You are cordially invited to the next Faculty of Health and Social Science (FHSS) and Ageing and Dementia Research Centre (ADRC) joint seminar:
Using Technologies for Safer Walking: A Participative Inquiry
Dr Petula (Tula) Brannelly
Senior Research Fellow, University of Southampton
21st June 2017 1-1.50pm
R301, Royal London House, Lansdowne Campus
This research project examines the use of GPS and other technologies that people with dementia and their families use to help with wayfinding and location. In this presentation, discussion will focus on data from police officers involved in missing person investigations, people with dementia and their families using the technologies; and the experiences of people using the technologies gathered using an ethnographic go-along interview approach, where a researcher goes out walking with the person using the technology. Tula will draw attention to the ethics of care approach to technology use for people with dementia and their families. Project website www.southampton.ac.uk/dementia-rights
All staff and students welcome.
Biography
Dr Brannelly joined the University of Southampton as a Senior Research Fellow in November 2015 to work with Ruth Bartlett on the Using GPS with Care project funded by the Alzheimer’s Society. It is an interdisciplinary participatory project centralising the experiences of people with dementia and their families. From 2006 – 2015 Tula was a Senior Lecturer in Mental Health at Massey University in New Zealand, and before that a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. Tula completed her PhD, ‘Citizenship and care for people with dementia’ at Birmingham in 2004. Prior to that Tula worked in mental health nursing roles with older people.
Tula’s interest in the ethics of care has sustained relationships with colleagues from the Universities of Brighton, Professor Marian Barnes and Dr Lizzie Ward, and Birmingham, Dr Nicki Ward, resulting in an edited collection to be published in October 2015, Ethics of Care, Critical Advances in International Perspectives, Policy Press. Whilst at Massey University in New Zealand, citizenship shaped by impacts of colonisation led Tula to consider ethics of care and collective cultures and to work with Maori. Tula has researched and published with Dr Amohia Boulton to understand more about the place of care in indigenous culture. PhD supervision has included Dr Stacey Wilson (Crisis intervention, Dean’s List) and Dr Sione Vaka (Tongan constructions of mental health; Sione is the first Tongan mental health nurse with a PhD, Health Research Council funded). Tula has also researched care workers and ethics at a dementia unit, completed a qualitative study of mental health service user activist priorities for change in mental health services (in NZ and UK), and evaluated the impact of antidiscrimination training on student nurses.
Venue: EB708, Executive Business Centre, Bournemouth University
The event is free to attend, however, places are limited and registrationis required.
About the Event:
Additive Manufacturing or 3D printing as it is more commonly known, continues to push the boundaries of Intellectual Property (IP) law whilst raising questions relating to the protection and exploitation of IP.
There have been various attempts to address these questions through legal and empirical studies; yet at the same time, there continues to be limited literature and debate on the implications of 3D printing surrounding IP law, industry, society, technology and policy.
This challenge, which extends to the lucrative jewellery sector raises further questions in relation to creativity, design, copyright and licensing and these issues will be addressed at the event by bringing together experts from the cultural and business sectors including designers, manufacturers, distributors, policy makers and legal professionals.
This multi-disciplinary event which will explore the above issues will also provide the platform for a discussion of the ‘Going for Gold’ project carried out by researchers at CIPPM (Bournemouth University) in collaboration with Museotechniki Ltd and Uformia AS and will be complemented by a demonstration of 3D printed jewellery artefacts resulting from the project.
Mark Bloomfield (Electrobloom); Roger Brownsword (Bournemouth University / Kings College London); Ruth Burstall (Baker & McKenzie LLP); Frank Cooper (Jewellery Industry Innovation Centre, Birmingham Jewellery School); Lionel Dean (De Montfort University); Damian Etherington (Ipswich Museum); Nikolaos Maniatis (Museotechniki Ltd); Dids McDonald (Anti Copying in Design); Dinusha Mendis (Bournemouth University); Cherie Stamm (Uformia AS); Andrea Wallace (CREATe, University of Glasgow); Michael Weinberg (Shapeways Inc).
Through BU’s subscription to UKRO, we have been advised of the following news items, which represent a ‘mere taster’ of all the updates provided by UKRO to their members.
To make full use of BU’s subscription to this service, why not register now?
Science With And For Society (SWAFS) Brokerage Event Presentations and Video are now available on the UKRO website.
The public consultation on the mid-term evaluation of the Erasmus+ programme is now open
The RISE Coordinators’ Day FAQ and Presentations are now available on the UKRO website
The White Paper – Future of Europe: Reflections and scenarios for the EU27 by 2025 has been published by the European Commission
eHealth Week 2017 will have the theme Data for Health: the key to personalised sustainable care – Register for this event in Malta, 10-12 May.
Draft documentation for Secure Societies future calls is available to UKRO subscribers.
Please note:You will need to sign in or register as a BU staff member to access many of these items, as part of BU’s UKRO subscription. Links have only been given to resources in the public domain.
If considering applying to EU calls, please contact Emily Cieciura, RKEO’s Research Facilitator: EU & International, to access further support.
The EURAXESS Portal has recently been revamped, making finding information much easier. There is a simple initial search based on who you are and what you need. You don’t need to register to access many of the features but if you do, you will be able to access even more and be able to interact with the EURAXESS community! It only takes a few moments to set your own EURAXESS account.
Services include:
Search for and posting job opportunities
Career development training
Partnering between individuals and organisations in both academia and business
Practical information and support concerning living and working in Europe such as visas, finding accommodation, pensions and health care…
Information for researchers wishing to relocate outside Europe – EURAXESSWorldwide has dedicated teams in ASEAN (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnam), Brazil, China, India, Japan and North America (US and Canada)
A personal profile once you have registered, so that you can be located by others looking for your expertise
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 contactEmily Cieciura, RKEO’s Research Facilitator: EU & International and BU’s EURAXESS Institutional Contact.
It’s British Science Week 2017 and to celebrate we’re sharing some of our science research stories, to highlight some of the fantastic research taking place here at BU. Today we’re looking how we’re breaking down the barriers in kayaking for women.Kayaking originated as a method of hunting on rough seas for Arctic Inuit tribes. It was later popularised in the UK by Scottish sportsman John MacGregor, known as Rob Roy, who wrote about his many voyages in a canoe more than 150 years ago, before his death in Bournemouth in 1892.The sport has, ever since, exhibited a more male-dominated history, with only 18% of UK kayakers being female in 2013, according to figures from Sport England.An early career researcher at BU is researching the design of kayaks, focussing on understanding how anthropometric enhancements, such as seating height within the craft, can affect the performance and paddling efficiency of white-water kayaks for women. Shelley Ellis, an academic and Lecturer in Biomechanics and Performance Analysis, became interested in the subject as she saw the challenges facing women in kayaking first-hand.
“My research looks specifically at kayak sitting height – it’s about trying to identify whether adapting sitting height in a white-water kayak can make our paddle strokes more efficient. It’s really borne out of my personal background as a kayaker and the challenges I’ve faced,” explains Shelley.
Having been around the kayaking community for some time, Shelley had heard many coaches suggest that seating height should be raised in order to improve performance, but discovered that there was no follow-up guidance about how much to raise the seat by. It tends to be based on trial and error, rather than taking into account an athlete’s height, body shape and size.
“Because historically kayaks have been predominantly designed with male participants in mind and we can’t change that or make the kayak different at this point in time, we have to make what we have more accessible to all users,” says Shelley, “We already know that by altering sitting height it will effect a chain of contact points within the kayak, however we don’t know how high it has to be to improve efficiency overall.”
Women tend to have a shorter torso length and shorter arms, which gives them a smaller lever to paddle the boat through water. If the sitting height is changed, then this means women have a different torso height, enabling them to have better leverage when paddling.
“My research is all about making sport, in this instance kayaking, more accessible to female participants. The number of women taking part in kayaking is considerably lower than men, although the female population in kayaking is growing much faster than males.
“It’s really about breaking down those barriers on the basis that equipment wasn’t originally designed for women – sport should be accessible for everyone and can be with our scientific knowledge. If we’re able to say that based on height and arm span, for example, we are able to calculate an altered seat height to enable a kayaker to be more efficient, this can help them to progress to the next level of their sport.
“If you look back to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, there are many names of female athletes that come to mind, from Jessica Ennis-Hill and Laura Trott to Sarah Storey and Ellie Simmonds, these now well-known names are helping to change perceptions of what is and isn’t achievable. But these successes didn’t happen by accident – alongside incredible athletes, a lot of science and research has taken place and this has also helped to understand how equipment should be setup for each athlete.
With these role models, even more people are likely to get involved in sport. As all of kayaking’s history has come from a male background, what we now need is for manufacturers to catch up to the fact that it is becoming more popular for women.
“We’re very lucky in the way that we think at BU – we’ve got a lot of academics here who feel that research is important but are also keen to make it relevant and useful. We want to make sure that our research will be used by people and through engaging people with that process, we can ensure that it has a further reach in the long run.
“I’m supported by a local kayaking business, South Coast Canoes, who give me access to participants and a place to share my research directly with the kayaking population in the form of workshops and talks. It really motivates me to solve this ‘challenge’ that female kayakers face as there are people telling me that this research is important, and that they need the answers to move forward in the sport.”
This story featured in the 2017 Bournemouth Research Chronicle, which can be read in full here.
Come along on Tuesday21 March at 2-3pm on Floor 5, Student Centre on Talbot Campus for the March edition of 14:Live.
Spring is fast approaching and festival season is just around the corner. Over the next few months you will be subjected to intense marketing campaigns from festival promoters, such as Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds, who will be telling you not to miss out on this year’s music festivals.
Many of your friends will be sharing their excitement about going to these festivals on social media. Social media has heightened the sensation that everyone but us appears to be having fun and many people have become more sensitive to FoMO appeals.
In this 14:Live, Dr Miguel Moital will discuss the psychology of ‘Fear of Missing Out’. What emotions come with FoMO? What marketing tricks are used to heighten FoMO? How can these emotions be managed?
With drinks and snacks provided, this will be a session you won’t want to miss!
As part of his inaugural lecture, Professor Robert Middleton, Head of BUORI, will share his research into developing virtual reality training for surgeons, which allows them to practice in the space in front of them – or even in space!
After the lecture, you’ll have the chance to see some of the state-of-the-art training equipment being used by BUORI and even try your hand at virtual surgery.
Professor Middleton joined Bournemouth University in 2015, while continuing to practise as a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital and working as the Director of Trauma at Poole Hospital. His extensive clinical experience helps to inform his research and the direction of Bournemouth University’s Orthopaedic Research Institute (BUORI).
Bournemouth University’s inaugural lecture series aims to celebrate new professorial appointments and the depth and breadth of research produced by the university. For further information on the inaugural lecture series, please visit www.bournemouth.ac.uk/public-lecture-series
Creating high performance sportspeople is something like alchemy, and comes with the same baggage of half-thoughts, assumptions and quasi-quackery. But the research has moved on, and we can put to bed three powerful myths about building the ultimate athlete.
The first of these myths is linked to the idea that “practice makes perfect”. This message has been passed down through generations as a fact and there is now much popular wisdom and misinformation, derived from a belief in a simplified number: 10,000 hours. But can it really be that easy? There is no question sportspeople must practice a lot to get to the top. But how much is enough? And can we all be world class with sufficient practice?
The 10,000 hours “rule” came out of work by a psychologist at Florida State University, Anders Ericsson. Popularised in books such as Bounce by Matthew Syed, and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, it has led to the belief that if you put in this amount of deliberate and focused practice you can reach elite levels of performance.
But rather than needing 10,000 hours, there is now evidence that as few as 4,400 hours of deliberate practice may be sufficient to claim a gold medal in hockey, 4,500 hours to reach a top-tier European national football side, and just 4,000 hours to reach the highest levels in basketball and netball. Good news, then, for those with busy lives but a hankering for Olympic success.
Ericsson himself has emphasised that he did not intend a “rule” to be drawn from his research. He does though for the most part believe that practice is more important than genetics but would no doubt agree that to make it as a rower or basketball player, way above average height and limb length are a clear advantage.
And there is also intriguing evidence that genetics may more generally influence one’s suitability for endurance versus power events. Genetics may underpin key performance factors such as explosive strength, speed of movement, running speed, reaction time, flexibility and balance.
Therefore, although we can’t predict the world’s best athletes based on genetics, combinations of gene variants are likely to act in concert to influence the sport in which athletes are most likely to successfully compete. It is at that point that practice comes into play.
Developing a theme
The second myth is that you must be in a sport’s development programme from an early age to make it. Here I’d offer a cautionary tale to parents who feel pressured to drag their offspring all over the country to attend development squads, fearing this is the only route to the top.
The sporting landscape is littered with those who have relocated in pursuit of success never to fulfil their early promise, while at the same time halting opportunities for the development of other key attributes necessary for performance and life.
Although most world class sportspeople have been involved in athlete support programmes at some stage, the evidence suggests a very non-linear path to the top. There is frequent selection and de-selection from squads, rather than linear progression within athlete support programmes. But here’s the conundrum: while most talent identification systems use current junior performance as the main criterion for selection to a development programme, junior success does not reliably predict long-term senior success.
Longitudinal studies with large samples of athletes across numerous sports have shown that the younger the first recruitment to a support programme, the younger the exit from the programme, and the higher the level of senior success, the later the age of first recruitment on to programmes.
In other words, the world’s best performers are recruited to support programmes significantly later than their less able counterparts. It’s important to stress then that early athlete support programmes are not the sole route to the development of talent. And furthermore, the world’s best sportspeople tend not to have progressed exclusively within one sport, but have practised multiple sports during childhood and adolescence.
In fact, the probability of attaining the highest level in sport is likely enhanced by the coupling of a large volume of intensive, organised specific training in the main sport with appreciable amounts of organised training and competitions in other sports.
Role models
The third myth is the concept of the happy, successful, champion that we should admire. The world’s best athletes are extraordinary, and we rightly marvel at their prowess and bask in their glory. Holding them up as role models to create a sporting and physical activity legacy is laudable.
But with 307 golds available at Rio 2016 for a world population of 7.4 billion, Olympic champions are, by definition, abnormal. In fact, there is now growing recognition that the intense resilience, determination, and will to win of the world’s best performers can be driven by something altogether different from happiness. The cartoon strip Dilbert facetiously observed: “I would think that a willingness to practice the same thing for 10,000 hours is a mental disorder.” At the very least, it takes a certain mindset to cope and flourish in the harsh world of elite sport.
In fact, there is emerging evidence that this deep-seated need to win at all costs may be driven by early developmental adversity and obstacles, which leave an indelible mark on the sportsperson. Thus, although this level of determination and commitment is something we might rightly be in awe of, to think we could or should emulate it is unrealistic, unnecessary, and potentially damaging.
The route to the top in sport isn’t as simple as accrued hours or neat pathways. It likely entails many ups and downs both within and outside sport. We should beware a tendency to over-simplify past success, and in doing so, leave the door open to a renewed appreciation for the myriad ways in which elite level can be reached.
The Department of Creative Technology, SciTech, is organizing 11th international conference on E-learning and Games (Edutainment), 26th ~ 28th June, 2017, at EBC, BU. Accepted papers will be published in book form in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. Authors of selected best papers will be invited to submit extended versions to be considered for publication in one of 4 journals. The conference covers broad topics, including education, online learning, game, animation, computer graphics, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), etc. More details here: http://www.edutainment2017.org.
Full paper submission deadline: 19th March 2017
Short paper (4 pages) submission deadline: 9th Apr 2017
In conjunction with the conference is also the 3rd Workshop for EU IRSES project on Next Generation Computer Animation Techniques, organized by NCCA. More details here: http://www.edutainment2017.org/workshops.
Do you want to run a public engagement activity at Glastonbury Festival this year? We have the opportunity to form part of the Science Tent at Glastonbury’s Green Futures Field – this is a great experience for researchers of all career stages to showcase their research to an engaged and well-informed public audience.
Activities should be interactive with some hands-on elements, and have aspects that will appeal to children, the general festival audience and to experts. If you’d like to be involved, you’ll need to be able to commit to being on-site for at least 5 days, from Wednesday 21st June to Sunday 25th June, and be happy camping for this time, whatever the weather!
If you are interested in this fantastic opportunity, please send an expression of interest by email to Genna West, providing an activity title, and a brief description of your research area and proposed activity by Friday 17th March.
Please note that there is a small amount of funding that can be used to develop your activity. All expenses will be covered and there is plenty of time in the evenings to explore the excitement of Glastonbury festival.
Pint of Science is hosting a series of events taking place across UK from the 15th-17th May in local pubs around Bournemouth. The Pint of Science festival aims to deliver interesting and relevant talks on the latest science research in an accessible format to the public – all in the comfort of pub!
We’re currently looking for speakers with Technology based research who would be interested in joining ‘Tech me out’ nights to deliver a talk on one of the 3 evenings – 15th ,16th , or 17th – The talks will be taking place in Chaplin’s in Boscombe.
We are also looking for health related speakers to take part in ‘Our body’ nights, also taking place over the 15th, 16th and 17th but this time in the Goat and Tricycle pub in the Triangle, Bournemouth
This is a great public engagement opportunity with an interesting crowd, enabling the opportunity for open discussion and questions with the wider public.
It’s British Science Week 2017 and to celebrate we’re sharing some of our science research stories, to highlight some of the fantastic research taking place here at BU. Today we’re looking at how BU researchers are working to develop reliable and renewable energy sources.
As the world’s population continues to grow, so does our consumption of natural resources. Many of these resources are non-renewable, so research into renewable sources of energy is vital. Research led by BU’s Professor Zulfiqar Khan is tackling this issue through reducing corrosion, improving heat transfer and fluid dynamics, and using nano coatings to enhance surface effiencies in renewable energy systems.
The European Union’s (EU’s) Renewable EnergyDirective states that the EU should be producing 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020; a challenging target for any country. Professor Khan’s research is a direct response to this initiative and to the challenge of finding sustainable and renewable ways of meeting our future energy needs. His research is supported by a team of PhD students, many of whom are fully or part funded by industry and international HEI partners.
One of his major areas of focus is developing solar thermal technology, solar energy is available abundantly due to its nature. “Currently, we are very reliant on Solar Photovoltaic for our solar panels, but we do not have a large supply of the materials used, so using it won’t be sustainable over a long period,” explains Prof Khan. “I am developing means of using readily available and sustainable materials to be applied in flat plate solar thermal systems through a combination of thermofluids with nano additives and efficient thermal storage, which will help meet our future energy needs. I am also looking at ways to move away from standalone panels to integrating them within standard building practices.”
Professor Khan explains the different components in the system: “There are four parts to this system. One part focuses upon generating heat for colder climates, while within warmer climates it focuses on generating electricity. The third part of the project looks at thermo-fluids, with the aim of improving the efficiency of fluids within the solar energy system. The final part will be the integration of heat storage and recovery system from waste.”
At the moment Professor Khan and his team of PhD students and Post Docs are testing the system for generating electricity in warmer climates. Funding from industry has allowed Professor Khan and his team to set up labs in Poole, which include a scale model of the solar thermal system – an invaluable tool for testing. The first two phases of heat generation in cold climates and generating electricity in warmer climates have been successfully commissioned. The third and fourth phase of optimisation of thermo-fluids and heat storage are in progress.
The very nature of the programme and its complexity means that an interdisciplinary approach is vital. Professor Khan’s research combines materials sciences (nano coatings), mechanical engineering (heat transfer and thermodynamics), and electrochemistry (corrosion). “It is the combination of several subjects and disciplines which guarantees the delivery of objectives of this very challenging and exciting programme, which will put BU in particular and the UK in general on the international map as a leader in developing clean energy technologies,” says Professor Khan. “This is why we shouldn’t shy away from other disciplines as it can bring huge benefits and opportunities to research which will give it originality, significance and reach.”
The research and its interdisciplinary nature has the potential to make a significant difference to society as it presents a solution to one of the biggest challenges now facing us – how to meet our current and future energy needs. “I think we can learn to do without many things, but without energy, life as we know it would not be the same,” says Professor Khan. “With our current levels of consumption and the non-renewable sources we are using, our energy sources won’t last forever. If we look to the future, our energy reserves used at our current rates will last us perhaps another 50 – 60 years for oil and gas, and coal another 100 years. What are we going to do when that runs out?”
You can find more of Professor Khan’s publications on his staff profile.
The team would like to thank UK and International industry as well as HEI partners for providing funding andresources to enable their research to take place.
Bournemouth University students, Georgia Robertson and Jordan Ezra, will be presenting their research in Westminster as part of the annual ‘Posters in Parliament’ event. Around 40 undergraduates from universities all over the UK will be presenting their research to politicians, policy makers and fellow students.
As a country, we face a number of big challenges – energy provision, health and wellbeing, as well as issues such as sustainability – all of which research can help solve. Posters in Parliament is designed celebrate the research of some of the UK’s undergraduates, as well as highlighting the achievements of the next generation of researchers, some of whom may well go on to tackle some of our biggest challenges.
Georgia Robertson, an Events & Leisure Marketing student, will be presenting her research into business-to-business marketing, which she began while on her placement year.
“Over the years, email marketing has developed a negative stigma, perhaps because of an increase in unsolicited contact in an attempt to generate businesses leads. These are known as lead generation emails. This stigma has led to a dramatic drop in engagement in business-to-business email marketing campaigns, which means it’s important for those involved in the campaigns to know how to optimise their success,” explains Georgia.
“I analysed data from over 500 lead generation email campaigns from my placement to see which variables influenced the success of those campaigns. These included the subject line, email content and the links in the email. By exploring these variables, I was able to identify the factors that led to success in email marketing campaigns, which I hope will be useful to businesses trying convert email contacts into customers.”
Jordan Ezra is a Digital Media Design student. For his final year dissertation, he chose to explore the gradual dissolution of human rights by different world governments and intelligence agencies.
“I’m interested in current world events and particularly how the erosion of human rights has been justified by events of the last 20 years. My research has shown that it’s becoming more difficult to tell the truth – an interesting conclusion, given the rise of ‘fake news’ stories,” says Jordan.
“By analysing events of the last 20 years, I found that legislation across the world is limiting our human rights through increased surveillance and co-operation with corporations, among other issues. My analysis showed that the justification for this dissolution is related to events such as September 11 Twin Towers attacks and subsequent war on terror. There’s an increasingly blurred line between privacy and security, which is beginning to spark debates around the need for more transparent democracies.”
Georgia and Jordan will be presenting their research in Parliament on 14 March. Posters in Parliament is part of the British Conference of Undergraduate Research (BCUR), which Bournemouth University will be hosting in April. If you’d like to attend and support some of the BU students presenting their research at BCUR, please register on Eventbrite here.
“We all know that being a researcher can be very satisfying, but it often comes at a price of high levels of stress and anxiety. It could be the pressure of deadlines, writers block or dealing with fixed term contracts, or perhaps the anxiety of not knowing where your next steps will take you. Research can also be isolating and hard on your self-confidence and motivation. Good mental health and well-being can help researchers deal with the stresses of life in academia and make the most of the opportunities around them whatever their future may hold.
Join us for a Google Hangout to learn more about looking after your own mental health and well-being and hear from researchers share their experiences of balancing life and research”.
In the past week I have had two publications accepted which are both linked to my research areas of social media and healthcare.
The first was the main study from my PhD which has taken 4 years to get published after being rejected by three journals! This is in the Journal of Athletic Training and summarises a feasibility study of a Facebook concussion intervention called “iCon” or interactive concussion management.
The second is in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) in their new “infographic” section and was modified from our previous BJSM editorial (Ahmed OH, Weiler R, Schneiders AG, McCrory P, Sullivan SJ. Top tips for social media use in sports and exercise medicine: doing the right thing in the digital age. Br J Sports Med 2015;49:909-910). BJSM are trying to push the publication of infographics such as this as an adjunct to traditional research papers.
Both of these publications are timely as on Thursday I am due to present at the International Olympic Committee ~World Conference on Prevention of Injury and Illness in Sport in Monaco (http://www.ioc-preventionconference.org/?page_id=1188). I will be leaning heavily on both of these papers in our symposium when I discuss the use of social media to deliver healthcare interventions in sports and exercise medicine.
References:
Ahmed OH, Schneiders AG, McCrory PR, Sullivan SJ. Sport Concussion Management Using Facebook: A Feasibility Study of an Innovative Adjunct ‘‘iCon’’. Journal of Athletic Training 2017;52(2):(in press-awaiting page numbers).
Ahmed OH, Weiler R, Schneiders AG, McCrory PR, Sullivan SJ. Infographic: Top Social Media Tips for Sports and Exercise Medicine Practitioners. British Journal of Sports Medicine 2017;(in press).
Further to the earlier blog-post concerning the internal competition for NERC standard grants (July 2017 deadline), please be reminded that the closing date is this Friday 17th March. Further details can be found here, but to summarise, the process is as follows:
Internal call launched 20 February 2017
Internal call deadline 17 March 2017. Academic submits one page expression of interest on research to be carried out, stating aims, objectives, potential impact, and any collaboration – to Lisa Gale-Andrews, RKEO
From 20th March, peer review takes place by DDRPP, BU academics with NERC experience, and external peer reviewers
Applicants will be informed of the decision regarding which application is to be taken forward after 27th March 2017. The successful applicant will then work with RKEO to develop, refine and draft their application before peer review in May and submission in July 2017.
The NIHR Fellowship Event will provide information about NIHR’s Fellowship schemes, and offer some hints and tips for a successful application. We are pleased to welcome the following speakers:
Professor Jane Sandall – Professor of Social Science & Women’s Health King’s College London, and NIHR Academic Training Advocate (Midwifery Lead)
Dr Dawn Biram – NIHR Trainees Coordinating Centre
NIHR Fellows – Bournemouth University
Date: Thursday 25th May 2017
Time: 14:00-16:00
Venue: Executive Business Centre, Lansdowne Campus
The session is open to all academics, researchers and clinicians who have an interest in applying for NIHR Fellowships.
About the NIHR Fellowship Programme: The NIHR is the UK’s major funder of applied health research. All of the research it funds works towards improving the health and wealth of the nation. 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. NIHR training programmes provide a unique opportunity for all professionals to improve the health of patients in their care through research. Training and career development awards from the NIHR range from undergraduate level through to opportunities for established investigators and research leaders. They are open to a wide range of professions and designed to suit different working arrangements and career pathways.
Budget: There was very little about HE in the budget this time, as expected, apart from the announcement of the outcomes of the consultations on PG doctoral loans and part-time maintenance loans (see below). The announcement of a £300m fund for brightest and best research talent, including for 1,000 new PhD places and fellowships focused on STEM subjects has been widely welcomed across the sector. There were lots of announcements about technical education
T-levels will be introduced, with 15 clear routes into employment
There will be an increase of over 50 per cent in number of hours training for 16-19 technical students including a high quality three month work placement, this will result in a £500m a year investment in 16-19 year olds
Maintenance loans for those who undertake higher level technical qualifications at the new institutes for technology and national colleges
Up to £40m investment in pilots to test the effectiveness of different approaches to lifelong learning
Up to £40m investment in pilots to test the effectiveness of different approaches to lifelong learning
The new doctoral loan will provide a contribution of up to £25,000 to the costs of study rather than covering the full fees and living costs of a student. It will be paid directly to the student rather than to the student’s institution.
The proposal to cap the number of people who could receive loans at each institution was not supported and so this has been dropped – it will be available to all eligible students for all eligible programmes – including all Level 8 programmes, up to 8 years long. Students receiving other government funding, such as through the NHS or a Research Council grant, will not be eligible.
Repayment arrangements will be the same as for the existing masters loan.
Part-time students will be eligible for maintenance loans from the academic year 2018/19
Students undertaking distance learning courses and Level 4 and 5 HE qualifications are likely to be eligible from academic year 2019/20 (this is subject to the passing of the HE and Research Bill – it will only happen when the Office for Students has been established and has put in place the new regulatory framework for providers)
The new loan arrangements will be reviewed after five years
Loan amounts each year will be based on the intensity of study. We had some concerns about this because it may make it harder for students to stretch the funding over the whole course
Maintenance loans for students undertaking distance learning courses will come in later as the Government needs to ensure a robust system of controls is in place
Part-time maintenance loans will be means tested
Repayment terms will mirror the process for part-time fee loans and the full-time undergraduate student finance system
Non-continuation: HESA have issued a summary of the 2015/16 non-continuation rates. OFFA have responded to the indicators expressing disappointment at the higher non-continuation rates for young students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds and earmarking this for attention in the Fair Access Agreements due for submission in April.
Higher Education and Research Bill and the TEF: the House of Lords have used the third reading of the TEF to make a number of amendments to the HE and Research Bill against the government. The Vice-Chancellor has blogged on the BU Research blog about what this means for the TEF. It is not at all clear what will happen next – if the amendments are not reversed, then TEF will go back to the drawing board in terms of what the OfS would do with it– but that would not affect the HEFCE- run year 2 process that has already started. Other amendments include one that requires universities to ensure that students are registered to vote as part of student registration. The debates in the Lords on the bill continue next week – more amendments are to come including more on migration and loans (including Sharia compliant finance), cheating, Prevent and UKRI.
New DLHE: HESA have responded to the enormous consultation on the DLHE last summer (over 130 questions) with a second one, which sets out their proposals for the new version of DLHE and asks for responses by 7th April – this one is much shorter (only 6 questions plus a space for more comments). We’ll be preparing an institutional response. Data will not be available until 2020.
DLHE will be centralised. The survey will be delivered both online and through telephone interviews, in order to achieve an overall response rate of at least 70% per provider
Survey at 15 months – replacing the 6 month and the longitudinal one (that was not used in league tables or the TEF)
It will also ask about previous and planned activity (to get away from problems associated with a “snapshot”
Linked to HMRC data on earnings and self-employment and other HESA study information including placements (from 19/20)
New question on entrepreneurship and three new ‘graduate voice’ measures of outcomes from the perspective of the respondent. These will measure the extent to which the graduate’s current activity reflects on three distinct areas of development:
Utilisation of what has been learned
Orientation toward their future goals
A sense of meaningfulness or importance.
Optional question banks including research student experiences, subjective wellbeing, Net promoter score, graduate choice, impact of HE. HE providers will be able to add their own questions to the end of the survey.
Brexit
Caroline Lucas MP asked a question in Parliament this week: Whether it is his policy to seek for the UK to remain a member of the Bologna Process after the UK’s withdrawal from the EU; and whether he plans that UK university degrees will be considered compatible with degrees in EU member states under the Bologna Process following the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. [66647]
Jo Johnson MP replied “The Bologna Process, which created the European Higher Education Area in 2010, is an intergovernmental agreement among 28 countries in the European region. It is not an EU body and therefore UK membership will not be affected by the UK’s departure from the EU.”
BU staff can login below:
Other services
Don’t miss a post!
Subscribe for the BU Research Digest, delivered freshly every day.