Student Experience

Convenor: Dr Matthew Cheeseman, University of Sheffield
Email: matt.cheeseman@shef.ac.uk
Convenor: Dr Camille Kandiko, King's College London
Email: camille.kandiko@kcl.ac.uk

The Student Experience Network brings together students, teachers, researchers and those working in various capacities of student support to find out what the nearly two million full- and part-time undergraduate home students in UK higher education are learning in the widest sense of the word from their experiences within and outwith formally institutionalised study. For this purpose the Network meets jointly with the British Sociological Association's Researching Students Study Group at least three times a year in association also with the National Union of Students.

Having co-co-ordinated the Network for several years, Professor Patrick Ainley is handing over to Dr. Matthew Cheeseman of the University of Sheffield.

Dr. Mark Weyers of UCL will continue in his role as co-coordinator, working with Patrick in London where they will continue to liaise with UCL's Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning to fit a SRHE SEN Network meeting into CALT's schedule of afternoon meetings for UCL staff on the third Wednesday of every month during term times. These will also be open to Network members, following the model of the last SEN meeting with CALT on the 24th November 2010 when Dr. Richard Allen spoke on 'Michael Polanyi and the Value of the Inexact'. Since then, events have thrown the series off track but it will be re-established in the autumn, beginning 16th November.

Meanwhile, Matthew will organise day events at Sheffield and/or in its environs, perhaps beginning with one on the 'The Freshers' Week Experience' in October! This will give Network members a unique opportunity to experience The Pleasures of Being a Student at the University of Sheffield at first hand! Matthew has many other ideas for meetings but would also welcome suggestions, particularly from institutions in the North able to host SEN meetings on the successful model we have established.

The University of Central Lancashire, which last year and the year before hosted day events on undergraduate research with the Network, has now developed these into the first British Conference of Undergraduate Research at Preston on 19th-20th April. All undergraduate students and anyone else who is interested are welcome to attend. The conference will include poster presentations, spoken papers and workshops by undergraduate students from all disciplines and all parts of the UK. There will also be a separate strand for academic staff to share their experiences of implementing undergraduate research in their institutions. This will include a session devoted to establishing BCUR as a long-term institution. Please see the website for registration and attendance details, plus a full conference programme: http://www.bcur.org/

Network members may also be interested in The Campaign for the Public University (http://publicuniversity.org.uk/) which recently held a meeting at Aston University, following up on the Network's prescient meeting there in September on 'New Activism or Old Politics?' with members of the Really Open University and others. There are several similar campaigns for the arts and social sciences, as well as for further and higher education (and, indeed, state education and the welfare state as a whole). As well as the recent student resistance, these have possibly changed the landscape in which the SEN is operating and which the changes above will enable it to address.

Further Details
Dr.Matthew Cheeseman
Student Experience Network convenor

Keeping You Informed

Reinvention: a Journal of Undergraduate Research. Volume 2, Issue 1

• Editorial: The Importance of Great Expectations
• Breaking Barriers in Clinical Communication: Are Securely Attached Doctors More Empathetic Doctors?
• Photonic Dipole Contours of Ferrofluid Hele-Shaw Cell
• Gender Roles and Sexual Politics in Hollywood Action Movie Cycles of the 1980s and 1990s
• µCell - Interdisciplinary Research in Modelling and Simulation of Cell Spatial Behaviour
• Struggling to Take Root: The Work of the Electro-Culture Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries between 1918 and 1936 and its Fight for Acceptance
• Dissolution Kinetics of Scolecite in Alkaline Environment

Please go to www.warwick.ac.uk/go/reinventionjournal/issues/volume2issue1 to see all of the papers listed here.

Papers are now accepted from all undergraduate students, within all disciplines, in the UK and overseas. Submissions are welcome for our next issue, due to be published in October 2009.

We are now also publishing collaborative papers, written on research undertaken by staff and students together. Please see our website for further details.

Reinvention: a Journal of Undergraduate Research: www.warwick.ac.uk/go/reinventionjournal

Documents

• The Student Experience of Business Study
  Held at the University of Greenwich January 27th 2010
  1-in-7 of UK students today do some sort of Business Study but what they are learning has been thrown into question by economic events since this time last year. This raises questions for the pedagogy of BS that are shared across higher education.
  Dr Martin Allen - The New Business Studies Generation.
• Student Experience Network - Annual Report 2009
• New Labour, Social Mobility and Higher Education, 3rd March 2009 - University of Manchester
• Widening to What? 24th June 2008 Summary
• SRHE Student Experience Network Spring Mailing 2008
• What Future for Higher Education January 23 2008 - Summary
• Annual Report of the Student Experience Network 2007
• Students as Producers of Knowledge: A popular Education Workshop February 2007
• Opinion Panel

Non Network Items

• Teaching and Learning - Research Briefing - March 2008 Number 32
• Improving What is Learned at University - Book Discount Offer