Education Strategy 2019-2025

As a research-intensive University with a reputation for internationally-excellent education and student satisfaction, the synergy between our ambitions in education, research and global engagement is central to our strategies. This Education Strategy is therefore founded on the idea that students and staff all learn through both education and research and, therefore, as a University, we are an International Learning Community within an Education-Research Ecosystem on which the long-term sustainability of our University is founded. Our focus on both education and research has its origin in our institutional ‘ Charter of Incorporation’.

We will build on our strong partnerships between staff and students, and evolve our established ethos of Students as Change Agents. We aim to be known globally for empowering our students, by involving them in the core mission of the University to change the world and contribute to society through the creation, dissemination and application of new knowledge.

We will celebrate inquiry-led learning in which students are equal members of the learning community, learning about research, and learning through their own research, inquiries and discoveries. This will be supported by involving our partners – businesses, universities, public and third-sector organisations, schools and colleges – in co-creating and delivering education.

We believe that by doing this, we will develop our students as agents of change both within the University, as co-creators of Knowledge, Societal Engagement, Impact Generation, Industrial Engagement, and beyond, as Global 21st Century Citizens.

Our Strategy has been co-created using the themes above as a basis for consultation. These frame our aspirations for Education in terms of: students; staff; curriculum; pedagogy; graduates and stakeholders; and the potential for digital transformation to support learning, teaching and the student experience.

The Strategy commits to the following Characteristics of Excellence in relation to education, to which we aspire and that combine to provide a shared vision for education at Exeter.

Success for All Our Students

• Ours will be a diverse, culturally rich and engaged community in which we welcome learners of potential of every background.
• We will promote inclusivity, wellbeing and accessibility through our curriculum, policies and processes.
• We will support all students to fulfil their potential and make a positive contribution to the wider world.
• We will strive to eliminate gaps in access, attainment and progression to employment seen between groups defined by socioeconomic (dis)advantage, ethnicity, age, disability, gender and nationality.

Valuing Educators

• We will create an inspiring and co-operative learning community for both staff and students in which education and research are synergistic and equally valued.
• We will recognise, develop and reward excellent educators across the University, at all career stages, through shaping our structures, policies and resources to achieve this.
• We will create an environment that fosters evidence-based innovation in educational practice, thus building both individuals’ and the institution’s reputation for pedagogic leadership.

Global 21st Century Education

• In partnership with our students we will forge a globally competitive curriculum and educational experience which addresses the challenges of the future.
• Our high-quality, interdisciplinary, research-rich and flexible education will attract students from around the world and engage them as active learners, and we will recognise diversification as a process to which everyone in our community contributes and from which everyone benefits.
• Our approach to education will reflect critically on the meanings of the ‘Global’ and Exeter’s place within this; it will make meaningful global opportunities open to all and will enable open engagement with other perspectives, ideas and challenges.
• Our physical and virtual learning spaces will be well designed and maintained, accessible to all, and conducive to the delivery of world-class education.

Learning Reimagined

• We will ensure that learning is enhanced through pedagogies informed by research and best practice, and is refreshed through continual evidence-based experimentation and evaluation. Innovative teaching, learning and assessment will be designed rigorously, so that aims, methods, content and outcomes are clearly aligned and carefully evaluated by teachers and learners.
• Through hands-on learning experiences, we will engage students as active participants in the production of knowledge, whether that knowledge is simply new to them or an original contribution to the relevant field of inquiry.
• Our assessment will be: fair, appropriate, quality assured and relevant; rigorous and challenging; evidence-based in its authenticity and originality; collaborative and diverse, and inclusive and accessible.
• We will continually review what we do in light of student feedback and advances across the sector to ensure that the Exeter experience is at the forefront of higher education.

Graduates of Distinction

• The Exeter graduate will be a pro-active, inclusive, resilient and creative agent of change. We will prepare our graduates for life beyond graduation through development of curiosity, openness, creativity, critical thinking and global understanding.
• The University of Exeter experience will offer diverse opportunities within and beyond the curriculum, to tailor experiences to develop wellbeing, employability and a lifelong approach to learning and development.
• Employers, alumni and other stakeholders will be engaged in the development and delivery of our programmes to embed diverse ‘real-world’, external perspectives that support students to become agents of change.

Our undergraduate offer has been a key strength of the University and our programmes remain highly attractive to talented students. We will make enhancements focusing on the following objectives:

1. Inducting and integrating students into Learning Communities within the Education-Research Ecosystem from day 1
2. Attracting & Supporting Diverse Learners, and ensuring that the content and delivery of education supports inclusion, diversity and wellbeing
3. Offering meaningful global opportunities to all (embedding global study and work experience)
4. Increasing Active/Inquiry-led Learning
5. Rebalancing Assessment
6. Liaising with key stakeholders

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We will strengthen and broaden our postgraduate portfolio, in alignment with our internationally-recognised strengths, and substantially increase our attractiveness to postgraduate applicants from around the world by ensuring that programmes enhance international career prospects for programme graduates. Our objectives in this area are:

1.  Aligning programmes to employers’ needs and areas where we have credible international strength
2. Embedding flexibility and choice into programme design to enable personalisation of students’ experience
3. Designing programmes to meet the needs of prospective students wherever they are and however they wish to learn
4. Ensuring that programme design, content and delivery support inclusion, diversity and wellbeing
5. Collaborating with key business and industry partners to develop bespoke offerings at scale
6. Proactively engaging our alumni as lifelong learners to meet their continuing and evolving career needs
7. Enhancing our programme development capacity 

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The University’s community of educators and professional staff is vital to the successful delivery of these strategic priorities. Therefore, it is imperative that, just as our students are supported to fulfil their potential through our commitment to the characteristics of excellence and to continuous enhancement of our programmes, our academic and professional staff and postgraduate research students are fully supported to achieve their potential. Our objectives in this area are:

1. Co-creating innovative education
2. Facilitating mobility and networking in support of innovation and reputation-building
3. Enhancing support and training
4. Ensuring opportunities for career progression and fostering educational leadership
5. Celebrating and enhancing the diversity among our staff, and supporting inclusion and wellbeing

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Where digital transformation can enhance learning and teaching, enable us to reach new learners, increase efficacy and efficiency, or free us to spend more time on what we most value in learning and teaching, we will seize the opportunities that exist. We will innovate to do so and we will seek to be in the vanguard of imaginative enhancement through digital transformation; however, our approach will not be dictated by technology. Work to support this priority is already underway through the EdTech Exeter Programme. Our objectives in this area are:

1. Taking an evidence-led approach to seizing opportunities offered by digital transformation
2. Supporting educators to build digital skills in teaching and learning
3. Improving processes and systems to create greater efficiency and transparency
4. Ensuring that Digital Transformation is conducive to inclusion, diversity and wellbeing

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While addressing the four priorities above, there is an opportunity to look holistically at our offer and seek to achieve more than a series of incremental enhancements. In doing so, it is important that we build on our strengths while learning from Universities around the world who are leading change or are established examples of excellence.

Our commitment is therefore to conduct further consultation and market research to inform the articulation of what we believe will be a distinctive model for education at Exeter. We will soft-launch and pilot some elements of this in 2020/21 and 2021/22 and, if the weight of evidence supports it, market a distinctive offering in 2022/2023.

Click here to find out more about the principles of this outline model, which include.

• Continuing, and evolving, our offer of professional accredited, single honours and combined/interdisciplinary programmes in the ‘liberal studies’ mode
• Ensuring that all students have the opportunity to integrate periods of study in industry and/or abroad into their programmes
• Facilitating students to undertake ‘thematic minors’ that promote structured engagement in interdisciplinary study and include minors focused on future careers and graduate-level employment
• Introducing an assessed longitudinal portfolio that enables students to capture their personal engagement with research, impact and societal engagement related to their programme
• Designing learning and teaching with an explicit aim of continual continual development of learning community, enabling students to engage in effective face to face and online social learning, and to lay foundations for community cohesion and positive wellbeing.