We are looking forward to welcoming 390 delegates to the Enhancement Themes Conference on 2 and 3 March, to participate in stimulating plenary sessions, workshops and poster presentations.

The focus will be on Graduates for the 21st Century: Integrating the Enhancement Themes. Plenary sessions are intended to highlight aspects of the development of graduate attributes throughout the student journey. As well as including details about progress and plans for the Enhancement Theme, they will consider changes taking place in the Scottish school system through Curriculum for Excellence how students can be supported in the development of graduate attributes; the importance of graduate attributes in terms of where students go, to employment and into the research environment; and the views of students themselves.

Papers, posters, presentations and videos of the different aspects of the conference will be posted on the Enhancement Themes website shortly, so those who are unable to attend can keep up to date with this ongoing work.

Professor Andrea Nolan	Professor Philip Winn	Sir Andrew Cubie	Catherine Macaslan	Professor Grant Jarvie
Professor George Kuh Professor Ian Diamond Joy Elliot Philip Whyte

A Graduates for the 21st Century (G21C) event was held on 7 December 2009 in Dundee to bring together for the first time all institutional G21C teams. Presentations were given by Cathy Macaslan (Scottish Government Policy Adviser and Vice Principal, University of Aberdeen) on 'Curriculum for Excellence and what it will mean for the Student Learning Experience', and David Lines (Emeritus Professor, Robert Gordon University) on 'What we have learned from the Themes: making a difference'. Institutional teams discussed the implications of Curriculum for Excellence and the outcomes of the Enhancement Themes and then, after lunch, had the opportunity to visit two Enhancement Theme areas to meet project facilitators and to share activities ongoing within institutions.

First deliverables

The first set of papers on each of the completed Enhancement Themes has just been published in time for the annual conference and can be accessed on the Enhancement Themes website. Each of the papers aims to give a current view of what is happening in area of the Enhancement Theme and is the first of a series of short papers that will aim to refresh and refocus Enhancement Themes areas.

Enhancing research-teaching linkages as a way to improve the development of employability attributes	Four recent papers on assessment and feedback with significant implications for practice	First things first: the first year in Scottish higher education

Thinking strategically about employability and graduate attributes: Universities and enhancing learning for beyond university	Graduates for the 21st Century - Classroom-based response to student needs

G21C institutional activities

A key aim of the G21C Enhancement Theme is to engage all Scottish HEIs in a general consideration of the type of graduates attributes necessary for the 21st century in the context of the likely needs of the increasingly complex range of learners, and further to consider how to support this diversity of learners in the achievement of these attributes. This discussion will consider the changing nature of higher education and the support of learning and teaching environments necessary for the development of graduates for the 21st century. Alongside institutional activities, various inputs will be sought to feed into the discussions including the views and anticipated future expectations as seen by:

• the higher education research community
• the ‘employer’
• the higher education sector itself
• a variety of disciplines
• international contributors and initiatives
• initiatives and developments in the school sector
• student themselves
• government policies.

These will form part of a symposium series which will run over the period of the Enhancement Theme and take place both within HEIs and also across the sector through a programme of seminars and conferences. The events will commence with the Enhancement Themes Conference on 2 and 3 March 2 2010, which will include plenary sessions and inputs from a variety of perspectives. It is hoped that the symposium series events will take place in a number of HEIs across Scotland in October (date and venue tbc), the Enhancement Themes Conference in March 2011 and a final event in June 2011.

I am happy to report that the 'responding to student needs' element of the G21C Enhancement Theme is now progressing well after an unfortunately late start. As the new project facilitator, from January 2010, I have initially been concentrating on contacting G21C steering committee (SC) members and the other project facilitators to ascertain where we might have overlapping areas of interest and scoping out where we might go next. I am currently working with SC members to develop joint activities in areas pertinent to the Enhancement Themes. I will be able to report shortly that we will be presenting two or three events, open to all in the sector, during the next few months although the exact topic areas or venues have yet to be decided. I am also intending to work closely with the facilitator of the First Year Experience Enhancement Theme, Jim Moir, as we are keen to examine the use of personal development planning (PDP) in responding to student needs. Work with the other facilitators has yet to be determined.

The workshop I am presenting at the Enhancement Themes Conference in March 2010 will examine the current activity within the sector arising from the original Responding to Student Needs Enhancement Theme in 2004, and will begin to take a look at how we can respond to student needs in the classroom. It will also briefly examine what use is being made within the sector of the PDP Toolkit that was developed to assist institutions in this respect. In addition, I have written a short ideas paper for the conference and continue to look for appropriate evidence from the UK and worldwide on good practice relating to responding to student needs and graduate attributes for the 21st century. I am particularly interested in finding people who can come to Scotland to speak to and inform the sector in this area. If you are interested in offering your services, or know someone else you think would be suitable, please do not hesitate to get in touch. I would be happy to discuss this with you.

I will also be updating the Responding to Student Needs section on the Enhancement Theme website (link). This will be a developing activity as information is found and articles written which are appropriate and beneficial for others in the sector and thoughts are given to the website design. Once again I would welcome ideas from others as to what should be included in this part of the website or indeed how it should look. By combining our ideas, skills and knowledge bases, and bringing together information and sources, we can build a website section that is beneficial to us all, both in content and design.

Dr Margaret Harris
Project Facilitator

In 1972, in a paper entitled 'The Survival of Higher Education', Roy Niblett, the first holder of a chair in higher education in the UK, wrote:

We are beginning to recognize that higher education has to become a lot more responsible both socially and personally than it has been in most colleges and graduate schools. But we have not, I think, realized the extent of the revolution required in the next fifty years to make it so: the changes of assumption called for, the changes of orientation, the changes of content. (p 44)

It is perhaps with some sense of cruel irony that the title of Niblett’s paper might well apply to current concerns over anticipated expected funding cuts in the world of higher education. However, looking beyond the title of the paper, I think we have much to be proud of and look forward to in Scottish higher education in moving towards the realisation of Niblett’s goal of incorporating social and personal themes as part of the learning process. The Graduates for the 21st Century Enhancement Theme goes some way to recognising that graduate attributes rest not simply on the ability to master knowledge content, but perhaps more importantly on the qualities that graduates acquire during the course of their learning. These qualities are now regarded as key aspects of being able to contribute to the evolving globalised knowledge economy and society that we now live in.

Although the development of these qualities may at first sight appear high-order concerns that are somewhat at a distance from the First Year Enhancement Theme, they do, however, have a considerable bearing on it. It is clear that on the back of these concerns rest what graduate attributes are for. They are for the ability to meet the demands of an evolving 21st century, and of course the emerging zeitgeist we can apply to this is that of a rapidly developing globalised technological knowledge-based society. How do we begin to develop in students the ability to deal with complexity, uncertainty and multi or transdisciplinarity, with the ability to integrate knowledge from different sources, and with the capacity to analyse the ethical social and environmental implications of what they learn? It is therefore not enough to simply focus on traditional aspects of teaching, learning and assessment in higher education unless we are clear on how graduate attributes relate to these aspects and can be developed from the word go. We need to incorporate into these core activities within the first year, the seeds of the development of graduate attributes in and for a changing world.

The higher education landscape is not what is was almost 40 years ago when Niblett wrote his paper. For one thing, we now have a much more diverse entry into the first year. This is what I see as the challenge of the First Year Enhancement Theme: helping students to utilise their diverse backgrounds in the early development of graduate attributes. And I think we can do this from the word go in the ways that we engage students in their learning; ways that challenge students to not only learn, for want of a better term ‘content’, but also how to contextualise this in both personal and wider societal terms. This might involve innovative modes of learning and assessment that encourage multi or transdisciplinary activities. What seems clear is that these modes of learning need to be much more driven by active participation than in the past. This is not simply a matter of fashion, away from traditional didactic forms of teaching, but an absolute necessity in terms of the development of graduate attributes that can meet the demands of the 21st century. It is not enough to assume that these attributes will be acquired through some sort of maturational process over the course of a degree programme. We must build in activities in the curriculum that develop them right from the word go, from the first year. This is where I see the ‘higher’ being in higher education and where I am looking to facilitate the cross-fertilisation of ideas on how to take this forward across institutions.

Dr Jim Moir
First Year project facilitator

A conference will be held on 25 May 2010 in Edinburgh to disseminate the outcomes from the Supporting Student Success project. Professor Andrea Nolan has kindly agreed to act as conference chair and Einar Lauritzen from the Uppsala University will also give a plenary address on strategic issues in student support in Scandinavia. A plenary will also be given by a representative of the student community to reflect one of the main outcomes from the project that is the role of student associations and students in supporting student success. Further details will be circulated shortly.

The International Benchmarking Working Group (IBWG) on the Postgraduate Research Student Experience now has 17 confirmed members from various HEIs across Scotland, and also NUS Scotland. Observers of the group include colleagues from the Higher Education Academy, NUS Scotland, the Scottish Funding Council, Universities Scotland and Vitae.

The first meeting of the Group was held on 15 December 2009 and provisionally agreed a range of topics falling under four broad, interrelated areas on which to focus the benchmarking exercise.

• The part-time and international student experience
• Standards, quality and reviews
• Pooling and Graduate Schools
• Student representation and postgraduates who teach.

The Group also agreed to source and share examples of doctoral education that exist either in their own institution, or that they have gained experience of in international institutions. A joint programme of work with the Scottish Funding Council and Vitae has been confirmed, with the second workshop taking place on 30 April 2010 (venue tbc, run by QAA Scotland) and the third taking place in the summer (date and venue tbc), which will be organised by Vitae around the topic of Graduate Schools. The Higher Education Academy has now also joined the collaborative programme and anticipates a workshop in the autumn on 'Postgraduates who Teach'. These themes relate to those the Group raised in the first IBWG meeting, so link in very well with the areas the Group hopes to explore.

Contact: Frances Morton (Development Officer)
f.morton@qaa.ac.uk
0141 572 3429

Elisabeth Piper joined QAA in October 2009 as the newest member of the Administration team. Elisabeth’s main area of work is assisting within the Development and Enhancement Group in all areas of administration, from correspondence to events.

Following the completion of her tertiary studies in 2006, Elisabeth moved to Scotland from Australia in 2007. Since then she has embarked on many adventures including travelling across the UK and Europe, working as the Secretary to the Head of HR for the Scottish FA and managing a hotel on the beautiful Isle of Skye. In her spare time, Elisabeth enjoys spending quality time at the gym, creating ‘culinary masterpieces’ and relaxing with friends.