University Centre Leeds is being hailed as a model example of how education providers should be working with employers.
The University Centre works closely with a number of businesses and organisations (including the NHS) and, in recent years, has strengthened those ties by pioneering Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs).
Designed to follow on from T Levels and A Levels, HTQs are developed in consultation with employers to ensure they produce ‘industry-ready’ individuals equipped with the specific skills needed to start in quality, advanced level roles.
Impressed by the University Centre’s track record of collaborating with businesses like Leeds-based cybersecurity solutions firm BlackDice, the Department for Education (DfE) visited earlier this year to make a video showcasing its approach.
The Univeristy Centre’s Dean of Higher Education, Dr Sarah Marquez, said: “Our work with employers to ensure our HTQs deliver exactly what they, our region and its economy needs is something we are very proud of.
“We became the first education institution in Yorkshire to gain approval to use the new quality mark, initially for our Cyber Security, Software Development and Computer Science courses, which launched in 2022.
“Since then we have expanded our HTQ portfolio to now include twelve other subjects, including health play specialism, business enterprise and management, healthcare assistant practitioner, PE and sport coaching, engineering, childcare, biomedical sciences, film and screen media, and animation.
“It is a testament to the quality and breadth of our offering that the Department for Education chose to visit us and record interviews about our collaboration with thriving businesses like BlackDice. We look forward to seeing how the footage is used to support what is a really important push to get more people, and businesses, to make the most of their potential by developing their higher technical skills.”
An ‘attractive proposition’ for businesses
The University Centre has been working closely with BlackDice’s Chief Operating Officer, Sarah Hague – who was also interviewed for the videos – on aspects of its cyber security and computer science degrees.
During her interview, Sarah said: “Students leaving with an HTQ will be a really attractive proposition for employers.
“Through occupational standards they will have developed the skills and knowledge that employers have asked for.
“For BlackDice, HTQs mean that we’ll be able to tap into work-ready talent that we might not have had access to.”
The University Centre is currently working with 120 employers and using their feedback to develop its courses – while aiming to team up with a further 50 in the near future.
The digital landscape in education is an ever-changing entity that is being shaped by technological advancements and cultural shifts. What we think of as ‘cool tech toys’ today, like virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI), are becoming as essential to learning as books and pencils, writes Adil Hussain, digital teacher at Keighley College.
In the further education classroom, the role of technology has long since become pivotal in shaping the teaching and learning experiences of educators and students. But with the number of emerging technologies and the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI), we have come a long way in a very short time in what feels like a whole new transformation of our work.
Over the past 12 months, I have been exploring and utilising AI in different ways in the classroom and have seamlessly incorporated it into my everyday teaching practices. Leveraging a range of tools to help me organise, plan and teach my students has not only changed the way I teach, it also underscores the immense potential AI holds for the whole sector.
Bringing simple ideas to life
At the heart of my approach is Scribble Diffusion, a powerful tool catering to my Level 1 students studying English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) and foundation courses. Through this platform, students are encouraged to sketch a drawing and provide a prompt, showcasing how powerful generative AI is and how it brings their concepts to life.
For example, the students were tasked with sharing a word to develop a narrative. This was further developed through Scribble Diffusion as a photo story. As a result, it not only boosted their confidence but also put their language and creative skills to the test, stimulating creativity and nurturing a deeper understanding of visual representation.
Fostering innovation and creativity
As a games design tutor, I have found the use of Leonardo AI helpful in fostering creativity and problem-solving skills among my Level 2 and 3 students, enhancing their ability to develop innovative and engaging game concepts. This free, token-based generative AI tool is versatile across various vocational courses, demonstrating its potential to cultivate a wide array of skills.
I have also been utilising Quizalize which has become my go-to resource for creating engaging quizzes – particularly useful for new starter/student activities or session recaps. The integration of ChatGPT within Quizalize has helped me streamline the quiz creation process, showcasing the collaborative potential between educators and AI to enhance teaching methodologies.
Streamlining processes for efficiency
Another area I have been exploring is TeacherMatic, which has rapidly become an essential tool to streamline my workload. By automating routine tasks and providing easy access to educational resources, it has allowed me to focus more on instructional activities and student interaction.
However, while it holds promise in reducing the burden on educators and has the potential to become effective if developed further, its widespread integration across educational institutions is yet to be fully realised. Gillian Keegan may be pinning her hopes on AI to reduce workload, but there is a long way to go to make this a reality.
In addition to all these tools, I have of course also invested in ChatGPT 4. Its personalised prompts feature sets it apart from the free version. Customisation will be significant in maximising AI’s effectiveness in the classroom and meeting diverse needs, but the cost implication is certainly something policy makers need to be aware of.
Soft skills are vital in our day-to-day interactions and perhaps even more so in the working world. As a result, I have recently explored an app called Body Swaps for soft skills training. This innovative tool utilises VR to simulate interviews, providing individuals with a unique opportunity to refine their interpersonal skills.
AI has revolutionised the way I work, making my teaching more personalised, efficient, and responsive, both in my day-to-day activities with students and in how I plan lessons. It has helped me facilitate seamless communication and resource sharing among my peers and students, fostering a community of continuous learning and professional development.
All of which is truly beneficial for early adopters like me. (And there’s no reason you can’t become one too very quickly, no matter how inexperienced you feel.) The challenge now is to make this revolution systemic.
The Labour government has made economic growth its top priority, but to drive this it will need to address skills shortages in the STEM sector which are holding us back to the tune of £1.5bn per year, writes Ann Marie Spry, our Vice Principal of Adults.
Colleges and higher education institutions like ours clearly play a vital role in addressing this problem – but not only through teaching the technical skills our learners need to succeed.
After analysing employer reports about recruitment in STEM fields a few years ago, what came over loud and clear was that while many of the students had the knowledge needed for the job, they didn’t have the necessary – and equally vital – behaviours.
So looking through a number of documents that mapped out the key characteristics that STEM employers were looking for, we whittled them down to create what we have called STEM 7. These are the attitudes and behaviours that underpin not just the science and tech industries but all kinds of jobs, from pastry chefs to fashion designers.
A skillset that transcends boundaries
STEM 7 consists of: creative thinking, problem-solving, communication, collaborative working, intellectual curiosity, flexibility and data-driven decision making. Just about all of those concepts are actually relevant regardless of the subject. Everybody these days has to use digital technology and maths in one way or another, and if you think of the design approach and problem-solving inherent to engineering, most jobs require creativity too.
Our challenge, as educators, is to ensure our curriculum provides opportunities for students to step out of their comfort zones and take on tasks in some of those STEM 7 areas they may struggle with. Engineers, for example, are known for having many important qualities – including problem-solving and, through their design approach, creativity. But they are not traditionally renowned for their collaborative approach or communication skills, both of which are invaluable in the workplace.
That’s something our approach can help students with before they join the world of work, by stretching and developing them to ensure they have some of those transferable skills that businesses of all types really value.
And we know it’s working. We included some of our partner employers, like tech consultancy BJSS, in the first discussions about our STEM 7 strategy to make sure they were on board, and they’ve been nothing but supportive.
Opening minds
Introducing this concept has meant challenging both ourselves and our students to broaden how we think about STEM. As someone with a science background I feel strongly that many people tend to have a fear of ‘science’ and the STEM subjects, but that’s something we can and will change because it’s all around us in everything we do daily.
One key way of doing so is through revising how we teach and moving away from the thoroughly unhelpful old perspective that saw technical and artistic courses as being entirely separate. Thankfully, there is an increasing awareness that both disciplines depend on each other and share many underlying principles, not least when it comes to creativity and intellectual curiosity.
The shorthand for this new perspective is STEAM (essentially, STEM plus the Arts) and Computer Game Design and Development is a classic example of STEAM in action. We teach the subject at Leeds City College as part of our very broad offering from the School of Creative Arts, at Quarry Hill campus – and it is the epitome of a field where technical know-how and creativity are equally important.
An immersive approach
Combined with this more open-minded perspective on what actually constitutes a STEM topic is the need to exploit emerging immersive technologies like AI and VR.
Such tools can offer great benefits to our students and the industries they want to enter. If you are studying healthcare, for example, you really want to learn on a hospital ward and we can offer that; indeed it will be one of the many new facilities that Harrogate College will provide following its £22m rebuild.
What VR does though, is give you so many additional options – in this case it allows you to change ward layouts, for example, and patient scenarios so that students are exposed to a wider set of challenges and leave college with a deeper understanding of what their jobs will entail.
We are already successfully using VR in welding at Keighley College, while across our group emerging technologies are helping us enhance the teaching of everything from science to electric vehicle infrastructure.
By combining these high-tech teaching aids with a STEM 7 approach, which also delivers those in-demand ‘softer skills’, we will start to plug those STEM-shaped holes in the country’s economy.
This thought leadership piece was recently published in FE Week.
University Centre Leeds and Leeds Conservatoire both gained overall TEF ratings of Silver this year which the Office for Students (OfS), which runs the scheme, grants when ‘the student experience and student outcomes are typically very high quality’.
The TEF aims to inspire higher education providers to improve and deliver excellence in teaching, learning and achieving positive outcomes for students.
Dean of Higher Education at University Centre Leeds, Dr Sarah Marquez, said: “This is a tremendous achievement and a true testament to everyone’s hard work.
“The quality of our teaching and our commitment to delivering a first class learning experience is at the heart of what we do, so this recognition is heartening.”
Conservatoire Principal, Professor Joe Wilson said: “Leeds Conservatoire is a specialist higher education provider, committed to providing an excellent experience and outcomes for its students. The Teaching Excellence Framework 2023 ratings reflect this and endorse the hard work and dedication of staff across the institution.”
All higher education providers in England with more than 500 undergraduates had to submit data for this year’s TEF.
Leeds Conservatoire students have been recording the sounds of nature as part of a sustainability push by Yorkshire’s higher education (HE) institutions.
The Conservatoire initiative is featured in a new Yorkshire Universities (YU) report which describes an array of sustainability projects that are being undertaken by local HE providers.
The guide is designed as a blueprint that can be used by other institutions wishing to drive student engagement with sustainability. It is the culmination of a 15-month, £20,000 pilot project funded by the UPP Foundation which included an audit of the extent to which the 12 YU member institutions embedded sustainability in their curricula.
Learning from the great outdoors
As part of the pilot, all 12 YU member institutions were given £1,000 to use towards boosting Sustainability Service Learning activity and providing experiential learning opportunities. Leeds Conservatoire enabled its students to carry out environmental field recordings and the feedback was very positive.
One said: “I really enjoyed exploring Leeds through a new lens and perspective, as well as having the opportunity to take field recordings through a variety of types of microphones which included zoom, shotgun, hydrophone and contact.
“I found exploring the way the natural world changed as we drew closer to the centre of the city especially interesting, and the discussions that it provoked were highly useful in creating a greater understanding of our relationship with nature.”
A further £3,000 was assigned as prize money to a Multi-University Challenge Day, organised in December 2023, which brought together 36 students – with a diverse set of skills and backgrounds – from across the 12 regional institutions.
The students were asked to form groups and develop ideas on how to engage more learners with sustainability – a topic that directly aligns with the Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission Regional Climate Action Plan. The winners were then invited to give a presentation at the annual Student Sustainability Research Conference.
An inspirational pilot to engage more students
Monika Antal, Assistant Director at Yorkshire Universities, said: “YU is proud to have led this pilot and we hope this guide will inspire other institutions to learn from what works in our experiences across the region.
“The project demonstrated there is significant value for universities working in partnership to address sustainability challenges through Service Learning, which benefits communities as well as offering students valuable real-world opportunities and experiential learning.
“We also discovered that community partners benefit from a diverse range of student perspectives and small amounts of funding can help to engage a wider range of students who would otherwise not have got involved.”
Richard Brabner, Executive Chair at the UPP Foundation, added: “Embedding local sustainability projects within the curriculum is great news for the towns and cities universities are from, great news for students who learn vital skills for the workplace, and great news for universities as it improves their reputation. We were proud to fund this project and warmly welcome the report. We hope it inspires more student sustainability initiatives across the higher education sector.”
UC Leeds outscored other local higher education providers – including Leeds Arts University, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds Trinity University and the University of Leeds – in six of the seven categories in the 2023 National Student Survey (NSS).
Those included quality of course teaching (93%), learning opportunities (88%), academic support (92%) and assessment and feedback (just under 92%).
UC Leeds was ranked above the national average in most areas of the survey too, including on a newly introduced question about mental wellbeing support. Over 88% of its students, compared to 81.6% nationally, said they were happy with the information that was provided about such services.
Glowing feedback ‘a credit to our teams’
Dean of Higher Education at UC Leeds, Dr Sarah Marquez, said: “We are really pleased with this fantastic feedback, which is a testament to the hard work of our teaching and support teams. It is wonderful to hear that so many of our students have been pleased with the quality of our courses and instruction.
“It is particularly pleasing to see improved ratings in several areas where we were already scoring highly, including teaching and academic support. Satisfaction in learning resources, meanwhile, jumped by nine percent – from 72.5% to 81.6% – which reflects our recent investment in facilities like our fantastic new digital hub.
“Our goal is always to deliver high calibre education along with outstanding experiences, including talks from inspiring speakers and visits to outstanding workplaces, to our students.
“These wonderful survey results show how much such initiatives are valued and will spur us on to even greater things.”
Leeds Conservatoire students performing Macbeth at Leeds Playhouse. Photo credit – Abby Swain
Hitting the high notes
Leeds Conservatoire, meanwhile, achieved the highest scores of any UK conservatoire in two of the survey’s categories – for assessment and feedback, and organisation and management. The specialist provider of higher music and performing arts education also scored above the national average for conservatoires in all seven areas.
Those results were music to the ears of Leeds Conservatoire Principal, Professor Joe Wilson. He said: “We’re so proud of this year’s NSS results and are thankful to our staff for their continued commitment, and to our students for recognising the conservatoire with this fantastic feedback.
“Leeds Conservatoire has a national and international reputation for creativity and innovation, and for being a truly contemporary specialist teaching institution.
“Our staff and industry partners are at the cutting edge of their creative disciplines, and our students are encouraged and supported to explore their individual artistic identities.”
More than 339,000 students took part in the 2023 NSS to rate their experiences of higher education.
The Office for Students, which manages the survey, updated the format this year following a public consultation.
