News: Course Improvement Plans

Below is a message from the Vice-Chancellor about a move to Course Improvement Plans that LEAD is helping support:

In my first few weeks at SHU I said that I considered Sheffield Hallam to be a good university with the potential to be a great university, and my experience since then has confirmed that view.   Our recent success in Confirmation and Clearing demonstrates that students want to come to Sheffield Hallam to study, attracted by our excellent courses, facilities, the opportunities we offer and enthusiastic staff. 

However, if we are to build a reputation as a great university we need to make significant progress in improving the student experience, at the core of which is teaching.  One of the tests for any organisation is how well it secures consistency of experience for all those it serves.  The National Student Survey (NSS) has demonstrated that although we do strikingly well in some areas of our work, we face challenges elsewhere.   At a time when student expectations are – rightly – rising, and higher education becomes yet more competitive, there is work to be done.

This work involves improving areas of low student satisfaction and addressing consistency in order to maintain the gains made each year, as well as to build in success in already strong features of our work.  I am sure that the best way to do this is to support course teams and departments in identifying and taking the actions required to improve the experience of students on their courses, and regularly review those actions, in the light of all available information, to bring about continuous improvement.  

A working group, including the Assistant Deans for Academic Development and colleagues from LEAD, STEER and SRD, are looking at ways to embed continuous improvement approaches to the student experience across the University, led by Prof Roger Eccleston who chairs the Academic Quality and Student Experience Committee.   The first step in this process has been a refinement of the course monitoring and review form, which will now be called the Course Improvement Plan (CIP), to provide clearer links to the available data and the capability to review actions and monitor progress against them.   The CIPs will be considered as live documents that are updated when new information becomes available, are reviewed within departments, faculties and at each Department Board. 

In order for us to set clear actions for the coming academic year and ensure that we are able to respond to the NSS and Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) results in a timely manner, the Action Plan portion of the CIP should be completed by course leaders in the first instance, with actions arising from the NSS and PTES data, by 19 September 2016. 

Thereafter, the form should be updated as more information, such as recruitment and retention and DLHE data become available and reviewed at Department Boards throughout the year.   The form will feed into the Annual Quality Review Process via the Department Overview reports in the usual way and the form will need to be completed by 28 October 2016 for that purpose.   

The CIP forms and guidance are available on the AQS SharePoint site.

With best wishes
Professor Chris Husbands
Vice-Chancellor