/ Full archive

BU welcomes the ERASMUS+ Research Team

On the 25th-27th October 2017, Dr Ben Hicks (Psychology and ADRC) and Professor Wen Tang (Department of Creative Technology) welcomed the ERASMUS+ project team to Bournemouth University. The team consisted of practitioners based at Alzheimer’s Valencia, Alzheimer’s Greece, Alzheimer’s Slovenia, Alzheimer’s Romania and IBV. Since October 2016, thanks to funding from the European Commission, the team has been developing an e-training platform to promote the use of Serious Games with people with dementia. This meeting-the third since the project began- enabled the research team to present the work they had been undertaking within their associated countries and discuss the next stages of the project. This included:

  • Selecting and evaluating a range of Serious Games with people with dementia and their care partners;
  • Creating guidance information on using the Serious Games; and
  • Developing training materials for health practitioners wishing to use the e-training platform

The e-training platform is beginning to take shape, although the training materials are not yet publically available. If you would like to access the web platform it can be found at: http://adgaming.ibv.org/

Although the meetings were long (and the discussions incredibly fruitful), the research team still had time to visit BU facilities and live the student experience for a day. This included having lunch within the Fusion Building canteen, undertaking Virtual Reality Navigational testing within the Psychology labs and buying two-for-one pints in Dylans at the end of the day!

The next project meeting will take place in Bucharest, Romania, in February 2018, where plans to disseminate and evaluate the training delivered to health practitioners will be discussed.

Welcoming the research team

The meetings begin

Experiencing student life at Dylans

Tags:

Natalia Adamczewska joins the HEIF-6 Virtual Learning Environment project

Awarded & submitted bids, HEIF

Recently, I was fortune enough to become the Research Assistant on the HEIF-6 project run by Dr Ben Hicks. This is a one year project that aims to develop and evaluate a free Virtual Learning Environment tool that will support practitioners and care home staff wishing to use commercial gaming technology (iPads, Nintendo Wii) with people with dementia and their care partners. We have a number of experts involved in the research, such as Dr Samuel Nyman from Psychology Department and ADRC, Professor Wen Tang from Department of Creative Technology, Dr Sarah Thomas who is Deputy Director BUCRU and Dr Clare Cutler who is Research Skills and Development Officer. We also collaborate with Alive! who are a charity dedicated to improving the lives of older people and people with dementia through delivering innovative activities (e.g. the use of technology) and training dementia care practitioners. They work with 350 Care Homes and Day Centers across the South West of England and we are lucky to have Malcolm Burgin onboard who as the Regional Manager of Alive!.

 

Being part of such a research team, and having the chance to contribute to the HEIF-6 project is a great privilege and will certainly be beneficial as I begin my journey as an early career researcher.

If you would like further information on the project, please feel free to email Ben on bhicks@Bournemouth.ac.uk

 

Photo of the Week: Tracks in the sand- tracking criminals

Tracks in the sand: tracking criminals

Tracks in the sand: tracking criminals

Our next instalment of the ‘Photo of the Week’ series features Professor Matthew Bennett’s image footprints in the sand, which represents his research into tracking criminals.  The series is a weekly instalment, which features an image taken by our fantastic BU staff and students. The photos give a glimpse into some of the fascinating work our researchers have been doing across BU and the wider community.

Within our lives we leave thousands of individual footprints – in the snow, on the beach, in the park and sometimes even muddy prints on the kitchen floor!  Tracks are more numerous than any other form of trace evidence, and record a unique snap shot in time about the track-maker.  Not only do they record details of the shoes worn, but information about our body mass, style of walking and the specific wear on the soles of our shoes that record information about the history of our footfall.  Reading these clues digitally provides an important forensic tools and HEIF-funded BU research (www.DigTrace.co.uk) in this area is shaping forensic practice both in the UK and overseas.

If you’d like find out more about the research or the photo itself then please contact Professor Bennett.

This photo was originally an entry in the 2017 Research Photography Competition. If you have any other questions about the Photo of the Week series or the competition please email research@bournemouth.ac.uk

HE policy update w/e 3rd November 2017

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, innovation

Influencing factors – where to work and study

UPP have released Skills to Pay the Bills: How students pick where to study and where to work. In the report they consider decision making at application stage, the relative importance of employability and which factors drive graduation retention in the area.

  • 70% of students said they would have been influenced by a university’s TEF score when selecting where to study (last year 84% said they would have been influenced by TEF – UPP suggest the decrease is that students have lost confidence in the TEF as a tool to help them differentiate between institutions). 58% of students declared they would not pay more fees to study at a gold or silver institution, however, applicants to Russell Group providers were more willing to pay an increased fee
  • More students (+6%) were aware of apprenticeships than in previous years. 30% say that they genuinely considered undertaking an apprenticeship before committing to their undergraduate degree. However, many decided against an apprenticeship because they thought it would limit their future career choices.
  • 40% of students were prepared to pay more (£2,000+ more) in fees if their degree guaranteed them a job with a salary minimum above £24,000 upon graduation. Students prioritised investment in employability programmes and work experience over research investment spend in institutions. Across all responses it was clear students feel vulnerable and are seeking future security – they are carefully weighing up whether they will benefit from the graduate premium
  • Students relocate after graduating for economic reasons – the perception of prosperity and sufficient graduate opportunities were the most significant factor to retain graduates within the area. The report recommends universities that aim to retain more graduate talent should work to increase the amount of graduate employment locally and effectively communicate these opportunities. For example, pairing students and recent graduates with local businesses.
    The second most influential factor was the availability of affordable accommodation. The golden handcuffs are areas which combine good graduate employment, affordable accommodation, and an attractive ‘look and feel’ to the local area (see map diagram on following page)

Read the concluding remarks and the recommendations for universities on page 15.

“Universities must be careful to ensure that they act in ways that cement the personal, institutional and civic bargain embodied by higher education. Focusing on employability, opportunity and retention is a vital part of that bargain.”

The above report was compiled from data collected in the UPP Annual Student Experience Survey. Click here for a deeper dive into the wider survey’s data and infometrics.

HE trends, facts and figures

UUK have published Higher Education in Facts and Figures 2017 which provides headline data on students, staff and finances. UUK describe their highlights:

  • In 2017 overall student satisfaction at UK HE institutions was 84%
  • University applications from 18 year olds in areas of England with lower HE participation rates have increased to record levels (part time students continue to decline)
  • Employment rates and median salaries continue to be higher for graduates than for non-graduates
  • Just under a quarter of total university income comes from direct UK government sources
  • 16% of research income comes from sources outside of the UK
  • The report stresses the diversity of students, the UK is the second most popular destination behind America and 14% of undergraduates, 38% of postgraduates, and 29% of academic staff are from outside the UK (of which 17% EU). Almost a quarter of senior lecturers and 18% of professors are non-UK nationals. 45% of the academic workforce are female.

Industrial Strategy

The Industrial Strategy Commission published their Final Report recommending a complete overhaul of the Government’s initial plans. They recommended the Industrial Strategy be owned by all and be “rethought as a broad, long-term and non-partisan commitment to strategic management of the economy… [it] must be an ambitious long-term plan with a positive vision for the UK.”

Dr Craig Berry (Sheffield Political Economy research Institute): “Industrial strategy isn’t just about supporting a small number of sectors. It should focus on big strategic challenges like decarbonisation and population ageing – and ultimately it should aim to make material differences to people’s everyday lives. This will mean rethinking how government makes policies and chooses its investments.”

Recommendations:

  • A powerful industrial strategy division should be established within the Treasury to catalyse all other departments to devise and implement policies consistent with the industrial strategy. The ambition should be to achieve positive outcomes and make a material difference to people’s everyday lives. They propose overhauling current decision making on large strategic projects to take into account the effect on people’s lives. In the trade-off between economic efficiency and the equitable treatment of communities it is right for fairness to communities take priority in some cases
  • The new UK Research and Innovation agency (UKRI) should inform, and be informed by, the proposed new industrial strategy division. The UKRI board should have a high-level advisory committee including representatives from all three Devolved Administrations, and from key local authorities with devolution deals.
  • A new independent expert body – The Office for Strategic Economic Management – was proposed to monitor and measure the long-term success of the new strategy. It should be created on the model of the Office for Budgetary Responsibility
  • The new strategy should commit to providing what they call “Universal Basic Infrastructure”. All citizens in all places should be served by a good standard of physical infrastructure and have access to high quality and universal health and education services.
  • The report says that skills policy has suffered decades of damaging instability, and so policy makers and institutions should provide stability, including a cross-party consensus. Closer working and co-operation is required between the Department for Education and BEIS, national and local authorities, and the higher and further education funding and regulatory systems. Read section 2.4 The skills system from page 37 for more detail on this.
  • A long-term commitment to raise the R&D intensity of the economy, measured as the ratio of R&D spend, should be accompanied by a more detailed understanding of the whole innovation system. This will require intermediate milestones for both business and government/HE R&D intensity, supported by proposals for concrete interventions at a material scale, and with a new emphasis on demand-led initiatives to supplement the supply-side approach characteristic of the last 15 years of science and innovation policy. The new strategy should be designed with a comprehensive understanding of the whole R&D landscape and the relationships between its different parts. New institutions must have clarity of mission and be judged by the appropriate metrics. More on research and development on page 41, section 2.5 The research and innovation landscape.
  • The UK should seek to maintain and enhance the international character of its research system, including through future participation in EU Framework Programmes, for example through associate country status.
  • Health and social care must be central to the new industrial strategy. As well as offering potential for productivity gains and new markets, achieving better outcomes for people’s wellbeing must be placed at the centre of the strategy.
  • The new strategy should be organised around meeting the long-term strategic goals of the state. These include decarbonisation of the economy, investing in infrastructure and increasing export capacity.
  • Innovation policy should focus on using the state’s purchasing power to create new markets and drive demand for innovation in areas such as healthcare and low carbon energy. Harness the UK’s current world-class innovation by re-linking excellence in basic and applied research.
  • Place continues to remain central to the new strategy – an industrial strategy should not try to do everything everywhere, but it should seek to do something for everywhere. In 5 or 10 years’ time we should be able to pick anywhere in the UK and say how the strategy has helped that place, its people and industries. As most places perform below the UK average the strategy should push further and faster devolution. LEP boundaries should coincide with the appropriate economic geography.

Health and social care at the centre of industrial strategy

An effective, efficient and financially viable health and social care system, in the context of an ageing demography, is a key strategic goal for the UK. The new strategy must incorporate social care, public health, the NHS (as a market as well as a service), and the UK’s strong industrial sectors in pharma/life sciences and medical technology, as one whole system.

Future increases in public spending on health should come with the strict expectation that investment should be used to raise productivity. The provision of health and social care in all places means that even small productivity increases could have a significant impact.

The new industrial strategy should aim to achieve higher productivity and better health outcomes by ensuring more skilled and satisfying jobs in the health and social care sector. An urgent focus on redesigning training and education should aim to both raise the skills of existing employees and attract new people to the sector.

Health and social care services should be integrated, but this should be steered by the goal of achieving better outcomes for people’s wellbeing and not purely by reducing costs. This will lead to savings but not on a sufficient scale to meet the spending pressures of an ageing population. Lessons must be learned from the places which are now experimenting with health and social care integration to build the evidence base for how to achieve better outcomes.

Read more on Health & Social Care from page 64.

Goals

The report outlines what the UK’s 2017 goals should be:

  • Ensuring adequate investment in infrastructure
  • Decarbonisation of the energy economy
  • Developing a sustainable health and social care system.
  • Unlocking long-term investment
  • Supporting high-value industries and building export capacity
  • Enabling growth in all parts of the UK

Other news

Apprenticeships: DfE confirmed they will review level 4 and 5 technical education to ensure it better addresses the needs of learners and employers. This includes progression from the new T level which will be taught from 2020. Anne Milton (Apprenticeships and Skills Minister) said: “High quality technical education helps young people and adults get into new, fulfilling and better paid careers. That’s good for them and good for our economy. This is the way we build a better, higher skilled workforce.”

Getting your research into parliament: A new How to guide has been released. Here are there 10 top tips:

Making connections

  • Be seen online or at events, so it’s easy for us to find you
  • Blog your research so we know what you are working on
  • Follow what we are doing on the Parliament website and via Twitter
  • Sign up to POST, Commons and Lords Library, and Select Committee Alerts
  • Invite parliamentary staff to your events

Presenting research

  • Don’t just send your journal articles: send us a brief and include your sources
  • Be relevant: start with a summary and focus on how your research impacts people
  • Use visuals: a picture can paint a thousand words (and save time and space)
  • Be clear and accurate: be explicit about all limitations and caveats
  • Don’t forget the essentials: include your contact details and date your briefing

Subscribe!

To subscribe to the weekly policy update simply email policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

65111                                                                                 65070

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

 

 

 

Calling all undergraduates… SURE 2018 is now open for abstract submissions!

student research

Bournemouth University’s annual undergraduate research conference – Showcasing Undergraduate Research Excellence (SURE) – returns for a third year in March 2018

As well as giving students a supportive platform to showcase the quality of work they do, it gives others at BU an insight into the excellent research undertaken by our undergraduates.  Not only is it a unique opportunity to further develop skills, prizes will also be available which include a fee waiver for a Master’s course at BU for the best overall contributor.

All undergraduate students at BU are eligible to apply, as are recent graduates.  Examples of research could be anything from preparing for a dissertation or an essay to work carried out during a placement year to volunteering or work with academic societies.  The key criteria is to be able to evidence critical thinking through the work.  Please do encourage your students to apply.

How to apply

To apply to present at SURE 2018, students will need to submit an application form, which includes a 250 word abstract, to sure@bournemouth.ac.uk.  Please read our ‘how to apply’ guidance first.

Abstracts will be accepted for oral or poster presentations.  If a student would like to present your research through another medium – a film, art exhibition or performance – please contact sure@bournemouth.ac.uk initially.

The deadline for submitting abstracts has been extended Friday 12 January 2018.

 

Prizes

Best overall contribution – a fee waiver to any BU Master’s

Best original research via oral presentation – 4 x £350 funding (1 per Faculty) for students to attend and present their research at the British Conference of Undergraduate Research

Best poster, demonstration or art installation: 4 x £25 Amazon voucher (1 per Faculty)

 

Conference attendance

SURE 2018 will take place on Wednesday 7 March 2018.  Registration for the conference will open in January 2018.

Staff and students from across BU are encouraged and welcome to attend.

For any queries, please contact sure@bournemouth.ac.uk or visit www.bournemouth.ac.uk/SURE2018.

 

 

External Application Reviewers Available

We are delighted to confirm that as part of the Research Knowledge Exchange Development Framework, we now have funds available for external application reviewers.

A reminder of the process has been outlined below, and all documentation is available on MyBU here.

Who decides when an external application reviewer may be used?

The permission of academics to use the faculty tied budgets will be under the control of the Deputy Deans of Research and Professional Practice (DDRPP) of each faculty.  This is to keep strategic control under the charge of each DDRPP for their respective faculty. 

How will academics access this support?

Academics who wish to access external support need to consult with their faculty DDRPP.  Please read the “Appointing an External Expert- Procedure” documents and complete the “External Support Checklist” along with an “Intention to Bid” form and send this to the relevant DDRPP.  If the request is approved, the DDRPP will send the approved paperwork to RKEO who will then contact the external consultant and the academic to work on a service specification.  All contracts and legal/financial arrangements will be dealt with by RKEO.

Who provides the External Support?

We currently have several external application reviewers available, details of which can be found on MyBU.  This process is still open so additional providers may be added at a later date. 

What do academics need to do?

Those interested in making use of an external expert should allow at least four weeks to work on an application before a funding call closing date. Shorter notice would not allow sufficient time for the experts to 1) make room in their schedules for working on a new application and 2) provide an appropriate level of in-depth advice with enough time to incorporate changes and suggestions.

Applicants will be asked to send a copy of an Intention to Bid form as well as a completed checklist to their DDRPP which will explain the background to their proposal and why they would find support helpful.

Is it worth applying for all this new Horizon 2020 funding, then?

Funding opportunities, international

Recipients of updates from this blog will have, no doubt, seen updates concerning the many new funding calls arising as a result of the release of the Horizon 2020 Work Programmes for 2018-2020. With current uncertainties, is it worth UK-based researchers applying, especially following the announcement on the Participant Portal that the eligibility criteria must be complied with for the entire duration of the grant (i.e. the researcher’s country of application being either a member or associate country to receive the funding)?

The UK Research Office (UKRO) however, has reminded the sector via their website’s public area that – UK businesses and universities should continue to bid for competitive EU funds while we remain a member of the EU and we will work with the Commission to ensure payment when funds are awarded. The Government will underwrite the payment of such awards, even when specific projects continue beyond the UK’s departure from the EU.

In the FAQ document, it is stated that even if UK partners cannot continue to receive funding from the European Commission because the UK has become a third country, the UK Government has guaranteed funding for successful bids submitted by UK participants before departure, including those that are successful afterwards. Third country participation is routine in Horizon 2020. 

It should also be noted that Horizon 2020 has always been open to Third Counties; it is the access to funding that may not be available unless it is a stipulation of the call, where the country is associated with the EU (Norway, for example) or where there is a specific provision in place.

With many calls having a closing date before the expected date of the UK exit, information about calls, info days, brokerage events etc., will continue to be posted on this blog, in anticipation of BU staff applying for funding to support their excellent research.

BU staff can register to receive their own updates from UKRO.

BU staff considering applying for any of these Horizon 2020 calls and other international funding, should contact Emily Cieciura, RKEO’s Research Facilitator: International Funding, for further information and support.