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Student Research Assistant – awarded projects

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, student research

The following is a list of current awarded projects, complete with live job links, for the summer round of the Student Research Assistantship (SRA) scheme:

 

Prof Alan Breen – Spinal Image Processing Assistant

Prof Alison McConnell – Cardiorespiratory Physiology Research Assistant: Development and evaluation of a mobile device App to lower blood pressure

Dr Anita Diaz – Enhancing public engagement with co-creating science through our science co-creation website

Dr Ann Bevan – Understanding behaviour change towards healthy diet patterns in women of childbearing age

Dr Ann Luce – Student Research Assistant: Media and Midwifery

Dr Anna Feigenbaum – Building a Database on Housing in London

Dr Anya Chapman – Climate Change and Seaside Piers: Student Research Assistant

Prof Barry Richards – Research support for a book and for teaching on the psychology of politics

Dr Brad Gyori – Mobile Application Research Engineer

Dr Carol Clark – Exploring the evidence relating to intrinsic factors that predict falls

Dr Christa van Raalte – ‘Understanding Media Careers’ – Student Research Assistant

Dr Darren Lilleker – Post-Truth: the challenge to liberal democracy

Dr David Botchie – Gender and SME finance in Ghana

Dr Debbie Sadd – Digitisation of Volunteer Stories

Dr Desiree Tait – Exploring data relating to a pain beliefs questionnaire

Dr Desiree Tait – Self-monitoring in pregnancy: women’s views

Dr Donald Nordberg – Governing the BBC

Dr Elvira Bolat – ‘Investigating Forms of Leadership in a Digital Age’ – Student Research Assistant

Dr Elvira Bolat – Marketing industry competitions and their role in fusing research, education & professional practice

Prof Iain MacRury – Research Assistant: Global University Advertising Survey Data Project 2000-2017

Dr Ishmael Tingbani – SME Finance, Investment and Performance: Typology and Impact

Dr Jae Yeon Choe – Migrant and Refugee Leisure Spaces Research Assistant

Dr James Gavin – Daily Activities as Training Exercises for Orthopaedic Patients

Dr Janet Scammell – To co-create a systematic literature review for publication to support funded research study

Dr Janet Scammell – Qualitative data analysis from an education evaluation project and co-create project publication

Dr Jian Chang – Research Centre Web Developer

Dr Jian Chang – Virtual and Augmented Reality Content Developer

Prof Julian McDougall – Digital Outreach Research Assistant

Karen Thompson – Carbon Reduction Programme Analysis

Dr Katherine Curtis – A review of literature on the availability, use and impact of health Apps among an older people

Dr Lorraine Brown – Female Muslim tourists in the West

Dr Lucy Lu – Global Engagement Assistant

Dr Marcin Budka – Public engagement assistant

Mathew Charles – Digital Research Programmer

Dr Mehdi Chowdhury – Research Assistant: International migration and the trade in cultural goods

Dr Mel Hughes – Evaluating models of Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) in research

Dr Michael O’Regan – Dietary acculturation and Food Cultures at BU project

Dr Michele Board – ‘Evaluation of dementia training designed for hospital care staff’

Dr Michele Board – Student Research Assistant to review the literature on ‘What factors enable a more humanised approach to care in a residential setting

Dr Milena Bobeva – Research Assistant

Dr Milena Bobeva – Research Assistant in exploring the value of project-based experiential learning

Dr Nan Jiang – Optimising a web based decision making tool for cancer care

Dr Neelu Seetaram – An investigation of the types of tourism taxes imposed at destinations worldwide

Dr Nigel Williams – A visual tale of 3 Cities

Dr Rosie Read – From fieldwork to published article: Turning student ethnographic research co-produced publications

Dr Sangeeta Khorana – UK Trade Policy Post Brexit

Dr Shamal Faily – CAIRIS

Sharon Docherty – Visual perceptions and falls

Dr Shelley Thompson – Women, Science and Journalism Student Research Assistant

Simon Thomas – An investigation of the placement year on student’s career expectations

Dr Steven Trenoweth – A literature review of the factors affecting mental distress of Post-Graduate Research (PGR) student

Dr Tim Breitbarth – Sport and Society: Public Perceptions and Social Media Conversations about the Social Value of Sport

Dr Vanessa Heaslip – Mobile Web App for Migrants Project – Student Research Assistant

Dr Vanessa Heaslip – Supporting Educational Attainment, Progression and Aspiration of young, white disadvantaged males

Dr Viachaslau Filimonau – Food donations in the UK grocery retail sector – The role of local charities

Dr Viachaslau Filimonau – Tourism and (food) waste – a systematic literature review of an emerging research domain

 

Please promote these vacancies to students where applicable.  All jobs are live on MyCareerHub, our Careers & Employability online careers tool.  You will need to use your staff/student credentials to login.

Please do look out for SRA updates on the BU Research Blog.

If you have any questions about this scheme, please contact Rachel Clarke, KE Adviser (KTP and Student Projects) on 61347 or email sra@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

The strange science of odour memory – BU published in the Conversation

Knowledge Exchange

Andrew Johnson, Bournemouth University and Andrew Moss, Bournemouth University

Smell is a powerful sense. It can improve alertness, reduce anxiety and influence self-confidence. Certain odours can even prime people to have safe sex. The Conversation

Odours provide a richness to our perception of the world. But, despite the ubiquity of smell, we understand less about smell memory than we do about visual and auditory memory.

The classic example of smell memory is what has become known as a Proustian memory (or involuntary memory). For this phenomenon, mere exposure to a stimulus can automatically trigger a strong memory from the past. For Proust, it was tea-soaked madeleine that activated a detailed memory of his aunt’s house.

A simple madeleine plunged Proust back to his youth.
vm2002/Shutterstock.com

As a researcher of odour memory, people often tell me stories of smells that triggered vivid autobiographical memories. This might be the smell of hospital food, a certain alcoholic drink or the shampoo of a former lover. This strong relationship between odour and emotion is thought to result from the part of the brain involved in processing odours being positioned within the limbic system – an area of the brain integral to emotion.

Testing short-term memory for smells

Not all smell is stored in long-term memory, though. Some smells are only retained in memory for short periods. Imagine you’re shopping for a new aftershave or perfume. You wouldn’t smell two products at the same time as it would be difficult to distinguish between the two. To decide which one you prefer, you need to smell them one after the other. This means you have to temporarily store the smell and then recall it to make a comparison. We have been examining how people store odours in short-term memory and the extent to which odour memory works differently from other types of memory.

The simplest explanation is that people perform smell memory tasks by verbally labelling the odours (for example: “smells like cheese”). But using this kind of verbal strategy results in the memory task being a test of verbal rather than olfactory memory, because we’re storing the word “cheese” in verbal memory not the actual smell of cheese in odour memory. As researchers, we can limit the use of this strategy by selecting odours that are hard to name. For example, non-food odours are typically harder to label.

Another trick we use is asking participants to repeat words that are irrelevant to the task during the test; this is called “concurrent articulation”. Concurrent articulation disrupts the participant’s ability to name the odours and their ability to silently rehearse the names during the task. For example, if you’re repeating “the, the, the” while sniffing something that smells like new-mown grass, you won’t be able to store the words “new-mown grass” in your verbal memory. It’s a bit like trying to read a book while listening to the news.

It has been shown that people can perform short-term olfactory memory tasks when the odours are hard to name,
and when undertaking concurrent articulation. These findings suggest that while verbal labelling can improve the memory for an odour, people are also able to store the actual odour within memory. This is supported by research showing that different parts of the brain are activated when remembering easy-to-name and hard-to-name odours; specifically, the inferior frontal gyrus and the piriform cortex, respectively.

One method by which olfactory short-term memory has been compared with other types of memory is by examining how well people can remember a list of odours. Depending on the specifics of the memory task, people are typically good at remembering the first and last item on a list (a phenomena known as primacy and recency). There is some evidence that, for some tasks, smell memory produces different primacy and recency effects to that of other stimuli. These differences might indicate that your smell memory works in a different way to other types of memory.

Smell memory as a diagnostic tool

You might, quite reasonably, ask why you should be interested in testing smell memory, since most of the time we use our olfactory perception to make judgements about odours (that smell is nice/horrible). But research has shown that an impaired sense of smell memory is a predictor of developing dementia.

To further emphasise this link, people with the ApoE gene (a genetic risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s), who show no signs of dementia, have impaired odour identification. These findings suggest that an olfactory memory test could potentially be used as part of the armoury in detecting the early stages of dementia. Early detection is important, as the earlier the intervention, the better the outcome.

Andrew Johnson, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Bournemouth University and Andrew Moss, PhD Student in Cognitive Psychology, Bournemouth University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

MSCA COFUND Call is now open!

Funding opportunities, Info Days, international

Would your research group benefit from a doctoral or fellowship programme?

Would you like to help support the careers of researchers?

Does your research have the potential to be of international significance?

If so, take a look at the funding available through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action COFUND scheme!

‘The COFUND scheme aims to stimulate regional, national or international programmes to foster excellence in researchers’ training, mobility and career development, spreading the best practices of Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions.

This will be achieved by co-funding new or existing regional, national, and international programmes to open up to, and provide for, international, intersectoral and interdisciplinary research training, as well as transnational and cross-sectoral mobility of researchers at all stages of their career.’ (Participant Portal call page)

This call closes on 28th September 2017.

UKRO, as the UK National Contact Point for MSCA, is hosting the UK Info Day in the afternoon of 18th May, in London. This event is free or charge but you must register. Find out more on the UKRO website.

 

BU staff are strongly advised to register, via BU’s subscription, on the UKRO website, so that you can receive announcements concerning EU funding direct to your own inbox – make sure that you hear first!

If you are considering applying, please contact Emily Cieciura, REKO’s Research Facilitator: EU & International, in the first instance.

Applying for funding from NIHR – Patient and Public Involvement – Resources Available

As part of the Research and Knowledge Exchange Development Framework, RKEO held a session on Applying for funding from NIHR – Patient and Public Involvement (PPI). Dr Louise Worswick, Research Fellow / former PPI Senior Programme Manager at the NIHR, outlined what is meant by PPI, and how this can be applied to health research. Helen Allen, Research Psychologist and RDS South West PPI Lead spoke about the importance of involving the public and patients in research, and how you can ensure you get the most out of patient involvement.

 

The resources from the session are now available on MyBU. To access them, please logon to the ‘Research and Knowledge Exchange Development Framework’ community, and under ‘Pathways’ select ‘National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)’.

 

Many thanks to Louise and to Helen for a fascinating insight into PPI. For further information, please contact Lisa Gale-Andrews, RKEO Research Facilitator.

Masterclass: Developing Interdisciplinarity

Fusion, innovation

Thursday 4th May 2017, 9.30-11.00 at Talbot Campus

In this session Professor Barry Richards will take us through the story of how intellectual and political interdisciplinarity established across both education and research, defined a new academic specialism which now has courses and departments in several universities, journals and a book series with major publishers and growing connections with professional practices.

This is part of the Leading Innovation Masterclasses series.

There are two other masterclasses in May: ‘Benchmarking your students’ digital experience’ with Jisc’s Sarah Knight, and ‘The clinical doctorate model – Enabling Practitioner Research’ with Professor Vanora Hundley.

Find out more about these and book a place at the following link:
Leading Innovation – Masterclasses

Humanisation Special Interest Group meeting BU 11th April 2017

Fusion

We are a group of scholars and practitioners who have an interest in what makes us Feel Human and how this is linked to Health, Wellbeing, Dignity and Compassion. We use Lifeworld approaches and subjective experience as the basis for our understanding. For more information please click here

At meetings we discuss issues following two presentations, and share our on-going work into humanisation in education, practice and research.

Our next meeting is

On April 11th 2017,  From 2pm to 4.30 pm,  At Lansdowne Campus, EB202

The two presentations are

  •  The relatives’ experience of acquired brain injury and the humanising role of the Expert Companion Mark Holloway – Brain Injury Case Manager Head First, SSCR Fellow
  •  Using photography to encourage introspection among GPs Rutherford – Senior Lecturer, Bournemouth University

If you are not already  a member of the Humanisation SIG e-mail group and would like to be, please contact Caroline Ellis-Hill 

For further details of the topics and speakers  please click here

All Staff and Students are welcome

New projects in the Student Project Bank!

There are new projects in the Student Project Bank from Jo Huey and Noc’s Box in the following areas:

  • Business, management and marketing
  • Computer animation and visual effects
  • Media and communications

Short briefs are listed below,  full project briefs are available upon request.

SPB048: Animation to raise awareness of the support available to adult children of alcoholics

Create a 2-3 minute animation that highlights the key characteristics of adult children of alcoholics (ACOA) and conveys a message that they are not alone and that change is possible.

SPB057: Raising the Game at Noc’s

Noc’s Box uses Gaming (PvP-face-to-face; Skirmish/Warhammer/Empire of the Dead…; and Role Play games) to help people with high social anxieties such as Asperger’s and other social communication/mental health issues to meet in a safe, supportive environment and, through the medium of gaming, to develop their confidence, communication and other life skills. Noc’s needs to reach more potential customers/users both in order to sustain the current business and our clubs and, vitally, to help to convince potential funders to sponsor them as a newly-formed charity. Create a marketing strategy for Noc’s Box with specific recommendations.

 SPB058: Raising the Game at Noc’s: Promotional Video

Noc’s Box uses Gaming (PvP-face-to-face; Skirmish/Warhammer/Empire of the Dead…; and Role Play games) to help people with high social anxieties such as Asperger’s and other social communication/mental health issues to meet in a safe, supportive environment and, through the medium of gaming, to develop their confidence, communication and other life skills. Noc’s needs to reach more potential customers/users both in order to sustain the current business and our clubs and, vitally, to help to convince potential funders to sponsor them as a newly-formed charity. Produce a short (3 minute) promotional video for Noc’s to use to promote the charity.

Apply now

Projects are available to all undergraduate and postgraduate students at BU and can be used for their dissertation, assignment, unit or group work. Members of staff may also choose a project to set to their students. A complete list of projects is available here.
Send us an email if you would like a project brief and an application form.

NIHR Research Design Service Grant Writing Retreat

Do you have a great idea for research in health or social care?

Would your team benefit from protected time and expert support to develop your idea into a competitive funding application?

The Research Design Services South West (RDS SW) and South Central (RDS SC) are delighted to offer a unique opportunity to researchers in health and social care across their regions. to attend a week-long residential Grant Writing Retreat at Dillington House, near Ilminster in Somerset from Monday 4 September to Friday 8 September 2017 inclusive. The purpose of the Retreat is to give busy professionals dedicated time to rapidly progress their research idea into fundable proposals. The Retreat will provide a supportive environment for research teams to develop high quality research proposals prior to application to national peer-reviewed funding streams. Participating teams will enjoy protected time dedicated to the development of their research proposals away from the distractions of their workplace, expert help and support from RDS adviser staff and the experience of working as part of a professional research team.

I urge you and your colleagues to have a look at the website to find out more details, the process for applying for a place on the retreat, and examples of success stories: http://rds-sw.nihr.ac.uk/rgwr.htm

The cost of the retreat is £2,850 per team of three researchers (see website for details). The opportunity to apply is open to everyone across our region.

HOWEVER, for teams that successfully apply for a place on the retreat, and that consist of at least one member of staff from the Department of Nursing and Clinical Sciences here at BU, the University can offer a limited number of places funded by the Department (2 but might be able to stretch to more).   If you don’t have anybody in mind within the department but still interested in collaborating and applying for a free space offered by the university please contact us and we can facilitate this and try to find people with shared interests and ideas.

Applications for the retreat must be submitted to RDS by 1pm 26th April 2017, and it is important that you discuss your application with someone from the BUCRU/RDS team at an early stage (Sarah Thomas, Helen Allen, Sharon Docherty, Andy Powell, Peter Thomas).

Your local branch of the NIHR Research Design Service is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) on the 5th floor of Royal London House. Feel free to pop in and see us, call us on 61939 or send us an email.

Featured Student Project Bank partner: Volunteer Centre Dorset

In our second spotlight, Siobhán Davis, Project Coordinator for the Community Credits Scheme, tells us about Volunteer Centre Dorset and the Community Credits Scheme.

The Dorset Volunteer Centre is part of a national network of volunteer centres that help voluntary and community organisations recruit and manage their volunteers, and help people interested in volunteering to find interesting and enjoyable opportunities. The Volunteer Centre Dorset seeks to promote and develop volunteering to all throughout Dorset.

The Community Credits Scheme is focused on people with learning disabilities and supports them to volunteer within their local community by providing a volunteer mentor. In return for volunteering they and their volunteer mentor receive time credit notes which they can exchange for an activity of their choice. This might be learning something from another member of the scheme or buying a session at their local football club, gym or cinema.

People with learning disabilities have been excluded from many organisations in the past and The Community Credit Scheme helps to break down some of those barriers. The Volunteer Centre Dorset successfully piloted The Community Credits Scheme in four towns in Dorset in 2013. They are in the process of extending the scheme to North and East Dorset.

The Community Credits Scheme aims to:

  • Set up volunteering placements for adults with mild learning disabilities and recruit mentors to support them
  • Set up exchange venues in which the credit notes earned for each hour of volunteering can be exchanged
  • Recruit befrienders to support people in exchanging credits if required
  • Support organisations that offer placements
  • Raise positive awareness of people with Learning disabilities.
  • Recruit volunteers throughout Dorset

Volunteers at an awards evening

Why is the Community Credits Scheme so important?

This scheme is paving the way in supporting people with difficulties into volunteering through supported volunteering. The credit scheme is also helping the socially isolated by setting up focus groups and insuring individuals are kept informed about new voluntary placements and events. For each credit a person earns they can exchange it for a health and wellbeing activity. For most of us on a daily basis we find it easy to phone up our mates and go out for the evening. For someone with communication difficulties or travelling difficulties this is huge so we encourage people to live healthier lifestyles, meet new people and step out of their comfort zone. Individuals are learning new skills which are transferrable to the work place. We set up easy, achievable outcomes for individuals to meet which sometimes they have to step out of their comfort zone to achieve. With the support of volunteer mentors/befrienders they can move forward.  For organisations seeking new volunteers this is a huge game changer because support is provided.

 What do you hope to achieve by working with the Student Project Bank?

We are hoping to set up a good working partnership and to include students. We are also looking forward to new ideas being brought forward. We believe that some of Bournemouth University’s students have brilliant skills and knowledge which they could share. This could then be a beacon project in Dorset that we could share with other areas in England. Working with Bournemouth University would be an amazing step forward.

Do you want to get involved? The following projects are available with Volunteer Centre Dorset:

SPB002: Marketing strategy for Volunteer Centre Dorset’s Community Credit Scheme

Create a marketing strategy to raise awareness of Volunteer Centre Dorset’s Community Credit Scheme.

SPB003: Campaign strategy to raise positive awareness of people with learning disabilities in the community

Create a campaign to raise positive awareness of people with learning disabilities in the community.

SPB004: Evaluation strategy for The Community Credit Scheme in Christchurch

Create an evaluation strategy for Volunteer Centre Dorset’s Community Credit Scheme in Christchurch.

SPB005: Volunteering opportunities for individuals with learning disabilities: engagement and experience

Research the ways in which individuals with learning disabilities engage with and experience volunteering.

SPB006: Identify products charities sell to create sustainable income and make recommendations for Volunteer Centre Dorset

Research the products charities sell to create sustainable income and make recommendations to Volunteer Centre Dorset for a product or line of products they could sell to create income for, and raise awareness of, The Community Credit Scheme.

Find out more and apply. 

FHSS – New Impact Champion

Research assessment

I just wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself as the new Impact Champion for the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences. When I began my research journey several years ago I knew I wanted my research to make a difference. It is this on-going desire to make a difference which led me to pursue this role of Impact Champion.

Part of my role is to take the lead in supporting academics to develop, maintain and ensure that research impact aligns with our core principle of ‘helping to make people’s lives better’. I will also be involved in developing impact case studies, and proactively accelerating impact in relation to REF.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if there is anything I can do to support you in your research impact.

Clare Killingback: ckillingback@bournemouth.ac.uk

EURAXESS – Supporting those working with Researchers

Do you support researchers? If so, EURAXESS can help you!

By registering on the EURAXESS site, you can gain access to a wealth of resources:

If you would like to discuss using EURAXESS as a researcher,  in order to promote BU’s research activity, supporting incoming researchers to BU or other related purpose, please contact Emily Cieciura, RKEO’s Research Facilitator: EU & International and BU’s EURAXESS Institutional Contact.

EURAXESS is also included as one of the highlighted resources within the Research Toolkit > Research Staff pages on this blog.

 

Research & Knowledge Exchange Development Framework – give us your feedback

Guidance, Info Days

It’s been over six months since Bournemouth University launched its new Research & Knowledge Exchange Development Framework, which was designed to offer academics at all stages of their career opportunities to develop their skills, knowledge and capabilities.

Since its launch, over 30 sessions have taken place, including sandpits designed to develop solutions to key research challenges, workshops with funders such as the British Academy and the Medical Research Council and skills sessions to help researchers engage with the media and policy makers.

The Research & Knowledge Exchange Office is currently planning activities and sessions for next year’s training programme and would like your feedback about what’s worked well, areas for improvement and suggestions for new training sessions.

Tell us what you think via our survey and be in with a chance of winning a £30 Amazon voucher. The deadline date is Friday 21 April.

Upcoming sessions:

  4 April Public engagement: an overview
  13 April Getting started on applying for research funding
  25 April How to update your Staff Profile Page using BRIAN
  9 May Writing Academy – Writing Day
  10 May Using social media to share your research
  18 May Targeting high quality journals
  18 May Writing an academic paper
  18 May Writing a good abstract
  18 May Dealing with editors
  24 May Research Data Management
  24 May Introduction to the Royal Society
  24 May My publication story so far… Prof. Tim Rees
  25 May Writing Academy – Writing Day

HE Policy update w/e 31st March 2017

Research Integritiy, Training

This week has of course been all about Brexit with the Article 50 notice formally served on Wednesday.   Bu published information for staff and students on Wednesday.

Then the White Paper setting out the plans for the Great Repeal Bill which will deal with arrangements to make UK law work once the UK has left the EU – a challenge given how much EU law has been incorporated into UK laws and regulations. The Bill itself has not been published, but the approach it will take is set out in the White Paper:

  • “In order to achieve a stable and smooth transition, the Government’s overall approach is to convert the body of existing EU law into domestic law, after which Parliament (and, where appropriate, the devolved legislatures) will be able to decide which elements of that law to keep, amend or repeal once we have left the EU. This ensures that, as a general rule, the same rules and laws will apply after we leave the EU as they did before….
  • The approach outlined in this White Paper is designed to give businesses, workers, investors and consumers the maximum possible certainty as we leave the EU: but it also needs to provide the flexibility necessary to respond to all eventualities of the negotiation process.
  • This is a separate process from that by which the Government will bring forward a motion on the final agreement to be voted on by both Houses of Parliament before it is concluded.
  • The Great Repeal Bill will not aim to make major changes to policy or establish new legal frameworks in the UK beyond those which are necessary to ensure the law continues to function properly from day one. Therefore, the Government will also introduce a number of further bills during the course of the next two years to ensure we are prepared for our withdrawal – and that Parliament has the fullest possible opportunity to scrutinise this legislation”.
  • The most controversial part of the proposal relates to powers to make secondary legislation. The White Paper says “This will enable corrections to be made to the laws that would otherwise no longer operate appropriately once we have left the EU, so that our legal system continues to function correctly outside the EU, and will also enable domestic law once we have left the EU to reflect the content of any withdrawal agreement under Article 50.”

So will there be any changes to UK law linked to Article 50 – there are some clues in the White Paper:

  • Customs bill
  • Immigration bill
  • And on consumer protection, the Government intends to bring forward a Green Paper this spring which will closely examine markets which are not working fairly for consumers

What the White Paper says won’t change:

  • Environmental protection
  • Worker’s rights and equalities
  • Participation in European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), but not the EU Charter on Human Rights

Read more about the process for Brexit here.

Universities are not mentioned in the paper (except in the introduction where it is noted that the government acted fast to reassure applicants about fees) – there are on-going calls for the question of EU citizens in the UK to be settled fast, along with fee guarantees for students starting in 2018/19. UUK’s priorities for Brexit are set out in their short paper here and there are some interesting views written for the Universities All Party Parliamentary Group here.

Fake Research – UUK has a new blog on fake research following comments in the news about it. The blog helpfully brings together the latest reports and information in this area including the Research Councils UK guidance issued recently.

Higher Education and Research Bill – this will have its third reading in the House of Lords on Tuesday No more amendments have been added since the debate was postponed following the Westminster attacks. However, we know a little bit more about the government’s approach to the opposition and cross bench amendments made by the Lords. The bill will go back to House of Commons (to start its “ping-pong”) after Easter.

For example, of the 5 non-government amendments, one related to the requirement that universities should share information with local authorities to ensure that students are registered to vote. Jo Johnson has written a letter to HEFCE requesting that they do more to encourage institutions to support students to register to vote. They ask HEFCE to develop a best practice model and then encourage universities to use it. This amendment this therefore likely to be removed in the House of Commons

Another provided that the OfS could not approve a provider unless it has been validated for at least 4 years (as now) or has been approved by a Quality Assurance Committee as being full able to maintain the required standard for the duration of its authorisation and that it operates in the public interest and the interest of students. It seems unlikely that this will survive in the House of Commons:

  • A letter dated 22nd March from Jo Johnson sets out the government’s position that the student protection arrangements should cover this and that there will be a consultation on this as part of a Regulatory Framework consultation in the autumn of 2017.
  • A letter dated 8th March from Jo Johnson sets out why the government believes that the current validation arrangements do not work and explains why it should be easier for new providers to be authorised.

The other 4 amendments were:

  • Requiring UKRI to encourage international collaboration, not allowing students to be treated as long term migrants and not allowing more visa restriction on student or staff immigration more stringent than the day the act is passed – this is likely to be removed in the Commons pending the wider consultation on immigration policy which has been delayed since November
  • Removing the TEF clause and requiring the OfS to introduce instead a scheme to provide information about quality, which is approved by Parliament and which cannot be used to create a single composite ranking – This is likely to be removed in the Commons but it will be interesting to see if any concessions are made about the TEF. So far subject level TEF has been postponed for a year to allow for 2 years of pilot, but other changes may be forthcoming
  • A statement that the TEF (or its replacement) cannot be used to rank institutions as to the fees that they charge or the number of students they recruit, in the UK or overseas – this seems unlikely to survive – the student number/immigration issue will be dealt with as above, and the fee issue is so key to the government’s position on fees that it seems very unlikely to be dropped. There has been surprisingly little pick up on this issue – see the VC’s blog on this. There is a blog by Professor Mark Smith here.
  • The grounds in which institutions can appeal the revocation of their authorisation, so that instead of being on the grounds of an error of fact, a decision being wrong in law or unreasonable, it now just says that institutions can appeal on the grounds that “the decision was wrong” – this seems unlikely to survive – see the letter from Viscount Younger and Lord Young dated 20th

Apprenticeships – The Commons Select Committee on Education, Skills and the Economy have published a report on apprenticeships which raises a number of concerns about the focus on quantity over quality.

Social Mobility – Justine Greening gave a speech on 30th March on social mobility. She set out three priorities:

  • tackling geographic disadvantage
  • investing in long-term capacity in our system
  • making sure our education system as a whole really prepares young people and adults for career success

This speech refers to the plans for schools to work with universities but doesn’t give any more information (we are still waiting for the response to the consultation), technical education and widening access to universities.

Research Professional – all you need to know

Funding opportunities

Research-Professional-logoEvery BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise. The Funding Development Team Officers can assist you with this, if required.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to ResearchProfessional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using ResearchProfessional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of ResearchProfessional. To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on ResearchProfessional. They are holding monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with ResearchProfessional. The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat. Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the fourth Tuesday of each month. You can register here for your preferred date:

25th April 2017

23rd May 2017

27th June 2017

25th July 2017

22nd August 2017

26th September 2017

24th October 2017

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you.