The Bath Outreach Network is a community of practice for University of Bath staff and PhD students who are interested in outreach. The Network is run by the Widening Access team and opportunities to get involved in our outreach work will be shared with the Network. It can also be used to connect with others across the University who are involved in outreach to share experiences and resources, and to get advice and support.
How staff can get involved with Access and Participation
Details of how staff at the University can help us to achieve our aims for Widening Access and Participation.
Widening Access
Access is one of the largest challenges highlighted in the Access and Participation Plan. The Widening Access team provide targeted outreach programmes, and build relationships with schools and teachers in order to help encourage students from under-represented groups to apply to the University of Bath.
You can get involved with some of the outreach activities already being delivered, contact Nerys Shah if you are interested. The Widening Access Team are also keen to support others to undertake outreach and do that through a network of staff engaged in or interested in delivering outreach.
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Bath Outreach Network
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School Governor Network
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The School Governor Network supports University members who are governors in schools. As part of our Access and Participation aims, the University wants to support those in our community who are making a difference in schools by taking up the role of school governor. The School Governor Network is a community of practice to share advice, support and resources relevant to school governance.
Closing degree awarding gaps
Widening Participation does not end once students arrive at University. Degree awarding gaps exist between certain groups of students across the University. The Centre for Learning and Teaching have produced an overview of the challenges and some of the research of how we can address these persistent gaps. Within the Access and Participation Plan we have targets to reduce the awarding gaps for certain groups.
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Understanding degree awarding gaps
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Analysis of data across the University shows there are awarding gaps for some groups of students. An overview of the gaps is presented in the Access and Participation Plan at an institutional level. To understand them more fully in your department you may want to consider looking at data available on the wiki.
Teaching and Learning
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Considering the role of learning and teaching in student attainment and outcomes links to all of our curriculum principles, notably supporting the needs of all learners and articulating a course-wide approach to learning. Inclusive teaching is not about lowering standards. Instead, it is about ensuring our students can work in a way that enables them to fulfil their academic potential by enabling them to work effectively in a way that is transparent, efficient, and flexible.
The Centre for Learning and Teaching have resources and content to consider the ways in which we teach and assess to ensure it is inclusive of all students.
You could start with their overview of the degree awarding gaps or their framework for inclusive teaching and explore their resources from there.
Widening Participation Research Network
The Widening Participation Research Network (WPRN) brings together researchers and practitioners from across the University who are working on widening participation related topics in some form or other - or are just interested in WP, access and participation, social mobility and social equity. The group meets to discuss issues relating to social mobility, to share our research projects and plans, and allow communication between WP researchers and the WP practitioner teams at the University. We are working towards collaborative approaches that lead to Research Informed Practice and Practice Informed Research. The group is lead by Professor Matt Dickson, more information contact Matt
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Student Research Projects
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Do you have students in your department who are interested in education focused social mobility, social equity, access and participation, widening participation? We are collating a list of potential dissertation/final year UG project questions some could be used for Masters projects or even PGR research.
The aim of this list is to collate interesting questions the institution has in the areas of social equality in education. We hope we will get lots of students to explore these questions and make recommendations that the institution can use to influence future research or practice. We hope to collate all the findings and publish some of them in insight reports on the University's website and maybe share with external organisations like TASO's HEEL repository to support practice across the sector.
We're currently developing this list so if you have questions or if you are interested in seeing the list please get in touch with Andrew Ross for a chat.
Contact us
For more details about how you can get involved please get in touch.