Student-facing support teams are always exploring how to balance volume and complexity in responding to students’ pastoral support challenges. At the same time, institutions are trying to build an infrastructure of automated information, insight and support that can engage students and direct them to a range of sources of support at the point of need. This session will explore how AI powered technology can most meaningfully be deployed in creating additional capacity and capability for universities to handle student wellbeing and student voice.

A chance to hear from higher education legend David Sweeney about his career in HE policymaking and leadership.

Chair of the Dyson Institute and Pearson Education, former UCAS chief executive, serial NED and friend of the show Mary Curnock Cook pulls up a chair for a chat about what she’s learned from her various experiences in and outside higher education, and what it all means for the future of the sector.

There is a whole host of staff members responsible for surveying students on a whole host of topics. Asking students for feedback is an essential part of institutional workflows each year, not least because of the accountability demanded by external national surveys used for quality assessment. But knowing when and how to survey students is more complicated than it looks and surveys are deployed for a wider range of purposes. 

Advancements in survey technology and data analytics have facilitated the increasing popularity of pre-arrival questionnaires. Likewise, module or cohort pulse surveys can indicate which students may be at risk, and make it possible to adapt provision to meet needs in a more “real time” manner. Plus, developing survey practice that actively engages students and ensures individuals feel listened to is essential. In this session we’ll unpick what we need to do to achieve these ends and how we can ensure there is strategic coordination, and embedding surveys across learning, teaching and the student life cycle.

Newly minted author and longstanding higher education professional Rachel Reeds joins us to share insight from her forthcoming book, Surviving and thriving in higher education professional services: a guide to success. Whether you are new to HE or are wondering how to reignite your motivation this session should give you some practical tools, new ideas, and reassurance that you are not alone.

Jonathan Grant hosts an expert discussion testing received wisdom on all the sacred cows of research: peer review, full economic costing, bureaucracy, and innovation infrastructure

It’s often said that UK HE promotes itself with North American stylings of student experience – but on European budgets and quality expectations. Drawing on his detailed knowledge both of Canadian and wider global HE, in this session we’ll be around the fireside with Alex Usher, who runs Canada’s Higher Education Strategy Associates, to learn lessons, swap observations and generally chew the strategy and politics fat.

Ask not what you can do for the humanities, ask what the humanities can do for you! Humanities teaching and research in higher education are under huge pressure. Facing major challenges in student recruitment, financial sustainability, the loss of specialised knowledge and skills, the expectation to show clear research impact, the challenge of preserving and reinventing humanities for the 21^st century is real and urgent. Yet the humanities are an inheritance from the earliest formation of the university, are part of its essence, and must play a role in ensuring the universities of tomorrow have the breadth of understanding needed to fulfil their purpose in a complex world. How can universities make sure that they are themselves getting full value from the knowledge and methods developed through the humanities?

Come and meet the Team Wonkhe people behind the headshots, while we chat through what makes a great article for the site.

The authors of Born to Rule: the making and remaking of the British elite will be discussing the role that universities can have in reproducing or, more rarely, disrupting established patterns of social privilege – and what can be done about it.