Enhancing the Student Experience in Higher Education: Innovation in Institutional Practices

The Bologna process has triggered a large-scale reform in European higher education, with strong emphasis on internationalization and compatibility across national systems, providing a series of concrete guidelines for degree cycles, transfer of credits, and quality assurance. However, its treatment of the topic of ‘the social dimension’ of higher education, and the related student support services remains incomplete. Its main contribution has been to highlight the differences of practice and to suggest that further work is needed in order to bring clarity and consistency at the national and institutional levels.

As universities across Europe are considering the conditions in which the Bologna process is being implemented, there is a growing demand for further focused discussion on the methods and practices that will deliver Bologna’s expanded goals of student-centred learning, students’ employability and the responsiveness of higher education institutions to the needs of a changing society and labour market, quality, student mobility, lifelong learning and international attractiveness of the EHEA (Trends V , 2007).

This workshop will focus on the factors that influence the overall student experience in higher education: changing student characteristics and expectations, and the institutions’ preparedness to create a student-centred learning environment. Drawing upon case studies of institutional innovative practices, the workshop will address topics such as the meaning of ‘student-oriented’ in different institutional cultures, definition of the ‘student experience’, examples of institutional structures that deliver support for the student experience: teaching and learning, student services, enrollment management. Workshop participants will be invited to contribute case studies and share their own approaches to innovation in institutional practice.

Deadline for applications and registrations: April 20, 2010