17th November 2008Professor Mantz Yorke
Lancaster University
Unlocking sector-wide data: what keys do institutional researchers hold?
Since the establishment of the Higher Education Statistics Agency in the UK plenty of data has potentially become available to researchers. Institutions themselves are also repositories of considerable amounts of data. Institutional research conducted solely on an ‘in-house’ basis may lose sight of the broader picture that a sectoral perspective might bring.
The case will be argued that 'supra-institutional research' offers potential value for individual institutions and the sector as a whole, and could be cost-effective. Two examples of such research will be presented: an analysis of honours degree classifications across the UK higher education sector, and a survey conducted by members of the Student Assessment and Classification Working Group of assessment regulations in a variety of higher education institutions. The examples indicate the potential value of this kind of research for both institutional benchmarking and sectoral development.
Mantz Yorke was, until August 2005, Professor of Higher Education at Liverpool John Moores University. Following retirement, he is Visiting Professor in the Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University.
His early career was in teaching and teacher education, after which he turned to staff development and educational research at Manchester Polytechnic. He then spent six years as a senior manager at Liverpool Polytechnic followed by two years on secondment as Director of Quality Enhancement at the Higher Education Quality Council, returning to what had become Liverpool John Moores University in 1994.
He has presented and published on various aspects of higher education, including 'the first year experience', retention, employability, assessment and institutional research.
Tel: 0044 114 225 5342 Fax: 0044 114 225 5337
E-Mail: conference21@shu.ac.uk
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