How Coventry is leading the way with the New Education
Most of us know of the expression ‘to send someone to Coventry’ — meaning to punish a person by treating them as though they don’t exist. But with the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) ranking Coventry University as 2nd in the UK for teaching, learning and employment outcomes in 2017, it might be time for the old idiom to retire.
With the introduction of tuition fees, the dynamic between student and institution changed, with student now as consumer of service, more entitled than ever to expect a high quality academic experience. A mountain of debt upon graduation makes being able to get a job not only an economic necessity but an outcome that should be pretty much guaranteed as part of the transaction between ‘consumer’ and ‘provider’. Unfortunately, this is often not the case, particularly for degrees that are less vocational in nature. Miriam, for example, is a recent young graduate with a 2:1 joint honours degree in Mathematics and Physics from a Russell Group university who was turned down for job after job for over 2 years (with lack of experience cited again and again) and ended up taking a position far beneath her capabilities. This is by no means an uncommon story, and a problem about which there is growing research and awareness.
The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) has emerged in this new world as a measure that looks at (in its own words) ‘what students most care about’. In addition to evaluating the institution against national quality assurance frameworks for Higher Education and assessment, the framework looks at data on continuation rates, student satisfaction and employment and further study outcomes. In 2017, the University of Coventry ranked 2nd in the UK (among participating institutions) in the TEF, scoring higher than many Russell Group universities.[1] They also ranked 12th in the UK in the Guardian University Guide 2018, Top 6 in the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018 and boast 97% of graduates employed or in further study six months after graduating (DLHE survey 2015/16).
So what is Coventry doing right? In their own words, ‘Our courses are explicitly designed to be challenging and thought-provoking and to provide students with a modern, forward-thinking education, that prepares them for future employment and enhances their career prospects.’ We recently spoke to Ian Webster, Senior Lecturer in Sport & Event Management at the School of Marketing and Management about how this translates into course design for his students: ‘We don’t want industry to look into us,’ says Ian. ‘We ask, what kind of skills do they want? How can we make our students more employable? How can we make them stand out at interviews? It’s the changing nature of universities — it’s a bit more apprenticeship-like, you’ve got to get your students geared towards industry.’
Students do this through a combination of ‘real-life’ work (through volunteering) and simulations/ internal events that enable them to apply the skills they have learned. This volunteering isn’t optional — it’s a core part of the module and students fail the course if they fail to participate. The opportunities to volunteer range from local to national to international, with students offered at least one international opportunity each year. Students volunteer at the London Marathon, for example, getting experience of the security and safety side of large-scale events. The Business School also has an exclusive partnership with England cricket, and over the coming year between 100 and 150 students will undertake different aspects of planning, organising and supporting the Cricket World Cup 2019. The very best students also get the opportunity to work with the British Council at their ‘Going Global’ conferences.
Another integral part of student’s training involves professional certification in the Eventsforce management system. As part of this training second year students use the software to plan the annual internal conference at which final year students present their dissertations, planning and booking sessions and producing the marketing collateral for the event. This relationship between the university and an industry giant not only ensures that students have highly relevant and sought-after experience but that Eventsforce has a trained user-base for the future.
This is not the only virtuous cycle engendered by the course — Ian reports that alumni often come back to give talks to current students and look to recruit Coventry students for placements — a sure sign that graduates are happy with the education they received and confident that future cohorts will have the same level of skill development.
In addition, third year students use McGraw-Hill’s Practice Marketing software to gain realistic experience of a competitive environment, working in teams to put into practice everything they know about the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) and trying to beat peers with their offering and strategy. Students then reflect upon their performance in the game in order to learn from their experiences and practise important project evaluation and report writing skills. You can read more about how this software is integrated into the course and into its assessment in our case study.
In fairness, many other institutions now recognise the need to develop workforce readiness skills in their students alongside their study routes. Oxford University’s Humanities Division offers researcher development pathways around career confidence, getting published, preparation for academic practice and ‘digital humanities’, for example. Salford Business School (runner up in the course and curriculum design category of the Guardian’s University Awards 2018) runs a professional development module for second year undergraduates to give students an understanding of recruitment processes and encourage them to reflect on their own skills and aspirations.
Coventry offers these generic skills-based courses too — with training in areas such as in developing a professional identity, career management, and research methods. But what really comes across in Coventry Business School’s Sport Management, Sport Marketing and Event Management degrees is the vast potential for innovating and building on traditional transmission teaching to enable students to learn by doing instead — and that by integrating the kinds of skills and competencies that businesses really want throughout students’ learning, they can exit university with the means to showcase and evidence experience as well as theoretical knowledge.
[1] The Independent
