The University is utilising our existing virtual learning environment within Moodle as a system to record and monitor student attendance at all timetabled learning activities across all Divisions. Moodle attendance capturing has been used successfully across the institution since 2019. 

The first phase of functionality is a positive development in monitoring and supporting our students’ wellbeing. By making it easier to record attendance, we’ll be able to better identify where students need support.  

Access to better reporting on attendance will also help us meet the requirements of various different bodies (e.g. UKVI) and inform future planning decisions.  

   When do we start using it?  

We are rolling this out from 26 September meaning student attendance can be recorded in Moodle for all timetabled credit bearing modules.  

 Drivers for change 

The primary driver for change is to ensure we can meet our University compliance requirements; and the need for increased monitoring as a result of changes to regulations. 

As you may be aware our preferred – and long-term – solution for attendance monitoring is a third-party system (Presto) that integrates directly with KentVision. Earlier this year as work on the third-party solution progressed; it became clear it would require more time to complete the integration work with KentVision ready for the start of term.  

As a result, a decision was made to develop an interim solution using the KentVision system to directly record student attendance. The functionality within KentVision was developed and was ready to deploy. However, the unresolved performance issues of KentVision that were observed during the clearing period meant that this approach was considered to be too high a risk.  

Instead, we have tested and developed our third option solution utilising our existing virtual learning environment within Moodle as a system to record and monitor student attendance at all timetabled learning activities across all Divisions. 

Colleagues across IS are concurrently making positive progress in determining the root cause of the system performance issues that were recently observed during the clearing period.  Several changes have already been made to the search function within KentVision – improving the overall system performance. We will share further updates with colleagues on this as soon as possible.   

How does the system work?  

Students log attendance using Moodle at the start of timetabled activities (credit bearing modules only).  

At the start of each timetabled event, the lecturer or session leader will need to open Moodle and click on the attendance activity to display a password code to the students within the first few minutes. 

Students will then have 20 minutes to mark themselves present from the scheduled start time of the session, using either the password code displayed, by clicking on the attendance activity on their Moodle module, entering the password and then marking themselves present. 

 Both staff and students access the system through Moodle using a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop computer.   

 Training and further information – Please share  

Please feel free to share this with others in your teams who may be interested to hear about this work. We know this functionality will be of interest to lots of colleagues and we want to ensure that everyone is aware of what’s happening.  

Register Your Attendance with Moodle – Student video guide 

Moodle Attendance for Teaching Staff – SharePoint guide for teaching colleagues  

Moodle Attendance guidance for admin teams – SharePoint guidance for professional service colleagues. 

 Register your attendance with Moodle video guide

Please join us for a Celebration of Life at The Gulbenkian on 10 September at 14:00, in loving memory of Professor Clive Hilborne Church.

Clive joined Kent from the Lancaster University in 1981 as Senior Lecturer in European Studies, affiliated with the then European Studies unit in the School of European Culture and Languages. He was promoted to a professorship in 1992 and became a member of the Department (now School) of Politics and International Relations in 1996. Upon his retirement in 2003, he was appointed Emeritus Professor. Continue reading Clive’s obituary.

If you would like to attend, please RSVP to joannabennett78@virginmedia.com.

As part of our Staff Conference 2022 (15-16 September), our ‘EDI Pathway’ will take place on Thursday 15 September. This is a day-long, face-to-face strand of presentations and workshops addressing, among other things, the experience of our trans students, the role of our staff disability network, accessibility and adult education.

All sessions will be taking place in Room TS2 in Templeman, so take a look at the schedule and come along!

10.15 – 11.00 – The experiences of our trans students – with Lynne Regan

This session will present Lynne’s recent research which looks at how improvements to university processes and facilities can provide a more inclusive environment where trans students feel validated and supported. It considers how trans-inclusive curricula can help to address the power imbalance of learning within a privileged cisnormative environment. The session will include group discussions with scenarios about we can better support our trans students.

11.15 – 12.00 – StellarHE – promoting diversity in leadership – with Sarah Dustagheer

Authenticity, inclusive emotional intelligence, cultural competence and inclusive leadership are some of the attributes that Black, Asian and ethnically diverse leaders bring to Higher Education. And yet they continue to be under-represented in senior roles and their lived experiences continue to be impacted by micro-aggressions through to outright discrimination.

StellarHE supports the achievement of Race Equality Charter Mark goal to “inspire a strategic approach to making cultural and systemic changes that will make a real difference to minority ethnic staff and students”. It is a tried and tested development experience for Diverse Leaders in HE.

In this session the first ever cohort of StellarHE colleagues from Kent share their experience of the course.

12.00 – 13.00 – What are they saying about faith in universities? – with Revd Dr Stephen Laird

Recent research has revealed that students at UK universities are now generally more attuned to religious faith than lecturers, supervisors and service providers. Our own student demographic has moved decisively towards greater ethnic and cultural diversity – something which is not reflected to the same extent across the staff body – and this observation certainly applies at Kent. This session will involve the sharing and discussion of data and our local insights followed by a discussion.

13.50 – 14.30 – Why do we bother with EDI initiatives? with Martin Michaelis

Is the purpose of EDI to make sure we adhere to legal requirements and remain in line with the law? Or do we want to go beyond the minimal requirements set by the law? And if so, why?

Drawing on his experience as EDI Lead in the Division of Natural Sciences, Martin will outline the importance of understanding why we undertake EDI initiatives and how the University and all staff and students can benefit from doing so. What is needed, he argues, is an inclusive, participatory leadership approach across the University that gives everybody the opportunity to make meaningful contributions and to receive the recognition for them.

14.30 – 15.15 – Get involved – the Staff disability network – with Dr Jennifer Leigh, Josie Caplehorne, Hannah Greer and Dr Jolie Keemink

What does it mean to be disabled, chronically ill or neurodivergent? What is it like to work with or manage a disabled or neurodivergent person? What are we too afraid to ask or say?

Delivered by the Staff Disability Network, this session will create more openness and understanding around these topics, introduce the Network’s activities, explain how you can get involved and what the network can do to support you. An open discussion will follow, using an approach that harnesses creative research methods to bring about conversations on topics that can be hard to put into words and to co-create a tangible output.

15.30 – 16.15 – Making information and learning accessible for all – with Kasia Senyszyn

How do we make our content and our teaching more inclusive? How do we gain confidence in creating accessible content to support all our students?

This session is for all staff who want to improve their support for students and staff with additional accessibility needs, as well as develop creative ways to embed ‘reasonable adjustments’ into their work and processes. Come along to learn interactively and to play some games!

If you have any access requirements for the session please do get in touch.

16.15 – 17.00 – Bridging the gap: How the University is breaking barriers to adult education and doing 6th form differently – with Donna Coyte and Lucy Frost

Diversifying our teaching provision is an important objective for the University as it enhances opportunity for students, breaking down barriers to progress and achievement. Find out about the University’s responsive and flexible approach to adult education and 6th form provision, why we do this, what we’ve learnt and why it matters.

Listen to our students on the 6th form programme on the Medway campus as they explain why they love our University Entrance Diploma course, how it has helped them to progress to undergraduate study and why we decided to develop and invest in this innovative programme. Adult students on the University’s Access to HE Diploma programme will also share their experiences of getting back to education. This session will focus on how and why this information can be of use to staff with some key ‘take-aways’, with a brief Q&A at the end.

Check out the daily programmes for the Staff Conference 2022.

The University of Kent has hosted the third successful Innovations in Internationalisation at Home Conference, chaired by Kent’s Director and Dean for Global and Lifelong Learning Dr Anthony Manning, and in collaboration with The IC Global.  Building on previous successes, this year’s conference remained digital allowing for participation by delegates spanning more than 30 countries with 145 attendees of the live conference session on 15 July and already more than 2000 views of our video session content.

The theme for 2022 was ‘The Power of Co-creation’ and included the creation of 20 pre-recorded video presentations from colleagues around the world sharing their experiences and insights in this area of work.  Topics ranged from working with students as partners, developing intercultural competences and skills, building a community, to examples of COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) Initiatives.  Online presentations were made available asynchronously in advance of the live conference, followed by the opportunity for live Q&A sessions with our presenters during the main conference.

Colleagues can access the IIH Conference sessions on this link

We were delighted to welcome Plenary Speakers, Eva Haug, Educational Advisor for Internationalisation of the Curriculum and COIL, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, who shared her thoughts about the potential of COIL and Virtual Exchange for a co-creative experience and Eveke de Louw, International Policy Advisor for the Curriculum and Co-curriculum, The Hague University of Applied Sciences who  gave a critical reflection on moving towards an impactful practice for IaH.

Dr Anthony Manning, said, This third conference in the Innovations in Internationalisation at Home series shows how interest in this important area of inclusive and accessible internationalisation continues to grow in interest across the international HE community. The conference and it’s diverse presenters continue to showcase a wide range of good practice through formal and informal curriculum internationalisation initiatives which offers opportunity for educational enhancement and global citizenship development. This benefits, students, universities employers and international communities.

Kent is now delighted to announce its first IIH workshop which takes place on Friday 9^th September in London.  This in-person event will include a series of workshops and round-table styled activities which will build on the themes of our recent digital conference.  It will provide practitioners with the opportunity to learn from colleagues, bring their own challenges and problems, to hopefully leave with solutions to enhance their own practice.

Booking for this workshop is now open

For more information, see our website or contact us at iihconference@kent.ac.uk

HR GO, one of the UK’s leading recruitment companies, and the University of Kent have been successful in a joint application for a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency. 

The award for £93,177 will provide half the cost of a two-year research project exploring how technology can better match roles with clients, including improving the feedback job seekers receive. HR GO will match fund the grant, resulting in a total project budget of £186,350.  

KTPs aim to help businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills within the UK knowledge base.  

John Parkinson, Chief Information Officer, HR GO, said: “We are delighted to have been successful in our application to UKRI for a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) with the University of Kent. 

“This project will develop innovative AI models and systems to deliver feedback, scoring and matching of candidates at scale. At present, we receive over 500,000 applications for work each year for roles across all sectors, and across the whole of the UK.

“These AI models will power a semi-automated communications process to deliver enhanced feedback to candidates whilst helping HR GO’s clients ensure they find the best possible candidates to meet their needs.” 

The project team is now in the process of hiring an associate, who will be delivering the project over the two years. In addition to being tasked with analysing millions of points of HR GO data, they will consider all aspects of machine learning and AI development, from ethics to avoiding bias.  

Dr Anna Jordanous, senior lecturer at the University of Kent’s School of Computing and co-lead of the project said: “This is a fascinating opportunity to work with complex real-life data. There are multiple interesting technical challenges to tackle, and it is exciting to see how research knowledge can be applied to make a real difference to recruitment candidates and clients.” 

HR GO has previously worked with Dr Jordanous to review potential machine learning solutions which could be deployed to automate contractor candidate role matching, as well as having sponsored the Kent HR Network and offered placements for students through the University of Kent’s Employability Points Scheme. 

The University of Kent’s Year 10 ‘Breaking Barriers’ Summer School was involved in the TASO research project to evaluate the impact of virtual summer schools. As TASO publish the interim findings, it provides us with an opportunity to reflect on what we learnt from taking part in this research project and lessons for the sector.

Developing our outreach curriculum

This research project gave us the opportunity to speak to a group of students that we considered to be highly impacted by the pandemic. A number of findings from the Implementation and Process Evaluation (IPE) made us think about how we can adjust our outreach curriculum to accommodate these students (and their influencers), and consider whether they are unique or enduring circumstances.

Despite only being in Year 10 and therefore a few years away from having to make decisions around HE, the students were clear that access to mental health support would be an important factor to them when deciding on university. Perhaps this is due to poor mental health being exacerbated by the pandemic and it’s something that we had already started to consider in activities designed for younger audiences. These findings helped to re-enforce that it was the right direction to go in.

Many of our talks designed for parents focus around student finance and funding, but the parents and guardians that we spoke to worried about their young person’s grades being a barrier to them accessing and succeeding at university. This may be due to the interrupted education their young person has experienced and something worth exploring in our curriculum design for this audience.

One of the key motivators for students taking part in the summer school was just for ‘something to do’; a way to spend their summer –

“Because it’s the Summer and I feel like if I hadn’t have done this, I would’ve wasted my time and not done anything else. So, this feels really productive”

That was something that as an institution we hadn’t considered (or perhaps wanted to consider!) before but we don’t yet know if it’s specific to this cohort – after having 2 years of interrupted study perhaps they’re motivated to do something productive. That’s something that will be interesting to explore this year and going forward.

We would have offered a virtual summer school in 2021 irrespective of our involvement in the TASO research project but it is reassuring that students agreed they had met each of the aims that we had set for the activity and that it did have a positive impact on them. We’ve now been able to adapt this content for in-person delivery this year.

Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) in outreach evaluation

One of our motivations for taking part in this research was because we were interested in the RCT process as a means of being able to demonstrate causality, but reluctant to do it ourselves. Having the support of TASO and the other partners was a real positive influence on our decision to apply. Although the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) performed the randomisation and selection of participants, the prospect of running an RCT as an evaluator is less daunting than it was before. There are few other outreach programmes in our curriculum that are suitable for this method of evaluation but we will definitely be exploring more Type 3 methods going forward.

The project also allowed us to have additional communication with the control group. Where previously our last communication with unsuccessful applicants was to tell them that they hadn’t got a place, this gave us an opportunity to get in touch with them again and let them know that we wanted to hear from them, and that we valued their thoughts and their opinions. We were able to leave it on a positive note, and we were pleasantly surprised with the response rate.

We look forward to the final research findings once we know whether these students applied to and enrolled in Higher Education or not and can see any differences between the control and treatment groups and any impact that may summer schools had.

Amy Burt, Monitoring & Evaluation Officer, University of Kent

Research and Innovation Services are looking for University of Kent academics to speak at this year’s Kent Human Resources Conference which will take place on our Canterbury campus on Wednesday 23 November.

Now in its eighth year, the conference will provide an opportunity for HR professionals and those responsible for HR in their roles to come together with University of Kent academics and guest speakers to learn, network and spark ideas. Throughout this one-day event, delegates will gain an insight into the latest research, examples of best practice and tips and tools which could be applied in the workplace.

We would like to feature voices from academics from across the university and are looking for proposals on topics relating to HR, or research and approaches which could be applied to overcome common HR challenges. These include but are not limited to:

·       Recruitment and retention

·       Changes in employment law

·       Workplace wellbeing

·       Diversity and inclusion

·       Flexible working practices

·       Training and Development

·       Leadership and management

·       Productivity and performance

·       Reward and Recognition

We actively encourage submissions from our academic colleagues at all stages of their career – from individuals who have never presented or run a session at a conference or event before, to more experienced voices from our community. Please submit your proposal using this form by Friday 9 September.

The Kent HR Network, sponsored by specialist HR platform provider, Ciphr, is an initiative focused on facilitating knowledge exchange between the academic community at the University of Kent and HR professionals, both locally and nationally.

If you have any questions about the conference, please get in touch with Chris McCarthy at c.mccarthy@kent.ac.uk.

We will be announcing further details about the conference over the coming weeks. To be the first to receive future updates on the conference, including ticket availability and our speaker line-up, sign up to our HR Network newsletter.

The Lambeth Conference is taking place at the University of Kent, Canterbury Cathedral and Lambeth Palace from 26 July – 8 August, with early arrivals having started yesterday.

Given both the scale and international profile of the Conference, campus will be busy with delegates, support staff, media and members of the public following the different events. We are also likely to see protest from different groups who wish to voice their concern at different aspects of the Church’s work, and we have worked closely with the Conference organisers to ensure this is peaceful and well managed. If you have concerns at the way any protest is being conducted on campus, please contact Campus Security.

Catering and Room Bookings

The increased numbers of visitors mean that alongside usual summer closures, a number of our catering outlets will be closed to the public and staff temporarily – Kent Union-run outlets such as Woody’s and the Library Cafe remain open, along with Co-Op and Caffe Nero. Room bookings will also be much busier due the number of fringe events we are hosting.

This will be a different environment to what we are all used to over the summer, so do consider working from home where you can and discuss any concerns with your line manager – there is also a wide range of support services available to staff if you need it, including your local HR team and our Employee Assistance Programme.

Main Conference Venues

The main meeting venue for the Bishops is the Kent Tennis and Events Arena, with Spouses meeting in the Sports Centre. The Chaplaincy will be based in the Kennedy Building, with numerous seminar rooms and lecture theatres used across campus for fringe events throughout the Conference.

Summer Parking Changes

With a very busy summer of conferences and events taking place at the Canterbury campus, there have been some temporary changes to our car parks. Please see notices within car parks and the email sent to permit holders for further details of the date and time of closures.

Please note that from Monday 18 July the Pavilion car park will be closed until 12 August and From Monday 25 July to Monday 8 August, all University of Kent permit holders will only be permitted to park within Pink Zone car parks, except Chipperfield and Sibson car parks. 

Thank you in advance for helping us make this summer’s conference season a success.

In the run up to the start of the Lambeth Conference, our LGBT+ Staff Network have organised a special event exploring the intersection between sexuality and religion on Wednesday 27 July. 

The Lambeth Conference will see senior figures from across the worldwide Anglican Communion coming together for prayer, reflection, fellowship and dialogue. The Church has attracted criticism ahead of the Conference over the place of LGBT+ people within it and we are clear that their views on equal marriage in particular do not fit with our own values as a University. However, our aim throughout the conference is to facilitate debate and discussion where we can in the interest of positive progress. 

Speakers at the Staff Network event include UoW Trinity St David lecturer Dr Angus M Slater, who will discuss LGBTQ+ Inclusion in the Church in Wales, and General Synod Member Jayne Ozanne, a former member of the UK Government LGBT Advisory Panel and Director of the Ozanne Foundation which works with religious organisations around the world to eliminate discrimination based on sexuality or gender. 

Following the talks, there will be a panel discussion including staff and students from the University, followed by a networking and social event. Rainbows in Religion takes place from 2 – 5pm at Marlowe Lecture Theatre. Spaces for the Symposium are limited to please register via EventBrite if you want to attend! 

All staff and students are also invited to walk with their LGBT+ colleagues at the Lambeth Walk ahead of the event, which is a chance to tell the world that people of all gender identities and sexualities are welcome and part of the Kent community. Meet at the Registry Lawns (by the Gulbenkian Theatre on the Canterbury campus) from 1pm. 

Did you know? The LGBTQ+ Staff Network recently launched our Researching the Rainbow podcast, which explores LGBTQIA+ research taking place across the University and beyond.