Enhancing education

Through continuous investment in its staff and facilities BU aims to offer a high quality, transformational education experience that produces self-motivated, self-directed, lifelong learners who are employable in an ever-changing world.

Unleashing the educational imagination

BU’s recently published Education Enhancement Strategy makes a strong statement about the experience that students can expect from their time at BU. Over the next four years students can expect significant improvements to the curriculum; a wider choice of courses and advances in the way it runs them; improved assessment and feedback; further support to assist them in finding employment; new and improved ways of learning through technology; initiatives to develop their global outlook and further support in their first year.

In December, BU was audited by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and was delighted to have been awarded the highest category of confidence in the maintenance of its academic standards and the enhancement of quality. This achievement involved a significant effort from staff and was a tribute to Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Rosemary Pope for her hard work in laying the foundations for this successful audit. Professor Pope died suddenly in March 2008.

Transforming education traditions

The University’s Virtual Learning Environment, myBU, is being used in many imaginative ways to enhance learning. This customised implementation of the Blackboard Academic Suite™ enables users to manage learning materials, evaluate performance and enhance communication and will be extended as BU investigates the potential for using the latest Web 2.0 technologies.

In addition, part-time e-learning courses have been introduced offering flexible learning. The innovative Foundation Degree (FdA) in Business in Management, developed with the Ministry of Defence, is delivered totally online and is being used by Army staff to gain a Higher Education qualification.

First class staff

By summer 2008, BU had appointed around 150 new academics to accelerate the development of its existing and potential centres of academic excellence. This has significantly increased the proportion of its academic staff with doctorates.

BU has changed the academic career structure and is now the youngest University to appoint Associate Professors, having promoted 10 members of staff in December 2008. It also continues to offer one of the largest staff development programmes in Higher Education: the Releasing Research and Enterprise Potential (REP) programme.

The Doctoral Track provides existing staff greater opportunity to pursue a doctoral qualification. Senior academics develop those with doctoral aspirations through mentoring and advising the most appropriate pathway, whether a traditional PhD, Professional Doctorate or PhD by Publication.

Investment in research support and facilities

The Academic Services team has made substantial investment in research information and facilities over the last year in support of BU’s commitment to develop its research strengths.

Additional access to online and print collections has enhanced research capacity and over 6,000 records of research performed by BU academics are now held on BURO (Bournemouth University Research Online), which is ranked 281st in the Top 300 World Repositories.

To support its PhD community, BU also offers a new bespoke web tool, myBUILD, to assist the research degree completion process. The interactive log documentation scheme is one of the first of its kind in UK universities.

The award-winning Sir Michael Cobham Library has been enhanced to provide both staff and students a greater variety of social learning spaces. Six ‘techno booths’ equipped with interactive whiteboards and PCs have been installed along with a ‘hi-tech’ study room for group study.

Supporting students

Investing in the quality of its student learning and the support BU provides has seen a rise to 78% in its students’ overall satisfaction in the National Student Survey (NSS) and a reduction in the level of student dropouts.

BU runs one of the largest student-to-student support schemes with over 150 trained Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) student leaders supporting over 1,650 first year students. In the recent Quality Assurance Agency institutional audit the PAL scheme was commended as an example of good practice.

<< Back to contents page

>> Forward to Building on research