Assessment of the online business support offer : growth and improvement service, my new business and helpline

This study provides the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) with an early understanding of whether online business support services provided by Business Link have performed effectively against the strategic objective of ‘digital transformation’. That is to successfully assist businesses through a website rather than through higher cost services (for example face to face contact). The study also makes an early assessment of the value of the services provided to new users, with a focus on cost effectiveness and effective referral to other appropriate business support services in the public, private and third sectors. The support services include the comprehensive start-up service provided by My New Business, and online tools provided by the Growth Improvement Service, enabling businesses to identify and solve problems

Reclaiming professional identity through postgraduate professional development: Career practitioners reclaiming their professional selves

Careers advisers in the UK have experienced significant change and upheaval within their professional practice. This research explores the role of postgraduate level professional development in contributing to professional identity. The research utilises a case study approach and adopts multiple tools to provide an in-depth examination of practitioners’ perceptions of themselves as professionals within their lived world experience. It presents a group of practitioners struggling to define themselves as professionals due to changing occupational nomenclature resulting from shifting government policy. Postgraduate professional development generated a perceived enhancement in professional identity through exposure to theory, policy and opportunities for reflection, thus contributing to more confident and empowered practitioners. Engagement with study facilitated development of confident, empowered practitioners with a strengthened sense of professional self

Academic libraries and student engagement: a literature review

The term ‘student engagement’ has a broad meaning and is used freely as an expression in several different contexts of academic librarianship. This literature review covers scholarship from across several of these areas and is structured so that four broad themes are systematically addressed: student engagement in learning; students as partners; student voice; methods and techniques for student engagement. The granular review of the literature reveals many sub-discussions about a range of academic librarianship topics and provides some discussion about how they cross over into the area of student engagement. The literature covers different innovations, techniques and strategies for student engagement, and the review illustrates how many techniques and tools are transferable across the different intentions and objectives of student engagement. The review concludes that many academic librarians are very proactive in student engagement activities and that student engagement itself has become a fundamental element of academic library management

Constructing a national higher education brand for the UK: positional competition and promised capitals

This article examines national branding of UK higher education, a strategic intent and action to collectively brand UK higher education with the aim to attract prospective international students, using a Bourdieusian approach to understanding promises of capitals. We trace its development between 1999 and 2014 through a sociological study, one of the first of its kind, from the 'Education UK' and subsumed under the broader 'Britain is GREAT' campaign of the Coalition Government. The findings reveal how a national higher education brand is construed by connecting particular representations of the nation with those of prospective international students and the higher education sector, which combine in the brand with promises of capitals to convert into positional advantage in a competitive environment. The conceptual framework proposed here seeks to connect national higher education branding to the concept of the competitive state, branded as a nation and committed to the knowledge economy

Student budgets and widening participation: Comparative experiences of finance in low and higher income undergraduates at a Northern Red Brick University

Drawing on a thematic analysis of longitudinal qualitative data (ntotal = 118), this article takes a “whole student lifecycle” approach to examine how lower and higher income students at an English northern red brick university variously attempted to manage their individual budgets. It explores how students reconcile their income—in the form of loans, grants, and bursaries—with the cost of living. Four arenas of interest are described: planning, budgeting, and managing “the student loan”; disruptions to financial planning; the role of familial support; and strategies of augmenting the budget. In detailing the micro‐level constraints on the individual budgets of lower and higher income undergraduates, the article highlights the importance of non‐repayable grants and bursaries in helping to sustain meaningful participation in higher tariff, more selective, higher education institutions. It also supports an emerging body of literature that suggests that the continuing amendments to the system of funding higher education in England are unlikely to address inequality of access, participation, and outcome

Academics' perceptions of students' motivation for learning and their own motivation for teaching in a marketized higher education context

Background. The marketisation of higher education (HE), which positions students as consumers and academics as service providers, may adversely affect students’ motivation for learning and academics’ motivation for teaching. According to self-determination theory (SDT), high-quality forms of motivation are achieved when individuals experience fulfilment of three psychological needs: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Aims. This study applied SDT to examine academics’ perceptions of whether the marketized HE context in England, UK, supported or undermined these three psychological needs for their students and for themselves. It also examined their perceptions of the impact that this context had on their teaching. Sample. Participants were 10 academics teaching at five post-1992 higher education institutions in England, UK. Method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and subsequently analyzed using thematic analysis. Results. Academics observed that students identifying as consumers seemed to display lower levels of competence, autonomy, and relatedness. This contributed to an HE environment that diminished the academics’ own psychological needs. Although some felt able to improve student motivation through their teaching, others felt demotivated and disempowered by top-down pressure from managers and bottom-up pressure from students. Conclusions. The marketized HE context may undermine high-quality motivation for students’ learning and academics’ teaching. Academics should be supported to teach in ways that facilitate competence, autonomy, and relatedness in their students and themselves