Summary report of baseline study of employability related activities in Scottish colleges

Providers report strong support for the development of employability skills and attributes,including core and 'soft' skills, both as discrete units and embedded within course provisionalongside other learning goals. Career education and guidance, including employment seeking skills, are addressed to a lesserextent than 'employability' through the inclusion of discrete units or embedded in other courseunits. While some providers include specific units in courses, student development in these areasis often addressed through central student services. Advice and guidance is most likely to beprovided at the pre-exit stage of students' programmes although it is important while students areon-course. Post-exit guidance is least likely to be supported, with colleges indicating thatobtaining progression information was difficult. Enterprise is the least likely aspect to be addressed, either in relation to business start-up or as afocus in developing enterprising skills and attitudes. College staff indicated that there was a needfor clarification on what was meant by enterprise and enterprising approaches and how theymight be incorporated into other units. There was strong support at institutional level to provide resources to enable students to reflecton issues related to employability, with course providers reporting wide use of personaldevelopment review and planning, though a wide range of terms was used to describe this

Measuring the volume and value of the outputs of higher education institutions

One of the key issues facing the Scottish Government and Scottish Funding Council is how to assess the contribution made to Scotland's economy by Scotland's higher education sector. Higher Education's contribution to the economy and society at large is viewed as providing one of the most important justifications for government expenditure on higher education. However there is a paucity of robust quantitative evidence against which related resource allocation decisions aimed at encouraging economically valuable activity can be made. Taking higher education activity as a whole there has been no practical, valid, way to analyse the economic value of what universities do, or to compare the value thus created with that generated by other activities in the economy. The overall objective of this paper is to show how the development of a framework with comprehensive and detailed quantitative measures of the outputs of HEIs in both volume and value terms can enable a holistic analysis of higher education institutions' economic value. The present paper draws on initial case study research supported by the Nuffield Foundation which was further elaborated in two substantive reports to the Scottish Funding Council

Valuing knowledge transfer : a new approach to assessing the broader impact of higher education institutions

There is considerable policy interest in exploring the overall value of higher education to society and in how higher education can support wider economic growth and development through 'knowledge transfer' from higher education institutions. Until fairly recently consideration of 'knowledge transfer' activity has tended to be mainly focussed on those HEI outputs that are commercial or market-based, relate to interaction with businesses and which are also relatively easy to measure (licensing, patents, consultancy contracts and so on). However it is beginning to be recognised that non-market outputs of higher education institutions (such as community interactions) could also have significant economic and social value linked to their support of knowledge flow to the wider community. This paper presents a new perspective on knowledge transfer from institutions. It demonstrates the application of welfare economic principles to estimate the value of non-market outputs of higher education institutions and It presents the results of a pilot study of 3 areas of non-market activity of Scottish higher education institutions, namely community engagement, cultural outreach and public policy advisory activity

Baseline study of employability related activities in Scottish colleges

In October 2004, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC)'s predecessor bodies, theSFEFC and the SHEFC, publishedLearning to Work(SFC 2004), a discussion paperabout how Scotland's colleges and universities can help to enhance learners'employability. In subsequent dialogue with stakeholders, there was agreement thatemployability should be a specific focus for quality enhancement in the college sectorfrom 2006-07. As a basis for further development, the SFC commissioned this studyto provide information on the range of current activities and practices in Scotland'scolleges which contribute to enhancing employability

A microwave dielectric biosensor based on suspended distributed MEMS transmission lines

Design and characterization of a miniature microwave dielectric biosensor based on distributed microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) transmission lines (DMTL) is reported in this paper. The biosensor has been realized by bonding the DMTL device with an acrylic fluidic channel. In order to demonstrate the sensing mechanism, the sensor is used to detect the small variation of the concentration of aqueous glucose solutions by measuring the electromagnetic resonant frequency shift of the device. It is observed from the results that the second notch of the reflection coefficient (S-11) varies from 7.66 to 7.93 GHz and the third notch of the reflection coefficient varies from 15.81 to 15.24 GHz when the concentration of the glucose solution ranges from 0 to 347 mg/ml, which indicates that higher order notches have higher sensitivities if looking at the absolute change in frequency

A posteriori error covariances in variational data assimilation

The problem of variational data assimilation for a nonlinear evolution model is formulated as an optimal control problem to find some unknown parameters of the model. The equation for the error of the optimal solution is derived through the statistical errors of the input data (background, observation, and model errors). A numerical algorithm is developed to construct an a posteriori covariance operator of the analysis error using the Hessian of an auxiliary control problem based on tangent linear model constraints

The Importance of Social Support Structures for Retention and Success

As a policy goal, widening participation is increasingly associated with retention and completion. For those who are concerned with equity or social mobility, it makes little sense to recruit new types of student if they do not then qualify for a graduate profession. There has been growing interest in retention and completion among researchers and policymakers, with much attention centring on the extent to which new students can be helped to integrate into the institution. Drawing on a study of undergraduates in the UK, this chapter explores the extent to which student support services and wider informal support networks feature in students' narratives of retention. Conceptually, we are interested here in the ways in which students feel themselves to be legitimate members of the ‘imagined community' of higher education, a concept that we have adapted from Anderson's treatment of nationalisms (Anderson, 1991)

Knowledge exchange with Sistema Scotland

This paper reports on a knowledge exchange project, funded by the Scottish Funding Council and with the aim of improving the ‘two-way flow of people and ideas between the research environment and wider economy, thereby contributing to national prosperity, the quality of life of citizens, and cultural enrichment of our society’ (Scottish Funding Council, n.d). The project was undertaken by a group of researchers from three higher education institutions with a combined knowledge of education, music and psychology which has guided their knowledge exchange activities with the project partner and among themselves. The project partner was Sistema Scotland, a charity which is attempting to implement a major programme of social change, originating in Venezuela, within a disadvantaged area of Scotland, and therefore a highly appropriate focus for knowledge exchange. The paper outlines the development of Sistema Scotland and the programme, El Sistema, on which it is based. It details the knowledge exchange activities undertaken, which used Derrida’s (1993) notion of aporia to try to engage Sistema Scotland with different perspectives and understandings, and a practical method for conducting meetings based on Open Space Technology. The various ‘encounters’ with children, service providers and stakeholders are reported and this is followed by a critique of the processes of knowledge exchange which were both permitted and prohibited. The paper ends with a discussion of the conditions that are necessary for knowledge exchange to be successful