desk.  The calendar contains all of the events that RKEO arrange, major funder call closing dates, information on various research schemes, and other activities that will be of interest to academics.

The Research & Knowledge Exchange Office would like your feedback on the calendar before deciding on whether to create next year’s.

Tell us what you think by completing our short survey . All entrants names will be entered into a draw and one lucky person will receive an RKEO goodie bag.  The deadline date is Friday 26 January.

international

The USA shutdown, following the current budget impasse, has started to affect many federal services across the country, but the effect can also be felt abroad.   I just noted on the PubMed webpages the above warning: “Because of a lapse in government funding, the information on this website may not be up to date, transactions submitted via the website may not be processed, and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted.”  This delay in funding in the most up-to-date health research database will not have a major effect today (Sunday 21 Jan.) as it will have on hundreds of thousands of federal staff facing unpaid leave and many more people facing interruptions in the provision of basic service across the USA.  It is however a sign of globalisation, with  internal political disputes in the USA affecting people across the globe, including health researchers at Bournemouth University.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Visiting Research (Faculty of Management)

Prof Davide Parilli has put in a request to host Francisca Sempere Ripoll as a visiting researcher (full time) from 1 September to 30 November 2018.

Francisca will be working with Prof Parilli on Research on Open innovation.

The planned outcomes are:
– publications
– definitions of new projects
– closer collaboration with the Universidat Politècnica de València of Spain.

If anyone has any objections, please let Jacqui Timms know by 26 January 2018.

Nesta’s 18 reasons to prioritise the early years of a child’s life

In 2017, Nesta launched the Early Years Social Action Fund to scale proven social action programmes that help children aged four to achieve developmental milestones by directly supporting parents.  The £1 million fund was used to support organisations that are making an impact, but require support to scale up. Having supported dozens of social action programmes to scale, Nesta have seen that social action works best when there is a clear role to complement, not replace public services, where opportunities fit in and around people’s lives and where any skills needed can be codified and learnt by many.

As the UK struggles with challenges of stagnating social mobility, increasing inequality, and lagging productivity, Nesta have compiled a list of 18 reasons why the early years of a child’s life are so important for social mobility and people’s life chances which show why in 2018 we need to do more to support new ideas that help give all children the best chance to fulfil their potential.

18 reasons to prioritise early years in 2018

  1. By the time children start school, the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers can be as large as 15 months.

  2. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds hear up to 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers by age three.

  3. Almost half of all children from disadvantaged backgrounds do not reach their expected level of development when they start school (29 per cent of all children).

  4. In the last decade, more than 2.5 million children in England – including over 580,000 poorer children – did not reach a good level of development by age five.

  5. Opportunity is very unevenly distributed. Disadvantaged children in the best areas are twice as likely to reach a good level of development at age five, compared with similar children in the worst areas.

  6. Gaps are evident by age two and a child’s development at as young as 22 months has been proven to be a good predictor for educational outcomes at age 26.

  7. Of the £9.1 billion the UK Government is spending on early years, just £250 million will reach the most disadvantaged families. Or just 2.7 per cent.

  8. In 2012, the UK was ranked 22nd out of 25 OECD countries for the proportion of expenditure in early years focused on closing the gap in opportunity.

  9. In almost all OECD countries, 15-year-old students who had access to early education outperformed students who had not.

  10. The gap between disadvantaged children and their peers in numeracy and literacy is particularly stark, with a 14 per cent gap in reading attainment, 15 per cent in writing, and 13 per cent in numbers.

  11. The lowest gap is in technology, which if harnessed properly, could potentially help lower the gaps in other areas.

  12. Good early education opportunities improve child outcomes regardless of family disadvantage or the quality of the home learning environment.

  13. The gap in educational attainment by the time a child starts school is one of the key drivers of social mobility, equivalent to, for example, up to two years of learning by the time they sit their GSCEs.

  14. The biggest indicator in how well a child does in their GCSEs is the progress that child has made by the age of five.

  15. Better educational attainment leads to higher qualifications and higher wages later in life.

  16. Top university graduates earn significantly more, on average, than graduates from less prestigious universities, and non-university graduates.

  17. Social mobility is a key driver in productivity and economic growth. A modest increase in the UK’s social mobility to the average across Western Europe would increase annual GDP by 2 per cent in the long term (or an additional £39bn to the UK economy).

  18. The quality of the home learning environment is more important for intellectual and social development than parental occupation, education or income. In other words, what parents do at home is more important than who your parents are.

These 18 reasons go to show that early years is at the heart of social mobility. They underscore the importance – both at an individual and societal level – of focusing on ideas and interventions that can impact child outcomes as soon as possible so that no child begins school behind the starting line.

If you would like to find out more about the Early Years Social Action programme, any of the specific projects or how you can commission early years innovations, please get in touch at will.bibby@nesta.org.uk.

The Refugee & Migrant Leisure Network (RMLN) December Meeting

Prof Janet Dickinson, Associate Prof Jayne Caudwell, and Dr Jaeyeon Choe (Centre for Events, Leisure, Society and Culture) have established a network called ‘The Refugee & Migrant Leisure Network (RMLN)’. They had the most recent meeting with partners on the 8th of December at Bournemouth University.

During the meeting, stakeholders from Dorset Race Equality Council, Unity in Vision, International Care Network, Red Cross and STAR joined academics to discuss current projects and issues. BU academics updated the network on current research related to multicultural lunches in Dorset, work with forced migrants in Bristol and future plans. Stakeholders suggested future research agendas, which focused on best practice for looking after unaccompanied asylum seeker children and supporting people into appropriate work aligned to existing skills.

The network has been providing a great opportunity to (re)build partnerships and update each other of current events, issues and programmes around refugee and migrant leisure spaces, migration, integration, wellbeing and mental health whilst working towards creating social integration and sense of belonging and community. The next meeting will be in Spring 2018.

More information about this group and related research project: https://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/2018/01/refugee-and-migrant-leisure-network-meeting-8th-december/

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Visiting Researcher

Prof Adele Ladkin has put in a request to host Maja Turnsek Hancic as a visiting researcher (full time) from 1 February to 3 May 2018.

Maja will be working on “The changing nature of work and employment in the platform economy” with Prof Adele Ladkin.

The planned outcomes are:
– Requirement from the funder for 36 hours teaching (topic to be agreed).
– Development of a research bid for submission to the ESRC in the area of New Work and Technology.
– Facilitate collaboration with FM colleagues to facilitate emerging research.
– Co-author papers where appropriate to assist REF submission

If anyone has any objections, please let Jacqui Timms know by 25 January 2018.