The Minister of State for Higher Education, T. D., launched two new National Forum reports at today’s National Symposium on Student Success, hosted by the Higher Education Authority in partnership with the National Forum.
The first report, Understanding and Enabling Student Success in Irish Higher Education, looks at student success through three lenses. Firstly, it explores the concept of student success from the key perspectives of national policy, the explicit strategic missions of our higher education institutions, our students and international literature. It then explores a range of themes that have been pivotal to our understanding of student success and how it can be supported. Finally, it looks at the development of an Irish national understanding of student success. The second report, ‘Making A Difference’ A Student View of Excellent Teaching, reflects on the recorded perceptions of approximately 4,000 students in Irish higher education regarding the characteristics, behaviours and skills associated with exceptional teachers. Teaching and learning is one of the key enablers of student success.
The National Symposium at which the reports were launched was attended by students, staff, senior managers and policy makers from across the sector. The event provided participants with the opportunity to contribute to the development of a national understanding of student success. It became clear that enabling Irish higher education students to succeed requires a fundamental shift in how we understand what success means.
Dr Terry Maguire, Director of the National Forum, explained the significance of the new national understanding of student success captured in the report:
“One of the key outputs of this report is the shared understanding of student success it articulates. This understanding has been shaped over many years by participants and contributors from across the sector, but we expect that having it in an explicit format will help our sector to work together to realise the success of all of our students in a consistent, meaningful and impactful way.”
The event, and the publication of the National Forum reports, is particularly timely for higher education institutions as the Higher Education System Performance Framework 2018-2020 recommends that all higher education institutions develop a student success strategy by 2020.
The National Forum would like to thank the HEA and the USI for their collaboration in ensuring the success of this event.
The two reports can be accessed here.
