The PQR is one of the University’s monitoring and review activities that provides each area with the opportunity to holistically review the quality and standards of the last six years, ensuring both quality assurance and enhancement of the student journey.
The panel met with colleagues from the Programme, Research Committee, students, supervisors, the Affiliated Research Centres (ARC) Management Team, as well as representatives from the ARCs including supervisors and students. The Review Panel judged that the evidence enabled them to have confidence in the quality and standards of Research Degrees Programme. The panel made 10 commendations and 10 recommendations, some of which are summarised here:
The panel commended:
- The success of the Research Degree Programme in terms of its consistently high completion and pass rates, and high student satisfaction (as evidenced in PRES), when compared with sector averages.
- The Research Degree Programme for maintaining a strong focus on the student experience across all programmes and modes of study, via the structured and coherent approach to assessing progress along the entire student journey, and for ensuring parity of experience for directly registered and partnership students.
- The Graduate School for its responsiveness to students during the pandemic and cost of living crisis, addressing academic and pastoral needs in a timely and effective manner, and for subsequently empowering students post-pandemic to take ownership of the development of their student community and student-led academic and wellbeing support.
- The Research Degrees Committee for the development of the Reasonable Adjustment Regulations to better support students with disabilities, with long term health conditions, and with caring responsibilities, and for adapting these regulations to support any PGR student whose progress is impacted by other exceptional circumstances.
The panel recommended:
- To be more explicit with PGR students and staff about how the Research Degree Programme uses frameworks and benchmark standards as quality measures, in order to improve student and staff awareness and understanding of these measures and how they influence and shape the quality of their work and research development.
- To develop a research environment that facilitates networking within and across the disciplines, qualifications and modes of study, and seamlessly integrates the pastoral and academic needs of students and staff, to engender a single inclusive research development community of practice.
- To redefine supervisor training within the context of ‘professional research development’ that is underpinned by transparent and measurable outcomes and sets clear expectations for regular engagement by all staff (irrespective of experience), to engender a community of practice for all supervisors.
- To develop an approach to routinely collect, analyse and evaluate the student voice and supervisor voice as a defined quality assurance measure across all research qualifications and partnerships, so as to enable the Research Degree Programme to demonstrate the actions that have been taken as part of a continuous improvement feedback loop.
Research Degrees are now in the process of preparing an action plan to respond to these recommendations. If you would like to know more about the findings of the Review, please contact the Academic Quality Standards Team on:
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