Module One: Applying Widening Access and Participation Policy

Learning Outcomes

Learning Outcomes

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Design practice to influence future policy.
• Critically reflect upon the implications and application of WP policy and theory applied in context.
• Apply key reflections to examine your own current practice.
• Critically reflect upon current and historical WP policy and theory.
• Demonstrate how you plan to augment your future practice.

The module is designed to provide you with flexible learning opportunities that facilitate professional networking and development, introducing, or reintroducing, you to academia, considering WP as a discipline within its own right as well as an HE professional service. Keynote lectures and sessions will reflect this pracademic approach in relation to WP theory, where you will learn how key pieces of WP policy and theory have led us to where we are now and how they are shaping the future direction of travel. You will explore this both chronologically and thematically, reflecting upon notable reports, concepts and movement, which will allow you to develop skills that will enrich your own practice and that of the sector.

You will benefit from peer mentoring, alongside your existing and emerging network, as you consider the foci for your assessments that see you reflect upon how exogenous policy has affected your current practice and how you can shape your future practice in a way that influence policy in a more endogenic way.

The sessions will cover topics that may be new to early practitioners whilst building depth for more experienced colleagues by examining them through an academic lens. Topics will include fundamental policy like that emerging from the reports of Brown, Robins and Dearing and initiatives like AimHigher and the development of the National Network of Collaborative Outreach (NNCO) to the National Collaborative Outreach Programme and its evolution into the Uni Connect Programme. Concepts and areas of focus such as raising aspirations and attainment will also be covered and students will gain an understanding of their origin, how they were deployed in practice and how (in some cases) more recent research has superseded them with new ways of thinking and understanding WP in practice.

The taught sessions will incorporate a range of approaches, including key-note, recorded lectures, live and interactive seminars, group and peer work. Lecture content will provide the context for historical and current policy development, which you will explore further in your independent study and discussions in seminar conversations with your fellow learners and peers, where you will be asked to reflect upon your own practice and that of the HEI(s) you have worked at.

You will examine this in greater depth with your peer mentor as you consider what you want to focus on for your assignments.

Blackboard will also be used in a variety of different ways including how you will access teaching resources, course materials and handouts as well as quizzes, peer conversations and flipped learning activities. Microsoft Teams will also be used to complement how we deliver live content in a flexible, hybrid manner.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.