Developing flexible ecosystems for education that support student success

Advance HE Collaborative Development Fund

Advance HE is dedicated to supporting the development of our members based on sector needs, and provides funding to help enable this. Previously, funding had been in the form of our Small Development Projects (SDPs), which were launched in 2004 and more recently, our Good Practice Grants.

For the 2020-21 member benefit year, funding was available to our global membership base in the form of our Collaborative Development Fund, which aims to harness the knowledge, experience and innovative capabilities of our members in order to address current challenges within the HE sector.

We invited our colleagues at member institutions to apply for the Collaborative Development Fund of between £20,000 and £35,000 per project, with projects starting in February 2021. Queen Mary Academy, Queen Mary, University of London were awarded the funding for this project. 

Developing flexible ecosystems for education that support student success: where are we now, what works and where next?

Prior to the current global pandemic the HE sector had begun to recognise the growing need for agile and responsive education and training systems to regularly upskill and reskill the workforce. Changes to the ways of working and living already being wrought by the fourth industrial revolution and artificial intelligence were driving changes in how and where we will work and continue to learn across our careers, but also upon how higher education would provide those on-going learning opportunities

The pandemic has highlighted that, globally, higher education institutions need to enhance their capacity to operate flexible and resilient education systems to meet student expectations and the accelerating social and economic transformations that society anticipates. To survive and thrive in the future employment landscape and to contribute economically, socially and culturally to society, students and graduates need to be self-motivated, innovative active agents prepared to take responsibility for their own learning and skill development. Globally, the higher education sector needs to ensure it has the strategies and infrastructure in place to develop and support the needs of graduates, society and the economy.

This project invited applications to lead a collaborative project entitled ‘Developing flexible ecosystems for education that supports student success’.

The principal aims of the study were:

• to review the higher education sector’s capacity for flexible provision
• to identify exemplars of the requisite infrastructure, strategies and enabling technologies that support equitable transitions through learning and work
• to identify priority areas to be addressed by Advance HE or providers.