full report - Higher Education Academy

The Higher Education Academy
Annual Report 2011-12
1

The Higher Education Academy
Annual Report 2011-12
“The world is experiencing an
economic crisis that is impacting
everyone everywhere.
However, periods of change
and uncertainty provide real
opportunity for brave leadership,
innovation and enterprise.”
3

About the HEA
The HEA is a national body supporting developments in learning
and teaching in UK higher education. It supports the sector in
providing the best possible learning experience for all students.
Through a range of programmes and events, research and
knowledge creation, evidence and grant funding direct to
disciplines and also at strategic leadership level, the HEA works
across the UK to enhance the quality of teaching and the student
learning experience.
In our work to identify, develop and disseminate evidenceinformed
approaches, we engage academics, subject communities
and institutions in examining current evidence about effective
practice, and in using this evidence to make decisions about
teaching, assessment, curriculum design and support for students.
We provide easy access to information and research and initiate
dialogue with individuals and institutions about how they can use
this evidence to support their students.
The HEA brokers relationships that promote the sharing of
effective practice. By ensuring the expertise that exists across
the sector can be distributed more widely, students are able
to benefit from high quality resources and teaching material
and pedagogic approaches, whether developed at their own or
another institution.
The landscape of UK higher education continues to change at
a rapid pace and the HEA’s role in supporting universities and
colleges in bringing about strategic change is more valuable than
ever. In the pages of this report you can find out about our
work over the past year and about our plans for the future.
4

Contents
7 Forewords
8 Foreword by Professor Sir Robert Burgess
10 Foreword by Professor Craig Mahoney
13 Highlights and impact
14 Highlights and impact from 2011-12
17 Annual Report 2011-12
18 Excellence in learning and teaching
22 National Teaching Fellows 2012
24 Lecturers
26 Higher education providers
28 Disciplines
31 Students
33 Funding
35 Change
36 National policy making
39 Partnerships
44 Future plans
46 Governance
48 Summary of financial results for the year ended 31 July 2012
49 HEA contact details
5

Forewords
7

Foreword by Professor Sir Robert Burgess
In the previous reporting period, financial and policy challenges dominated the agenda within
the higher education sector. Despite these ongoing pressures, in this reporting period it is
very encouraging, and wholly appropriate, that an emerging policy thread, common across
the United Kingdom, puts the emphasis on putting students first.
This is where our focus should be. The Scottish Government
paper, Putting Learners at the Centre, emphasises widening access
and the learner journey; in Northern Ireland, in Graduating to
Success, the Executive references four guiding principles to meet
student needs – responsiveness, quality, accessibility and flexibility;
in Wales, the Further and Higher Education (Wales) Bill (July 2012)
focuses on the importance of the student voice and quality
enhancement; and in England, the sentiment is explicit in the
White Paper title, Students at the Heart of the System.
This thread is entirely consistent with the Higher Education
Academy’s (HEA) mission: “To use our expertise and resources
to support individuals, disciplinary and interdisciplinary teams
and higher education communities and institutions in general to
enhance the quality and impact of learning and teaching.”
This year, much has been done at the HEA to realise this mission
in what I believe has been a hugely successful period. The sector,
and specifically the HEA’s subscribers, are seeing clear benefits
of the HEA’s work to support individual academics, departments
and institutions, and to influence policy in learning and teaching.
The HEA’s successes and its impact this year, which are evident
throughout this annual report, have their foundation in the HEA’s
new strategy, its new structure, and its renewed vigour. It is our
aim to endeavour to support and improve the quality in teaching
in higher education, and so to enhance the experience of students
across the United Kingdom.
The new structure is underpinned by a new brand and a real
commitment to a set of robust values, represented and reflected
in a restyled and refreshed visual identity for the organisation.
Within this structure, the HEA’s new partnership team is playing
a key role in working very closely with institutions to understand
their needs and show and share where the HEA can offer help
and support. Support at the subject level remains at the heart of
our work. The Academic Practice area, with 28 subject disciplines
in four clusters, has quickly found its feet and is proving to be an
agile, flexible and, above all, a proactive way of providing support
for academics and institutions in their particular subject areas.
The attendance and feedback from the four cluster conferences
this year was testimony to the quality of engagement and the
value of these groupings.
In November, the HEA launched the revised UK Professional
Standards Framework (UKPSF) on behalf of the sector. This
was, and remains, very significant work in developing teaching
excellence and is thus making a direct impact on the student
experience. It is encouraging to note the progress in the UKPSF
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eing embraced at institutional level and at the end of the
reporting period there were over 500 accredited provisions
across 137 HEIs. The commitment to recognising teacher
excellence is highlighted this year by the award of 55 National
Teaching Fellowships representing a wide range of disciplines and
all mission groups.
The HEA has continued to support and fund Teaching
Development Grants, investing over £2 million this year, and this
work is complemented by the exciting launch of the International
Scholarship Scheme and Doctoral Programme. This work will
develop pedagogical knowledge and evidence-based practice.
Building an evidence base is fundamental work and our capacity,
capability and collaboration are being enhanced: this year, among
many other initiatives, the HEA’s partnership on the ‘What Works?
Student Retention and Success project’ with Action on Access,
The Paul Hamlyn Foundation and HEFCE, concluded its work
through an excellent report and very well-received conference.
Many more examples are related in the pages that follow.
both at government level and across the sector, reinforces
the importance of the work of the HEA as a key player and
influencer in enhancing the student experience through learning
and teaching. We look forward to working with colleagues across
the the United Kingdom to achieve this aim.
Chair of the Board
I think the HEA can reflect on the year’s work with a considerable
degree of pride given what has been achieved. There is still
much to do – and there will continue to be much to do, given the
dynamic nature of higher education. But the focus on students,
9

Foreword by Professor Craig Mahoney
As I reflect on the past year I feel very positive about what we, the higher
education community, have achieved together.
Despite growing expectations of governments, students, parents,
employers and policy makers we have risen to the challenges.
Each of the UK devolved administrations has now published
a vision for higher education, which will differentiate the four
landscapes more distinctly than ever before. The challenge for
UK bodies like the HEA is how to support the national needs,
the institutional variabilities and the individual requirements of
learners seeking an outstanding learning experience, when there
are four distinct and different contexts impacting delivery.
The UK has outstanding provision to support the learning
and teaching of our 2.5 million students and higher education
provides a wonderful opportunity for supporting personal
development, raising aspirations, enabling social mobility, and
providing a key driver for economic development. The HEA
continues to use its expertise and resources to support
individual staff who can make a difference to students during
their personal learning journey in higher education, and to
support HEIs at a strategic level to further enhance their
learning and teaching.
The world is experiencing a huge economic crisis that is
impacting everyone everywhere. However, periods of intense
change and uncertainty provide real opportunity for brave
leadership, innovation and enterprise. Over the last year the
HEA has made distinctive and far-reaching changes, which I
strongly believe are already leading to significant benefits for
our students. For example, the launch of two new funding
programmes, the International Scholarship Scheme and the
Doctoral Programme, are bringing innovation to UK learning
and teaching through collaboration with HEIs around the
world and through research into pedagogical practice. Our
Connections project, in partnership with the UK Council for
International Student Affairs, resulted in 20 funded projects
that are enhancing the learning experience for both home and
international students. And over 100 Teaching Developments
Grants are having a significant positive impact on students across
the UK.
In November 2011 we launched the revised UK Professional
Standards Framework (UKPSF) following extensive consultation
with the sector and I am delighted that the first Principal
Fellows have been recognised for their strategic commitment
to learning and teaching in higher education. We also launched
a learning and teaching Policy Think-tank, which is exploring
practical implications of national policy for learning and teaching.
10

During the year we also published our latest Strategic Plan,
which reflects our new brand and a more responsive and
flexible approach to institutional engagement. We will continue
to review our strategy so we can remain flexible and proactive
in meeting the needs of the higher education community, and
in developing new business at home and internationally. You can
read more about these new areas on page 27 of this report.
During 2011-12 the HEA has implemented its refreshed
structure, which includes supporting academics at the discipline
level through a team of directly employed or seconded staff
with pedagogic and subject expertise working with an extensive
network of Academic Associates distributed throughout the
sector. Our four cluster conferences were received with great
enthusiasm and received excellent feedback from their relevant
communities, and our discipline-focused new to teaching
workshops have been highly popular. Our Annual Conference
was a huge success and provided wonderful opportunities for
the exploration and dissemination of knowledge into the higher
education system. You will find many more examples of how our
new structure has provided flexible and effective support in the
pages of this report.
I hope you find this report a useful summary of our work over
the past year. I look forward to meeting many of you over
the coming year and building on the positive results we have
achieved together.
Chief Executive
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Highlights and impact
“The UK has outstanding provision
to support the learning and teaching
of our 2.5 million students and
higher education provides a
wonderful opportunity for
supporting personal development,
raising aspirations, enabling social
mobility and providing a key driver
for economic development.”
13

Highlights and impact from 2011-12
In 2011-12 the HEA:
• launched the revised UK Professional Standards
Framework (UKPSF) to the sector in November 2011
followed by supporting workshops held across the UK
through the year. Just under 300 delegates from HEIs and
sector bodies have engaged with the revised UKPSF
through the launch or workshops;
• recognised the first Principal Fellows under the HEA’s
Professional Recognition scheme;
• launched the Strategic Plan 2012-2016, which focuses on
how best to support the sector in responding to the rapidly
changing HE landscape, and rolled out a new visual identity
underpinned by the HEA’s brand and values;
• supported the work of the sector in the key priority areas
of employability and internationalisation by distributing 111
Teaching Development Grants, over £2 million in funding, to
individuals, departments and collaborative teams;
• launched two major funding schemes: the International
Scholarship Scheme provided grants of up to £20,000
totalling over £190,000 to 14 individuals to undertake specific
investigations of innovative teaching and learning practice
outside the UK; and the Doctoral Programme funded 15
awards totalling over £823,000 to enable development of
evidence-based practice in HE;
• held Wales’ first national learning and teaching conference
in April 2012, the inaugural Future Directions for Higher
Education for Wales conference – ‘Graduates For Our Future’.
The event was well attended, with 162 delegates from
Welsh HE and FE institutions;
• provided seven change programmes with 50 teams from 35
institutions taking part. Eleven HEIs joined the Students as
Partners programme, a partnership with Birmingham City
University that helps HEIs involve students in institutional
change more rigorously;
• worked in partnership with the National Union of Students
to roll out the Student-Led Teaching Awards scheme across
the UK after two highly successful years running the initiative
in Scotland. Over 30 institutions took part across England,
Scotland and Wales, with students making over 6,000
nominations and over 100 awards given;
• launched a new Policy Think-tank initiative to facilitate in-depth
discussion on key HE policy issues. Two Think-tanks ran this
year: one on the National Student Survey for postgraduate
taught students and one on universities’ contribution to the
Green Economy;
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• launched the Connections programme in partnership with
the UK Council for International Student Affairs, funding 20
projects that support international students studying in the UK
or encourage UK students to take opportunities to be more
internationally aware;
• ran the national Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey
(PTES) for its fourth consecutive year between February and
June 2012. 54,640 taught postgraduates from 83 HEIs took
part representing a significant increase on previous years
(38,756 took part in 2011, the previous highest response);
• managed the transition into the new organisational structure:
28 disciplines are organised into four clusters, which has
enabled enhanced integration and the sharing of best practice
across the subject groupings;
• significantly strengthened our physical presence in Scotland
and our relationship with Universities Scotland, moving to new
joint premises in September 2012;
• held a successful conference for each of the discipline clusters,
attended in total by over 770 delegates: Arts and Humanities
in Glasgow; STEM at Imperial College London; Social Sciences
in Liverpool; and Health Sciences (since renamed Health and
Social Care) at the University of Nottingham;
• held a highly successful Annual Conference on the theme of
‘Great expectations – are you ready?’, which was attended by
almost 450 delegates, a marked increase on last year;
• ran over 450 events, including seminars, workshops,
conferences, Special Interest Groups and summits, across the
full range of disciplines and themes; in total, HEA events were
attended by over 12,000 delegates;
• received a 62% increase in the number of visitors to the HEA
website, with an average of 38,200 unique visitors per month,
compared with 24,000 in 2010-11;
• commissioned Professor Graham Gibbs to undertake research
into the implications of the recommendations of his influential
HEA report, Dimensions of quality, in a market environment;
• sponsored the ‘Most Innovative Teacher of the Year’ award
at the annual Times Higher Education Awards in November
2011, awarded to David Gibson OBE, from Queen’s University
Belfast for his work on enterprise education.
15

Annual Report 2011-12
“It is encouraging and wholly
appropriate that an emerging
policy thread, common across
the United Kingdom, puts the
emphasis on putting students
first. This is where our focus
should be.”
17

High quality learning and teaching are at the heart of
the student experience. The HEA engages with
higher education providers and lecturers on work
to support, inspire and recognise teaching.
Excellence in learning
and teaching
In November, the HEA launched the
revised UK Professional Standards
Framework (UKPSF).The UKPSF was
and remains a very significant work in
developing teaching excellence and is
thus making a direct impact on the
student experience.
Following extensive consultation with the sector, in
November 2011 the HEA launched the revised UKPSF,
providing a framework for comprehensively recognising and
benchmarking teaching and learning support roles against a
set of internationally recognised criteria. The launch event
was well attended, with 95 representatives of the HEA’s
subscribers, funders and partners, including the four UK higher
education funding bodies, Universities UK, GuildHE and the
NUS. Since the launch, the HEA has held eight workshops
and presentations across the UK to introduce the revised
framework and explore how it helps individual staff and HEIs.
These events have been positively received, promoting and
developing the use of the framework to delegates from over
half of the UK’s HEIs.
The HEA in Wales ran the inaugural Future Directions for
Higher Education for Wales conference – ‘Graduates For Our
Future’ in April 2012 at Glyndŵr University. The conference
attracted delegates from all HEIs in Wales including students,
practitioners, policy makers, senior HEI managers, along with
key sector organisations and employers. The conference
showcased best practice in Wales’ first sector-wide quality
enhancement theme, ‘Graduates For Our Future’, and its three
work strands: Students as Partners; Learning in Employment;
and Learning for Employment. The HEA in Wales also
produced a publication for each strand demonstrating the
range of initiatives from institutions across Wales.
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In November 2011, David Gibson OBE from Queen’s
University Belfast was named ‘Most Innovative Teacher of
the Year’ at the Times Higher Education Awards, an award
sponsored by the HEA. David’s nomination showcased his
pioneering work in developing a model of entrepreneurship
education that has been adopted by the European Training
Foundation and led to him becoming the first person in Europe
to be named the ‘world number one’ enterprise educator
by the United States Association of Small Business and
Entrepreneurship. David has shared his innovative learning
and teaching practices through HEA colleagues.
The HEA continued its work with Scottish colleges this year in
partnership with Scotland’s Colleges and the Equality
Practitioners’ Network. Funded by the Scottish Funding Council
the second year of the three-year Embedding Equality and
Diversity in the Scottish Curriculum project saw workshops and
a change programme help eight institutions develop an inclusive
culture. Six case studies were published to disseminate the best
practice of the colleges involved in the project to the sector.
The HEA discipline areas have worked with the sector this
year providing a wide variety of activities to enhance learning
and teaching. For example, the Politics discipline ran seven
workshops across the UK and sponsored four of the new
teaching and learning panels at the British International
Studies Association annual conference in Edinburgh.
Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism subject areas
funded a major project to capitalise on the opportunities
provided by the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to
provide learning resources for curriculum development, and
the Nursing discipline has been working with the Royal College
of Nursing (RCN) Fertility Forum to develop a national
Education Framework for Fertility Nursing.
The first academic practice summits from the HEA were held
this year with expertise sought from disciplinary contacts. The
Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) summit
in February 2012 discussed the topic of feedback, a key issue
in STEM communities. The event was supported by the HEA’s
Academic Lead for Assessment and Feedback, who gave a
keynote presentation. The Arts and Humanities summit in March
2012 addressed transition, retention and success in the Arts and
Humanities, and the Social Sciences summit discussed teaching
research methods. Recommendations from the summits are being
shared with the sector to enhance learning and teaching on the
themes discussed, or will feed into future HEA strategic planning.
A summit in the Health Sciences disciplines will follow in 2012-13.
The Discipline Lead for Dance, Drama and Music delivered a
session on assessment and feedback at two HEIs. On a wider
scale, the HEA has also worked with assessment experts
through the year to produce a key publication, A marked
improvement, which will be published in the Autumn.
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Excellence in learning and teaching
An evaluation of the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme was
undertaken by the HEA in 2012 to review the process and
development of the scheme, and explore its impact at all levels:
the individual recipient; their institution; and the sector. Input
was sought from National Teaching Fellows (NTFs), senior
managers at HEIs and professional bodies, as well as through an
open survey available on the HEA website. A range of methods
were used to gather feedback including surveys, one-to-one
interviews and focus groups. Support from independent
Academic Associates throughout the process has ensured
objectivity and provided expertise in analysing the data. The
findings of the evaluation will be published in the Autumn.
The HEA’s work with JISC on the HEFCE-funded Open
Educational Resources (OER) programme moved into phase
three this year. Thirteen case studies that highlight the benefit
of OER were launched at the HEA’s Annual Conference in July
2012. The case studies cover a range of topics such as students
as producers of OER, the impact of mobile web applications,
and staff development in the OER era. Further case studies
sharing the work of The Open University’s Support Centre for
Open Resources in Education (SCORE) fellows in the field of
OER will be published by the HEA in the Autumn. A one-year
HEFCE-funded programme entitled changing the learning
landscape, which focuses on strategic use of learning
technologies will follow on from the OER programme in
2012-13. As a partner-led collaborative programme, the
HEA will be delivering a substantial continuing professional
development (CPD) offer for academic staff and senior leaders
of educational development in HEIs.
This year the HEA has taken steps to initiate a project to
strengthen its online support for academics through its plans to
establish an online Resources Centre. The Resources Centre,
which will extend and consolidate the existing EvidenceNet
online repository, will provide an interactive peer-reviewed
forum for online communities of practice and allow academics
to share a range of high quality and authoritative online
materials, reports and documents.
The HEA has carried out significant work in the area of flexible
learning this year. This has included two flexible learning summits
bringing together senior managers from a range of UK
institutions, and the publication of the evaluation of the HEFCEfunded
flexible learning Pathfinder projects, which reported that
the performance of students on two-year accelerated degree
programmes was comparable and in some cases exceeded that
of three-year degree students. Other work in this area included:
the commissioning of a Transfer of Credit project to provide an
overview of how transfer of credit contributes to flexible
learning; ongoing meetings of the Employer Engagement
Exchange Group, culminating with a highly successful
conference in Manchester in June 2012; a workshop with the
Heads of e-Learning Forum (HeLF) focusing on how institutions
20

can successfully manage the transition from having students
submit paper-based assignments, to submitting their assignments
electronically; and a one-day workshop exploring new forms of
online engagement, and the implications for teaching and learning.
In partnership with the National Co-ordinating Centre for
Public Engagement (NCCPE), the HEA ran the ‘Teaching and
Learning Summit on Employability’ in May 2012, bringing
together practitioners, experts, employers, senior managers,
students and policy makers to discuss how to engage students
with employability. Recommendations from the summit included
the HEA supporting HEIs in implementing their employability
strategies through the development of a framework and
professional development programmes. A revised Pedagogy for
employability was published by the HEA this year, with an
accompanying workshop held in June 2012. The HEA in Wales
has worked with the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales
(HEFCW) and other sector partners to develop a Skills and
Employability Framework for Wales, which was launched in June
2012. The framework aims to improve the employability skills of
graduates from Welsh universities and complements the HEA’s
work in Wales on Learning for Employment through the Future
Directions programme.
The HEA’s assessment work this year includes the publication
of A handbook for external examining, collated from the outputs of
the research and development work under the theme ‘enhancing
the support for external examining’. The handbook was written
to support the QAA guidance for external examiners within
the UK Quality Code for Education, and launched at a jointly held
conference on external examining in May 2012. Following
the successful publication last year of two guidance reports
supporting the development of HEIs’ academic integrity policy
and practice, this year the HEA’s Academic Integrity Service
ran the sixth event on ‘Institutional Policies and Procedures for
Managing Student Plagiarism’ in partnership with the Assessment
Standards Knowledge exchange (ASKe) in June 2012, and
sponsored the Fifth International Plagiarism Conference in
partnership with plagiarismadvice.org.
The HEA Annual Conference, ‘Great Expectations - are you
ready?’, was held over two days at the University of Manchester
in July 2012, with almost 450 delegates attending, a marked
increase on last year. Inspired by the Olympic year, the speeches
and sessions looked at expectations of success and preparation
for challenges through the lens of the roles of students, staff and
HEIs in enhancing the student learning experience. Following the
success of last year’s pilot, the keynote sessions were again offered
via a live stream and also posted on the HEA website after the
event. The keynote speech of Martin Bean, Vice-Chancellor of The
Open University, ‘Great expectations: not a choice, a reality’ was a
particular highlight, receiving excellent feedback and trending on
Twitter (ranking fourth most tweeted topic in the UK), and has
since been downloaded over 5,000 times from the HEA website.
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National Teaching Fellows
2012
The commitment to recognising teaching
excellence is highlighted this year by the
award of 55 National Teaching Fellows
representing a wide range of disciplines
and all mission groups.
Heather Barnett University of Westminster
Dr Brendan Bartram University of Wolverhampton
Helen Bilton
University of Reading
Professor Stuart Brand Birmingham City University
Dr Jo Brown
St George’s, University of London
Dr Charles Buckley Bangor University
Professor Gráinne Conole University of Leicester
Dr Fiona Copland Aston University
Eur Ing Dr Tony Cowling University of Sheffield
Dr Gerry Czerniawski University of East London
Dr Coral Dando Lancaster University
Dr Basiro Davey MBE The Open University
Professor John Davies Coventry University
Dr Luke Dawson University of Liverpool
Dr Christine Dearnley University of Bradford
Dr Paul Farrand University of Exeter
Dr Suanne Gibson Plymouth University
Christopher Goldsmith De Montfort University
Anna Lise Gordon St Mary’s University College
Claire Hamshire Manchester Metropolitan University
Dr Janet Hargreaves University of Huddersfield
Dr Paul Hewson Plymouth University
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Fifty-five National Teaching Fellows (NTFs) from institutions across England, Wales and Northern Ireland were
recognised this year by the HEA, bringing the total number to 533. Each new National Teaching Fellow
is awarded £10,000 to support their professional development of learning and teaching. This year’s
cohort represents a wide range of disciplines and all mission groups.
Sara Holmes MBE University of Portsmouth
Dr Peter Howarth Queen Mary, University of London
Rebecca Huxley-Binns Nottingham Trent University
Stella Jones-Devitt Sheffield Hallam University
Helen Keegan
University of Salford
Dr David Killick
Leeds Metropolitan University
Fiona Lamb
Loughborough University
Beverly Leeds
University of Central Lancashire
Dr Cristina Leston-Bandeira University of Hull
Ruth Matheson
Cardiff Metropolitan University
Professor Rachel McCrindle University of Reading
Dr Undrell Moore Newcastle University
Dr Jane Morris
University of Brighton
Dr Neil Morris
University of Leeds
Dr Sheila Oliver Cardiff University
Anita Peleg
London South Bank University
Nicky Reid
University of Roehampton
Dr Laura Ritchie University of Chichester
Tim Roberts
Conservatoire for Dance and Drama
– Circus Space
Dr Zoe Robinson Keele University
Dr Vivien Rolfe
De Montfort University
Kim Russell
Professor Jonathan Scott
Dr Rhona Sharpe
Dr Ayona Silva-Fletcher
Brian Smith
Professor Steve Stanton
Dr Brendan Stone
Dr Janet Strivens
Jane Thomas
Barbara Walsh
Professor David Wilson
Dr Richard Winsley
University of Worcester
University of Leicester
Oxford Brookes University
The Royal Veterinary College
Edge Hill University
City University London
University of Sheffield
University of Liverpool
Swansea University
Liverpool John Moores University
Birmingham City University
University of Exeter
23

Lecturers
The HEA leads, supports and informs the
professional development and recognition
of staff in higher education. Through its
reports, research, events and networking
opportunities, it ensures that individuals
have access to professional recognition,
advice and guidance. Its work to enhance
the status of teaching, and to support new
academic staff, continued to be priorities
across the UK this year.
The HEA continues to provide accreditation to the sector,
aligned to the revised UKPSF. In 2011-12, 114 academic course
provisions were accredited across 44 HEIs. Twelve institutions
were supported by the HEA in the development of their
UKPSF continuing professional development (CPD) schemes,
and 18 HEIs had CPD provision accredited this year, a total of
46 programmes.
The number of HE professionals seeking recognition through
the HEA Professional Recognition Service substantially increased
again: 6,103 were recognised, an increase of over 1,500 on
2010-11 figures. Of those 1,484 were Associate Fellows (which
includes professionals previously recognised as Associates prior
to the launch of the revised UKPSF in November 2011), 4,581
were Fellows and 34 were Senior Fellows.
The revised UKPSF was extended to include a fourth descriptor
labelled Principal Fellow for those demonstrating substantial
strategic impact on learning and teaching aligned to descriptor
four. In 2011-12 the HEA recognised the first three Principal
Fellows, all from the University of Exeter.
The HEA held 47 workshops this year to support those new to
teaching whether full-time or part-time lecturers, postgraduates
24

The HEA continues to use its expertise and resources to support individual staff
who can make a difference to students during their personal learning
journey in higher education.
who teach or graduate teaching assistants, many organised by
the discipline clusters. The STEM team led two new to teaching
two-day residential courses: one in Edinburgh for Geography,
Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES), Built Environment
and Engineering; the other in Birmingham for Psychology,
Biosciences, Computing and Physical Sciences. The STEM team
also ran four events for postgraduates who teach. Business
and Management, Marketing, and Hospitality, Leisure, Sport
and Tourism hosted early-career staff from their disciplines
at Social Sciences’ new to teaching workshops in Bristol and
Newcastle, while the Sociology Discipline Lead ran a new to
teaching workshop in Wales. Arts and Humanities held two new
to teaching events including a three-day ‘Teaching in practice’
event for Art and Design lecturers, featuring workshops on art
critiques and the accessibility of Art education. This event was
jointly held at the Business Design Centre, the Garden Museum,
and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
With the Department for Education’s publication of the
new Standards for Teachers in England in May 2012, to be
introduced from September 2012, the HEA has been very
active in supporting the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) sector
in HE through the production of a booklet developed by The
Universities Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET)
with the National Association of School-Based Teacher
Trainers (NASBTT), Working with the Teachers’ Standards in Initial
Teacher Education: Guidance to support assessment for Qualified
Teacher Status (QTS). The HEA organised eight co-ordinated
discipline workshops, hosted by different HEIs in England, to
disseminate and discuss the draft guidance and to identify
resources that could support the implementation of the
standards. Representatives from 87% of HEIs offering ITE
attended these HEA workshops. Work on ITE projects has also
been commissioned in Scotland and Wales by the HEA using
Academic Associates, both prominent academics in the two
nations, to co-ordinate the work.
The HEA continues to publish a range of 12 discipline-based
academic journals, from Bioscience Education to Discourse from
the Philosophy and Religious Studies discipline with many
more in between. This year two further editions of the wellreceived
Islamic Studies Network’s Perspectives journal were
published. In 2011-12 processes relating to the HEA’s journal
provision were reviewed and changes put in place to ensure
that the journal portfolio, in the future, is more visible and has
greater impact.
25

Higher education providers
The HEA liaises directly with higher
education providers across the UK
to ensure it develops and provides
programmes of support based on
institutional needs. Through its
regular communication channels it
encourages debate so that institutions
can collaborate in shared academic
research to support the learning
experience of all students.
This year the HEA Surveys for Enhancement conference, held
in May 2012 in Nottingham, presented research and practice on
the use of student surveys to help delegates use survey data to
improve learning and teaching. The wide range of sessions
covered themes including the use of qualitative data, and
developing and measuring student engagement.
The HEA has also produced a range of discipline-based reports
that give detailed analysis of National Student Survey (NSS)
scores, at discipline and subject level. The reports contain
comparisons between a number of student and institutional
characteristics, such as gender, domicile, mode of study, mission
group, etc. Eleven reports for STEM and Health Sciences
disciplines were launched at the HEA Surveys for Enhancement
conference, with the Arts and Humanities reports published in
July and the Social Sciences reports to be published in Autumn
2012. An evaluation of the impact of the discipline reports will
be undertaken to inform the HEA’s discipline-level NSS support
for 2012-13.
The ‘What Works? Student Retention and Success’ project
run by the HEA in partnership with HEFCE, The Paul Hamlyn
Foundation and Action on Access concluded its work this year.
The partnership published the findings of the initiative through
26

The partnership team is playing a key role in working closely with institutions
to understand their needs and show and share where the HEA
can offer help and support.
a summary report, launched at the two-day ‘What Works?’
conference in March 2012, and the final report, Building student
engagement and belonging in higher education at a time of change:
final report from the What Works? Student Retention and Success
programme, in July 2012. The conference attracted over 200
attendees and included leading international and UK keynote
addresses. A Compendium of effective practice was also published
this year to enable the successful What Works? model to be applied
beyond the programme of work, with a second to follow
next year. The HEA and Action on Access are currently working
together to develop a second phase to build on the valuable
work of the ‘What Works?’ project.
The HEA held the Black and minority ethnic (BME) students
learning and teaching summit programme in 2012 comprising
a series of activities designed to generate, collect and review
evidence on the contribution of the curriculum to BME
student retention and success in higher education. The
synthesised outcomes were presented at a two-day residential
event in April 2012 to be interrogated by practitioners, students,
senior institutional managers and national policy makers.
A report of the recommendations of the summit providing a
set of guiding principles will be published in the Autumn. One
of the recommendations led to the establishment of the HEA’s
Strategic Development Grants, offering almost £70,000 in
funding for eight projects that are designed to improve the
attainment of BME students within higher education. The
Social Work and Social Policy discipline has funded work on
the retention of BME students in Social Policy this year.
UK higher education has a worldwide reputation for
excellence in teaching quality and universities across the
sector are increasingly working in an international context,
recruiting internationally and developing their global presence.
This year the HEA has been developing an international
strategy through which it aims to work in partnership with
UK and international institutions to deliver services to higher
education organisations, governments and sector agencies
overseas. In 2012, the HEA engaged with universities and
government ministries in South East Asia, Australasia, Africa,
Europe and the Middle East.
In response to an increasing demand for bespoke support, the
HEA has launched a consultancy service, providing tailored
interventions that meet the specific needs of institutions and
providers. In 2012, more than 50 universities engaged with
this service, and interest continues to grow across the UK
and overseas.
27

Higher education providers
The HEA’s higher education in further education (HE in FE)
team ran a number of workshops across the country this year to
support colleagues teaching higher education in further education
colleges including: four scholarly activity workshops; three
workshops providing guidance on professional recognition and
the UKPSF; and four workshops advising on the revised QAA
methodology for reviewing HE in FE.
In August 2011 the HEA launched a refocused partnership
programme, with a team of partnership managers dedicated
to working with senior managers in all subscribing institutions
to ensure they receive the most effective support for their
institution’s particular needs. Nearly 190 meetings have been
carried out over the course of the year, with regular ongoing
contact throughout the year. This change in approach has ensured
more regular dialogue, particularly at a senior level in institutions,
both raising the HEA profile and the demand for its services, and
ensuring subscribers received better value for money for their
annual subscription.
Disciplines
The HEA works across the disciplines
to provide subject-specific support for
enhancing the student learning experience.
Lecturers, departments and discipline
communities are supported through a
range of services including subject-specific
information and resources, events and
departmental workshops, as well as funding
and support for special interest groups.
28

The Academic Practice area, with 28 subject disciplines in four clusters is proving to be an agile,
flexible and above all, proactive way of providing support for academics
and institutions in their subject areas.
The HEA successfully managed the transition into a new way
of working with the disciplines this year. Twenty-eight disciplines
are organised into four clusters – Arts and Humanities,
Health Sciences, STEM and Social Sciences – enabling enhanced
integration and the sharing of best practice across the subject
groupings. Each Discipline Lead is also a practising academic,
ensuring current thinking in learning and teaching is embedded
in HEA work through their input.
Each of the four HEA discipline clusters ran a highly successful
cluster conference this year, demonstrating the interest and ability
of cross-discipline working. Arts and Humanities ran ‘Pedagogies
of hope and opportunity’, in Glasgow in May 2012, which included
several sessions on employability, and a well-received keynote
speech by Professor Giovanni Shiuma focusing on the related
theme of the power of art and culture in business. Thirty parallel
sessions and interactive workshops offered valuable
opportunities for the 120 delegates to share practice and make
connections within and across disciplines.
The Health Sciences conference, ‘Innovation, simulation and the
evolution of technology-enhanced learning’, was held at the
University of Nottingham in May 2012 attended by 240 delegates.
Exceptional feedback was received with 77% of attendees stating
their intention to change their practice after attending.
The Social Sciences conference, ‘Ways of knowing, ways of
learning’, took place in May 2012 in Liverpool, bringing the
discipline community together to better understand what
constitutes effective practice in social sciences in relation to the
way their students learn and apply that learning. Dianne Laurillard
of the London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, gave a
keynote speech on Tools for teachers’ collaborative learning. Two
competitions were run at the conference: a ‘nanoteach’
competition and a student photography competition. The winners
were awarded at the HEA Annual Conference. The conference
was ‘liveblogged’ by the Social Sciences cluster team, and a review
of the social networking at the conference was undertaken and
published on the blog.
The STEM team hosted its first two-day annual learning and
teaching conference, ‘Aiming for excellence in STEM learning and
teaching’, at Imperial College London in April 2012. Over 340
delegates attended the event. There was a great deal of interest in
submitting conference papers from across the STEM disciplines: for
example, over 40 submissions came from Computing alone. The
conference proceedings and academic papers are available
to download from the HEA website. The STEM team ran a
conference blog, continuing with a STEM blog as part of the pilot
for the STEM resource centre.
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Disciplines
The HEA has been active in establishing Special Interest Groups
(SIGs) this year, with 15 discipline-related SIGs supported including:
‘Enhancing students’ experiences of Operational Research’ and
‘Service provision offered by the Mathematical Sciences’ from the
Maths, Statistics and Operational Research discipline; ‘Fieldwork’
from GEES; and ‘Pedagogical Research in the Biological Sciences’,
‘Teaching and Learning BioMaths’ and ‘Teaching and Learning
BioEthics’ from Biological Sciences. The two Engineering SIGs
covered work on Engineering education and the global
dimension of Engineering education, and brought together
academics, professional body, employer and sector skills
representatives to formulate activity to be undertaken through
Academic Associates. The Medicine and Dentistry discipline is
looking at a potential SIG for the coming year on cross-cluster
working and the integration of Arts and Humanities in Medicine.
The disciplines have provided support to the sector through a
number of conferences and events this year. Business and
Management in partnership with the Association of Business
Schools ran a very successful teaching and learning conference
in Manchester in April 2012, attended by 150 delegates and with
keynotes from Professor Graham Gibbs and the HEA’s Chief
Executive Professor Craig Mahoney. The HEA Law discipline
and Nottingham Law School hosted the third National Law
Students Forum in June 2012 at Nottingham Trent University, this
year focusing on employability. The HEA has also published key
discipline-related publications this year including a new report on
student career expectations on the qualifying Law degree. This
report was described by Dr Valerie Shrimplin, former Head
of Education Standards at the Bar Standards Board and now
Academic Registrar at Gresham College, as: “a very interesting
and thorough piece of research that will be helpful to inform
current thinking on legal education and training, especially the
wishes and needs of students”.
The HEA discipline areas are also working to ensure greater
engagement with the sector through online bulletins and
publications; for example, the Marketing discipline disseminates a
quarterly online publication, HEA Marketing Digest, and over half
of the Psychology academics in the UK now receive a monthly
e-bulletin from the Discipline Lead for Psychology.
This year the HEA has built up a network of nearly 1,500
Academic Associates from across the sector, covering all disciplines
and thematic areas that are priorities for higher education. Their
activities include undertaking research, writing reports and
evaluations, organising workshops and seminars, assisting on the
change programmes, helping with accreditation and recognition
work, editing journals, blogging, and helping the network of
Discipline Leads cover the UK building networks and delivering
expert activities in their subject areas. The HEA has also
developed a toolkit of resources to support the work of the
Academic Associates and this will be launched in September,
to sit alongside a series of induction events.
30

Over the last year the HEA has made distinctive
and far-reaching changes, which are already leading
to significant benefits for our students.
Students
The HEA’s approach to student
engagement considers students as
active partners in their learning
experience. It promotes the value of
student engagement and shares effective
practice across the HE sector. The HEA
has worked with HEIs to ensure that all
students, whatever their background, can
benefit from inclusive teaching practices.
The HEA has worked in partnership with the National Union
of Students (NUS) on a major UK-wide project to roll out the
Student-Led Teaching Awards (SLTA) initiative. This builds on the
highly successful work of the HEA in Scotland and NUS Scotland
who have run the SLTA initiative with Scottish institutions for
two years. This year over 30 institutions were supported to run
award schemes across England, Scotland and Wales, with students
making over 6,000 nominations and over 100 awards given.
The HEA and NUS ran two SLTA events in 2011-12, in Edinburgh
and Nottingham, to support and promote the project and share
results of previous SLTAs to enhance learning and teaching.
A report on the impact of SLTAs will be published shortly.
As a result of previous student involvement across the change
programmes, the HEA recognised the significant potential for
working with students to support transformative change in their
learning experiences. Students as Partners is a new HEA
change programme run in partnership with Birmingham City
University to help HEIs develop their capacity to involve
students in institutional change more rigorously. Participating
teams comprise at least 50% students or student representatives.
Ten teams representing 11 institutions are taking part in this
change programme over the next year. A well-received and very
positive start-up meeting with the teams was run in June 2012 and
the residential meeting will be held in September.
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Students
The HEA’s Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES)
continued to increase its engagement with students and
institutions, with 83 institutions taking part in PTES 2012 (up
from 80 in 2011) and 54,640 students responding to the survey
(up from 38,756 in 2011). The national response rate was
24.7% (up from 17.8% in 2011). This year PTES 2012 created
new benchmarking groups for million+ and University Alliance
institutions. The Postgraduate Research Experience Survey
(PRES) is run biennially and did not run in 2012. The HEA will
provide both PTES and PRES to the sector in 2013.
Student attitudes towards and skills for sustainable development, a
report by the HEA and NUS, was published this year, following
on from the 2011 first phase report on first-year students’
attitudes to education for sustainable development (ESD). The
report showed that students expect universities to address
sustainability issues and that they would be willing to take a
pay deduction if their employers had a strong environmental
performance. Students believe employers value sustainability
skills, according to the research, with almost 80% of secondyear
students viewing universities as a key provider of these
environmental, social and economic skills. In June this year, the
HEA’s Academic Lead for ESD attended the World Symposium
on Sustainable Development at Universities (WSSD-U-2012)
to talk about the HEA’s ESD institutional change programme,
Green Academy. The next phase of this study (to be researched
this coming academic year and published in 2013) will focus on
whether there has been a shift in sustainability attitudes as a
result of the increased student tuition fees.
Providing a discipline context is a national HEA priority, and
the Business and Management discipline is working on a book
of 14 case studies of practice, entitled Enhancing education for
sustainable development, with contributions from a range of
business disciplines in UK universities and worldwide.
The HEA Connections initiative, in partnership with the UK
Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA), provided
20 grants totalling over £160,000 to pilot projects supporting
internationalisation. The Connections funding supports HEIs
to enhance the teaching and learning experiences both for
international students studying in the UK and home students in
the context of internationalisation, and to promote intercultural
understanding to prepare students for employment in a
global context.
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The HEA offers a wide range of funding opportunities for
individuals, departments and collaborative
projects to enhance learning.
Funding
The Teaching Development Grants
are a core part of the HEA’s work
to build up an evidence base for the
sector around what works in learning
and teaching. Through the practices that
the funded projects develop and model,
they encourage innovations in learning
and teaching that have the potential for
discipline-wide and sector-wide impact.
This year in the second phase of the initiative, the HEA funded
111 grants (718 bids were received), totalling over £2 million,
across individual, departmental and collaborative strands, to
stimulate evidence-based research and encourage innovations
in learning and teaching on the themes of employability and
internationalisation. Grants for the coming academic year will
focus on work on assessment and feedback and flexible learning.
Through its International Scholarship Scheme, the HEA awarded
14 scholarships this year, amounting to just under £200,000
of funding. The recipients of the 2012 scheme will undertake
focused investigations outside of the UK and deliver specific
outcomes for dissemination within the UK at the end of the
scholarship. The scholarships include the transferability of good
Nursing educational practice between the UK and Singapore,
and investigations in Canada and the Netherlands to support
the design of an innovative interdisciplinary graduate
programme suitable for UK HEIs. HEA International Scholar,
Harriet Harriss, Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes
University, stated the impact of the scholarship for her
Architecture students would be enabling them to “reach out
in terms of their own professional development, be more
capable, set up companies, have more professional confidence
and competence in order to change the profession of
Architecture for the future”.
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Funding
The HEA’s Doctoral Programme, which forms part of the HEA’s
strategy to undertake research to develop pedagogical knowledge
and evidence-based practice in higher education, made 15 awards
this year (133 applications were received). This amounted to
over £800,000 of funding for academics to support doctoral
studentships in fields including the impact of retention strategies
on part-time mature students in HE, and unpacking the dynamics
of group interaction in problem-based learning. The research
outcomes from the doctoral studentships will be disseminated
across UK higher education.
The HEA workshop and seminar series invites subscribing
institutions to seek funding to host and deliver a seminar and
produce an associated report for the sector. This year 236
seminars were held attracting over 5,000 attendees, including:
194 across the disciplines; 32 in the thematic areas of assessment
and feedback, retention and success, and internationalisation; and
seven on open educational resources.
Following on from the recommendations of the BME students
learning and teaching summit, the HEA awarded eight Strategic
Development Grants, providing funding for projects that improve
the attainment of BME students within higher education. Funding
of just under £70,000 was granted across the projects to
implement the ‘guiding principles’ published from the summit, and
to increase BME student successes and contribute to the HEA’s
knowledge about effective approaches to improving the retention
of BME students. The HEA Strategic Development Grants are for
one-year projects, but the impact of the funding will be evaluated
over three years.
34

Despite growing expectations of governments, students,
parents, employers and policy makers the higher
education community has risen to the challenges.
Change
Higher education providers are
experiencing unprecedented changes
which are challenging traditional
approaches to learning and teaching.
The HEA offers a range of services
designed to help institutions, faculties
and/or departments adapt to these
changes and thereby enhance the
student learning experience.
The HEA has run successful change programmes since 2004,
starting with the Change Academy and gradually expanding
the portfolio of programmes on offer to support institutions,
faculties and departments to adapt to the unprecedented
changes they face. In 2011-12 the HEA ran seven new change
programmes. Fifty teams from 35 institutions across the four
nations of the UK took part, including one private provider.
The change programmes offered this year are:
Assessment and feedback;
Representing student achievement;
Reward and recognition
Responding to the NSS in the disciplines;
Internationalisation;
Students as partners;
Open educational resources.
The Assessment and feedback and Representing student
achievement change programmes (which ran as a combined
programme) have recently completed. Some comments from
participants include:
35

Change
“This was a great opportunity to be part of driving change
within my own institution. Support and guidance were
provided to help us progress with an initiative which we have
been fiddling with for several years. This provided the focus
to really make progress and to identify ways we can keep
monitoring developments.”
“[It] really prompted us to get on with the action, and as a
result we’ve achieved far more than I thought possible in
the time available.”
Responding to the National Student Survey in the disciplines
is a new discipline-based programme enabling subject
communities and departments to work creatively to
meet the challenges of changes to funding models, new
technologies, balancing teaching and research, and serving an
increasingly diverse body of learners. The ten teams involved
represent all four of the HEA’s discipline clusters and all UK
nations. The residential meeting for this programme was held
in July, with a final meeting planned for November.
National policy making
The HEA works to inform, influence and
interpret policy across the UK and home
nations. It does this through a range of
mechanisms including: representation on
committees, through formal responses to
relevant consultations, facilitating policy
debates that affect learning and teaching
in higher education and commissioning
leading research.
36

The sector and specifically subscribers are seeing clear benefits of the HEA’s work to
support individual academics and institutions, and to influence policy
in learning and teaching.
This year the HEA ran its first two Policy Think-tanks –
roundtable discussions of policy with an invited group of
stakeholders, facilitated and reported on by the HEA. The
first, ‘Graduates for the future: the role of universities towards
a green economy’, held in February 2012, was a residential
event for student, academic and business leaders in the field of
sustainable development, with five stimulus presentations to
encourage debate.
The second HEA Policy Think-tank was ‘Postgraduate taught:
National Student Survey’, held in May and attended by survey
experts, senior institutional managers, HEFCE and BIS
representatives, and policy makers. Following this successful
Policy Think-tank, the HEA is continuing to ensure
developments are informed by the experience of PTES
through representation on HEFCE’s Postgraduate Information
Steering Group.
The HEA responded to 15 consultations in 2011-12, giving
input to Government White Papers and consultations on the
future of higher education at national, thematic and discipline
level. This included the Scottish Government’s Putting learners
at the centre – delivering our ambitions for post-16 education
consultation, the Welsh Government’s The future shape of higher
education in Wales consultation, and the BIS White Paper Higher
Education: Students at the Heart of the System. The HEA was
also involved in the development of DELNI’s Higher Education
Strategy for Northern Ireland,published in April 2012, chairing
the ‘Learning Expert Group’.
The HEA gave evidence to the Lingfield review of
‘Professionalism in Further Education’. The interim report,
published in March 2012, commended the HEA’s approach
to professional recognition: “the Higher Education Academy
shows clearly that a shift from the intention to compel
lecturers to achieve teacher-training qualifications, towards one
where they and their employers are persuaded that this is in
all their best interests in order to enhance standards, is much
more effective than regulation.”
In providing evidence to the review of A-level curriculum, the
HEA said that it may be beneficial for universities from all
mission groups, not the Russell Group alone, to be involved in
helping to set A-level exams.
In relation to its thematic work, the HEA had input into the
Wilson Review of Business-University Collaboration, with
Professor Sir Tim Wilson attending an HEA Employer
37

National policy making
Engagement Exchange Group and incorporating their
recommendations into the report. The HEA also contributed
to the Welsh Government’s Sustainable Development Bill, and is
involved in ongoing consultation with the QAA in chapters for
the new UK Quality Code for Higher Education.
At discipline level, the HEA submitted written evidence to the
House of Lords Inquiry on Higher Education in STEM subjects.
The Chief Executive was subsequently called to give evidence
on behalf of the HEA at the Select Committee hearing.
The HEA commissioned Professor Graham Gibbs to follow
up his influential 2010 HEA report Dimensions of quality to
look at the implications of his recommendations in a market
environment. As part of his research he visited a wide range of
HEIs across the UK and engaged 60 members of the HEA’s PVC
Network in a discussion in late 2011. His final report will be
published during 2012-13.
Further research commissioned by the HEA this year
includes: a study in partnership with the NUS to enhance
understanding about how and why students make choices
about where and what to study; an independent review of the
Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES) examining the
design, operation and use of PTES and bringing together the
first four years of findings; ‘Leading the Student Experience’,
commissioned jointly with the Leadership Foundation for
Higher Education, to explore how academic and professional
staff are working together in new ways to deliver the best
possible student experience; a critical review of the existing
knowledge base on teaching development programmes with
recommendations for better understanding of programme
efficacy and impact; and a study to measure the impact of
the UKPSF for teaching and supporting learning, which will
produce a set of case studies, resources and reports with
recommendations for the HEA about how to more effectively
disseminate and foster the use of the UKPSF in the sector and
identify possible future empirical research on the UKPSF. The
first four projects will report in Autumn, and the UKPSF review
will report in the Spring.
The Network of Deputy and Pro-Vice-Chancellors and
Vice-Principals provides a forum for senior managers in
HE to enhance their understanding of current learning and
teaching issues through biannual meetings. In December 2011
the Network discussed the implications of recent policy
developments on the student learning experience. Delegates
had the opportunity to hear from Professor Graham Gibbs and
shape work on the practical implications of his Dimensions of
quality report. In April the Network explored how universities
are making themselves distinctive to attract students in an
increasingly competitive environment, followed by a discussion
on the use of Open Educational Resources.
38

Building an evidence base is fundamental work
and our capacity and capability and collaborations
are being enhanced.
Partnerships
The HEA works in partnership with
educational organisations and HEIs
to share expertise and guidance.
These deliver a range of resources
and outcomes that directly impact the
student learning experience. The HEA’s
partnership working ensures that those
with expertise in areas of common
interest can help shape the future of
the student learning experience.
Higher Education Policy Institute
The HEA has worked closely with HEPI this year, co-hosting a
series of four policy breakfast seminars held at the House of
Commons, which brought together key figures from the
sector to discuss emerging issues in HE. The topics discussed
were: ‘Higher education in a state of flux: facing up to the
challenges’; ‘What students want: markets, quality and
consumers’; the proposed new regulatory and quality
assurance framework for HE; and unfair access and reduced
participation – the consequence of the new arrangements for
access and participation. The HEA also sponsored HEPI’s Spring
2012 Conference ‘What students want – the student learning
experience in the changing world of higher education’, with the
Chief Executive of the HEA providing the keynote presentation.
NUS
The HEA worked in partnership with the National Union of
Students as the Student-Led Teaching Awards project was rolled
out across the UK, after two successful years in Scotland.
The HEA and NUS Scotland continued to work closely on the
SLTAs, jointly running a conference and number of events to
support and promote the initiative. The HEA also sponsored a
student winner of the NUS Scotland Awards. Liam Burns,
President of the NUS, sits on the HEA Board of Directors.
39

Partnerships
Action on Access, The Paul Hamlyn Foundation and HEFCE
The HEA’s partnership on the ‘What Works? Student Retention
and Success’ project concluded its work this year by disseminating
the findings of the initiative through a summary and final report
and a two-day conference. To enable the successful model to
be applied beyond the programme of work, a Compendium of
effective practice was also published, with a second to follow
next year. The HEA and Action on Access are currently working
together to develop a second phase to build on the valuable work
of the ‘What Works?’ project.
Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare (ASPiH)
This year the HEA has worked in partnership with the
Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare (ASPiH) to
create over 40 Simulation Development Officers (SDO). These
consultants are working with the HEA and ASPiH to collate,
evaluate and enhance existing simulation-based learning activities
within HEIs and NHS facilities and enable the initiation of new
educational activity that will enhance healthcare education.
UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA)
In January this year the HEA launched the Connections project
in partnership with UKCISA to fund 20 projects that either
support international students studying in the UK or
encourage UK students to take opportunities to be more
internationally aware. Projects range from developing skills for
successful international group work to the creation of a global
agenda in the Biosciences.
UUK, GuildHE, JISC, Centre for Recording Achievement
The HEA worked in partnership this year to provide support
to the sector for the implementation of the Higher Education
Achievement Report (HEAR). These activities built on the HEAR
trial experiences and included conferences and workshops for
stakeholder communities covering different aspects of the HEAR.
The HEAR was officially launched in October 2012 and the HEA
will lead support for the HEAR across the sector.
QAA
The HEA’s partnership work with QAA on external examining
continued this year, with a jointly held conference on external
examining in May 2012 to disseminate the new QAA guidance
for external examiners within the UK Quality Code for Education
and the HEA’s A handbook for external examining, written to
support the QAA guidance.
QAA and the HEA in Scotland worked together this year on
the conclusion of the ScotPID personal development planning
project (with the Centre for Recording Achievement) publishing
a report on the outcomes of the successful project. The HEA also
40

Partnerships
collaborated with QAA Scotland to support the Scottish HE
sector in the work on the new Enhancement Theme ‘Developing
and Supporting the Curriculum’. QAA Scotland is also a member
of the management group of the HEA-administered Scottish
Higher Education Employability Forum (SHEEF).
LFHE
The HEA and Leadership Foundation for Higher Education work
in partnership to support Change Academy, the flagship change
programme. The LFHE also jointly commissioned a research
project with the HEA this year, ‘Leading the Student Experience’,
which will report in Autumn 2012.
education’ in March 2012 attended by high-profile experts from
the sector, which led the HEA to commission work in this area,
providing a baseline from which it can undertake trend analysis.
The HEA will be working with The Guardian on similar events
in the coming year.
JISC
The HEA’s work with JISC on the HEFCE-funded Open
Educational Resources programme moved into phase three
this year. Launched in October 2011, this phase was concluded
in October 2012.
Plagiarismadvice.org
The HEA sponsored the fifth International Plagiarism
Conference in partnership with plagiarismadvice.org. Following
the HEA’s two well-received academic integrity publications last
year, the HEA’s Academic Integrity Service was asked to run a
workshop at the conference.
Guardian HE Network
Launched in July 2012, the HEA is sponsoring and providing
content for the ‘learning and teaching hub’ on the Guardian’s
HE Network website. It also hosted a Guardian roundtable
discussion on ‘The future of learning and teaching in higher
41

Future plans
“It is our aim to endeavour
to support and improve the
quality of teaching in higher
education and so to enhance
the experience of students
across the United Kingdom.”
43

Future plans
In the current academic year, 2012-13, students in England are facing significant increases in their
fees, with students in Wales and Northern Ireland also seeing changes.
These changes have brought even more attention to the quality
of teaching that students right across the UK are experiencing,
and the HEA will continue to put students at the centre of the
debate around the learning experience. This student-centred
approach is a key focus of the HEA’s new Students as Partners
(SAP) programme. A major part of the SAP agenda is a change
programme, built on the HEA’s belief that students can and
should play a key role in shaping institutional change. The HEA
will also strengthen its collaborations with other sector
agencies, provide thought leadership and support sector-wide
debate on the benefits and purposes of working in partnership
with students.
During the current academic year the HEA aims to significantly
expand its accreditation of continuing professional development
frameworks with HE providers.
The organisation will continue to support those new to teaching
but increase its reach to work with new constituencies
including mid-career professionals, those new to pedagogic
research, established pedagogic researchers, Deans, and those
delivering HE in further education colleges.
The HEA will continue to build its evidence base for learning
and teaching through a strategic programme of research work.
This research will address the impact of higher education
reforms on learning and teaching across the four nations of the
UK. Examples include the impact of higher student fees, the
increase in student indebtedness, private HE providers, the
Higher Education Achievement Report and the Key
Information Sets. Research will also be undertaken into what
students gain from their experience of higher education in
relation to enhanced powers of analytical thinking and
communication skills.
The HEA will also gather and synthesise evidence about
effective learning and teaching, using data provided by its
postgraduate surveys and will work with the NUS to support
higher education providers inform enhancements to their
postgraduate and undergraduate provision.
During 2011-12 the HEA began its business development
programme. The HEA will continue to develop its international
strategy both to support UK institutions to deliver services
overseas, and to work directly with overseas universities,
governments and higher education agencies to support the
enhancement of their students’ learning experience.
44

In 2012-13 the HEA will continue to support the sector in
discipline-related learning and teaching and the enhancement
of practice. It will do this by bringing together disciplinary
communities through strategic projects, expert groups,
interdisciplinary programmes of work and workshops.
The HEA also offers bespoke consultancy to academic
departments wishing to improve aspects of their learning
and teaching provision.
By subscribing to the HEA, universities and colleges have access
to a wealth of expertise and resources to help staff prepare,
deliver and continually develop their teaching. Institutions across
the sector have brought about changes that have had lasting
impact on the quality of learning and teaching for their students
and the HEA’s work over the coming year will continue to build
on the positive results achieved to date.
45

Governance
As of 31 July 2012
Professor Craig Mahoney
Caroline Thomas
Chief Executive
Company Secretary
HEA Board Members
Professor Sir Robert Burgess
Robert Barlow
Rebecca Bunting
Liam Burns
Anthony Carey
Professor Antony Chapman
Geoff Donnelly
Chair of the Board, Vice-Chancellor, University of Leicester
Founder and Managing Associate, Your Talent Ltd
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Portsmouth and Director and Vice-Chair of the
Society for Research into Higher Education
President, National Union of Students
Partner at Mazars LLP
Vice-Chancellor, Cardiff Metropolitan University
Non-Executive Director, NHS North Yorkshire and York, and Chair of Governors,
Oxford Brookes University
46

Professor Janice Kay
Professor Peter Lutzeier
Professor Mike Mannion
Professor Don Nutbeam
Johnny Rich
Rama Thirunamachandran
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Exeter
Principal and Chief Executive, Newman University College
Vice-Principal and Pro-Vice-Chancellor Learning and Teaching, Glasgow Caledonian University
Vice-Chancellor, University of Southampton
Publisher, Push/RealWorld
Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, Keele University
47

Summary financial results for the year ended 31 July 2012
2012 2011
Income
£000 £000
Funding body grants 19,395 24,357
Other income 3,273 3,196
Investment income 52 55
Total income 22,720 27,608
Expenditure
Staff costs (6,955) (4,528)
Subject centres (1,482) (11,372)
Other operating expenses (14,127) (9,532)
Restructure (513) (1,059)
Depreciation (183) (76)
Interest and other finance costs (7) (4)
Total expenditure (23,312) (26,571)
Deficit for the year deducted (592) 1,037
within the Income and
Expenditure reserve
Opening reserves 3502 2465
Closing reserves 2910 3502
Cash flow 332 171
Our full financial statements can be obtained from www.heacademy.ac.uk. They show
a positive cash flow and a planned deficit. Future plans will lead to increased reserves.
48

HEA contact details
General enquiries enquiries@heacademy.ac.uk 01904 717500
Professor Craig Mahoney craig.mahoney@heacademy.ac.uk 01904 717521
Chief Executive
Professor Stephanie Marshall stephanie.marshall@heacademy.ac.uk 01904 717500
Deputy Chief Executive, Research and Policy
Professor Philippa Levy philippa.levy@heacademy.ac.uk 01904 717500
Deputy Chief Executive, Academic
Heather Jackson heather.jackson@heacademy.ac.uk 01904 717541
Interim Assistant Chief Executive, Resources
Professor Grahame Bilbow grahame.bilbow@heacademy.ac.uk 01904 717500
Assistant Director and Head of Arts and Humanities
Dr John Craig john.craig@heacademy.ac.uk 01904 717500
Assistant Director and Head of Social Sciences
Dr Janet De Wilde janet.dewilde@heacademy.ac.uk 01904 717597
Assistant Director and Head of STEM
Geoff Glover geoff.glover@heacademy.ac.uk 01904 717500
Assistant Director and Head of Health and Social Care
Dr Jeanne Keay jeanne.keay@heacademy.ac.uk 01904 717500
Assistant Director and Head of International Strategy
Dr Janet De Wilde janet.dewilde@heacademy.ac.uk 01904 717597
Interim Assistant Director and Head of Leadership
and Strategy
Richard Brawn richard.brawn@heacademy.ac.uk 01904 717500
Interim Head of Teacher Excellence
Dr Helena Lim, helena.lim@heacademy.ac.uk 02920 471520
Assistant Director, Wales and Northern Ireland,
and Head of Partnerships
Dr Alastair Robertson alastair.robertson@heacademy.ac.uk 0131 2250716
Assistant Director Scotland,
and Head of Research and Policy
Marketing pressoffice@heacademy.ac.uk 01904 717517
Media and Communications
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“There is much to do and
there will continue to be
much to do given the dynamic
nature of higher education.
But, the focus on students,
both at government level and
across the sector, reinforces
the importance of this work.”
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Contact us
The Higher Education Academy
Innovation Way
York Science Park
Heslington
York
YO10 5BR
+44 (0)1904 717500
enquiries@heacademy.ac.uk
© The Higher Education Academy, 2012
The Higher Education Academy (HEA) is a national body for learning
and teaching in higher education. We work with universities and other
higher education providers to help bring about change in learning and
teaching. We do this to improve the experience that students have while
they are studying, and to support and develop those who teach them.
Our activities focus on rewarding and recognising excellence in teaching,
bringing together people and resources to research and share best
practice, and by helping to influence, shape and implement policy -
locally, nationally, and internationally.
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