What makes a great foundation course?

“Courses that recognise the importance of developing learning skills, as well as subject knowledge, may well have the edge”

Foundation courses have been one of the success stories of recent times, with numbers quadrupling over the last five years and more than 55,000 students choosing to study foundation year courses in 2019/20.

“A foundation course should prepare students for university, not just with English language level but also with a mix of academic literacies, study skills, critical thinking and confidence. The aim is to make them feel prepared and ready for the next big step in their academic life,” says Keith Ibsen, deputy academic director, at St Clare’s, Oxford.

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R.test – the test for SAT and ACT preparedness

“The ambition is to scale up AI-powered test prep to provide effective education across a wide range of subjects and learning environments”

I am always excited to see new innovations that have the potential to make learning more accessible and effective, and that’s why I am thrilled to launch R.test, an AI-powered application from Riiid designed to help students prepare for standardised tests such as the SAT and ACT.

What makes R.test so exciting is its ability to predict test scores with high accuracy in a fraction of the time it takes to complete a full mock test.

With just 30 questions, R.test quickly evaluates a student’s test preparedness and provides detailed analysis of their knowledge and test-taking strategy. It even provides students with actionable guidance on how to improve, including a selection of relevant practice questions curated by the AI engine.

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Improve digital experience for all by focusing on international students

“Broadly, international students have a greater variety of attitudes and a greater variance of digital skills than their UK counterparts”

International students coming to the UK are an increasingly diverse group. They arrive with a breadth of personal perceptions, cultural backgrounds and prior experiences both inside and outside formal education. These experiences impact on how well they use digital technologies to learn.

This diversity means that the digital experience of international students coming to the UK is inconsistent with all their needs.

The problems these students face can be tackled by higher education providers taking a more inclusive approach, focusing on equity and outcomes. They can create a digital experience that benefits all students, not just international students.

The Jisc team has embarked on a four-phase research project aimed at understanding the digital experience of international students studying in the UK. Our findings and initial recommendations from the first phase will be published in the middle of April 2023.

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The importance of sustainability in students’ university choice

“Considering 45% of 16 to 25-year-olds are suffering from climate anxiety, it’s understandable that they want to study at an institution which shares their vision for a sustainable future”

2023 saw the launch of a new league table for higher education institutions based on sustainability. The QS sustainability rankings set out to measure a university’s ability to tackle the world’s greatest environmental, social and governance challenges.

Likewise, the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, which were introduced four years ago, aim to assess universities against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

But do students really think about an institution’s approach to climate action when deciding where to apply?

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Benchmarking sustainable development in higher education

“82% of prospective international students either actively seek out or will be seeking out information on an institution’s sustainability practices”

2023 is set to be the 10th year in a row which will see global average temperatures reach at least 1C above what they were in pre-industrial times.

Governments and organisations across the globe are once again looking to ways in which they can become more sustainable to help stem the onset of climate change. Universities are no exception; and indeed, they are uniquely placed to help deliver environmental change.

New solutions to the climate crisis will be developed by those about to pass through higher education and it is important that this year the sector supports students and staff who are highly invested in the issue.

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The birth of a “higher education influencer”

“In March 2021 Z.J. started livestreaming from Chicago area universities on WeChat and immediately found it was a big hit”

The world of international higher education recruitment has traditionally been a very analogue affair. Typically, a representative from a university will do a tour of a region of the world and dutifully set up a table in the lunchroom or another high traffic area in the hopes of attracting the attention of students who may both be interested in learning about their university and speak English well enough to engage in a discussion.

Information is shared via brochures and websites and students are left to fill in the rest with their imagination or via online searches until they have a chance to visit in person.

However, during the pandemic and with a mission to pivot his already successful tourism and commerce marketing business, Z.J. Tong found a way to bring the schools into the phones, and homes, of China. Witness, the birth of a “higher education influencer”.

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How should universities respond to robot writing?

“At one end of the spectrum are ‘the accommodators’ who see the inevitable rise of AI and conclude that fighting it is pointless. But this is a false dichotomy”

The arrival of automated essay-writing software has sent shockwaves through the global higher education sector. Academics and administrators are urgently debating how to respond to a technology that could make cheating a run-of-the-mill, free, and potentially acceptable behaviour for millions of university students.

Just last year Australia’s higher education regulator, TEQSA, was busy blocking access to scores of essay mills – websites that offer to write essays for students – usually for a few hundred dollars, with turnaround times of 24 hours to two weeks. That response now feels like it came from a bygone era, in the face of the game-changing ChatGPT, the new AI algorithm that can respond to nearly any prompt by spitting out original text right before one’s eyes.

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Interdisciplinary collaboration for 21st century learning

“Within the busy, everyday lives of teachers, is it practical to overhaul the system while protecting the sanctity of their subject?”

Regardless of which level of education they work in, every teacher will have some form of specialism; be it early years, secondary mathematics, art or music. However, in an increasingly globalised and interconnected world, educators are waking up to the need for a new style of learning that is more transdisciplinary and focused on the skills and competencies needed for the 21st century workplace.

The traditional approach of narrow subject specialisms is obsolete, according to Reimers (2009), and teams of teachers from across the disciplines need to work together to create a more integrated, globally-minded approach to learning.

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India opens its border for foreign universities campuses

“The assumption that top universities will be willing to open campuses in India in highly regulated atmosphere is wishful thinking”

India has a total of 1,072 universities as of 22 November 2022. There are 54 central universities, 460 state universities, 430 private universities and 128 deemed to be universities. But there is no university within top 150 universities of the world in QS ranking of 2023.

The National Education policy 2020 envisions India as a global study destination that provides affordable and excellent education to all. It also allows foreign universities to open campuses in India.

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UK to introduce tougher immigration rules for students and dependents?

“The proposed policy seems out of the blue, as it goes against everything the government has said in the past decade”

British home secretary Suella Braverman is drawing up new immigration rules to make it harder for foreign students to come to the UK with their dependents. This proposal has come in light of a five-fold growth in “dependant visas” issued in the last three years.

If approved, it will be added to other post-Brexit measures implemented since the UK left the European Union. But how will a changed immigration system impact student migration and how will education exports economy be impacted?

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