AccessHE Team Spotlight – April 2020

May 12, 2020

Welcome back to Team Spotlight, a light-hearted section of our monthly Connect e-bulletin (free and open to all – subscribe to it here). Here, you can discover who we are at AccessHE and what we’ve been up to over the past month or so. Through the remainder of April, our Spotlight shone to reveal…

Richard, AccessHE Deputy Head

“After an April full of project planning, May is set to be a month of project delivery for AccessHE. The coming weeks certainly have lots in store, from the roll-out of our Uni Connect Online short courses to new virtual outreach events. We’ll also be hosting further virtual action forum meetings. The first of these took place recently and we’ve been really encouraged by levels of engagement – not to mention relieved to see that the new format works! Shortly before Easter we set up virtual spaces linked to the forums to enable members to come together, collaborate and share ideas outside of the forum meetings, and we hope these ‘AccessHE Communities’ can sustain the amazing innovation we have seen in outreach and student success work since lockdown began by fostering the continuing exchange of ideas and best practice.

I found it really helpful to hear from AccessHE members during our virtual roundtable discussion on 21st April and have been focussed since then on taking forward the project ideas that came out of that, such as our Student Advocate programme – an employability project that offers paid opportunities to student ambassadors across our membership to deliver online outreach activity to our Uni Connect partner schools.”

Uni Connect: (Naz, Mair & Ella): Due to the closure of schools, the Uni Connect team is currently working on a suite of seven new short online courses which will feature on the AccessHE Online website (alongside the pre-existing courses). Known as AccessHE Futures, these short courses –  due to launch this month – will be designed and delivered by our AccessHE Uni Connect Facilitator Ella Simms and will explore the various aspects of HE study. Aimed at students from Y9 upwards, topics covered will include decision-making, career pathways, student finance, revision tips and mindfulness. Once ready, we shall disseminate them to our partner schools in Barking & Dagenham and Havering. We are also in touch with our AccessHE member HEIs to explore ways in which the virtual /online content they already have or plan to develop can feature on the AccessHE Online website. If any member HEIs wish to discuss this then please contact Naz.Khan@londonhigher.ac.uk.”

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