Student analytics and inclusive education with Professor Edward Peck

Professor Edward Peck is the Vice-Chancellor and President of Nottingham Trent University and was appointed Student Support Champion for the Department for Education. He is also Deputy Chair of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). His exemplary commitment to higher education and students was recognised when Professor Peck was made Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours List.

The Festival of Education is one of Queen Mary’s flagship events, and this year will take place in the Graduate Centre on our Mile End campus, and online via Zoom Events, from 18-20 April. It will address the barriers to successfully implementing inclusive education and explore pedagogical approaches that can further this.

As well as Professor Peck’s keynote, the Festival will include a talk from Imperial College London’s Dr Camille Kandiko Howson on valuing teaching, research and service in higher education, as well as a series of workshops and presentations on an inclusive educational experience.

In your speech you will be talking about the role of student analytics in supporting inclusive education. Where are we with student analytics currently and how do you see that changing over the next 3-5 years?

Universities have been adding more and more activities to the student support landscape, often driven by external recommendations and good practice examples. Many of these activities are making a real difference to many students. However, some of these interventions lack an evidence base, require additional investment at a time of financial constraint, and make new demands upon colleagues. 

At the same time, many higher education providers are on a journey towards more sophisticated data systems to understand better their students and to inform the choice of the most relevant and effective interventions. This is an encouraging development and demonstrates once again how committed universities are to the success of their students.

Student analytics are becoming more sophisticated, with the ability to predict as well as report on student engagement and wellbeing. The core data specification published by JISC in March is an important next step in encouraging HEPs to use data that they are probably already collecting to not only report on but also predict how students will fare. 

This will have genuine benefits. But we cannot not know what we now know, or could have known, about our students when we generate and have access to these data. I expect there will be increasing expectations from Government, commentators, and parents that higher education providers will shape their policies and practices based on what we know about our students.

Our overall conference theme is Inclusive Education. What do you think are the most significant barriers to success in the HE sector at the moment? And what about any barriers which are more visible?

The major barriers may be the negative messages that some young people - and especially those without familial experience of the sector - may be receiving about the value of a degree which discourage their application and the pressure of the finances on those less affluent students as cost of living pressures continue. 

If you were asked to describe a world where HE is truly inclusive, what would that look like?

We would know how best to reach each student and provide support (both targeted and general) that would enable all of them to reach their full potential. The more we know about our students, the more we can understand them as individuals and help them through their challenges. Student analytics have a key role to play here.

You have recently become Student Support Champion for the Department for Education. In this new role, what will be your first priorities and where do you think students currently need the most support?

One area of focus is on student analytics. Another is approaches to supporting students with serious mental health problems. Clearly these two intersect. 

Arising out of these two areas, I believe that the design and delivery of student support needs a new approach and am currently working with a group of volunteer HEPs to rethink student support design alongside Advance HE and UUK’s Student Policy Network. The aim of this project is to articulate the fundamental support needs of students and which evidence-based interventions meet them, fully informed by data collection and sharing, to create more robust and targeted systems of support.