Want to share best practice? We’re on the CASE!

So I recently attended the CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) European Annual Conference 2015 in Manchester. For those who may not be familiar with CASE, it’s an organisation that helps people within the education sector to share knowledge, best practice, and training. Each year they hold an annual conference, and this year I got the opportunity to attend.

An informative three days of networking and sharing knowledge!

It was a three day conference in Manchester (starting off with a 6am train the day after Bank Holiday Monday!), and it was three days packed full of presentations, case studies and interactive sessions. There’s something for everyone; people working in communications; alumni; marketing; management (strategy) and fundraising. And there were even people from the Netherlands and Australia in attendance. So lots of networking, note taking and learning!

I tried to mix up the presentations that I attended. I attended mainly marketing focused sessions, but I also went to some communications ones too.

A couple of things I’ve taken away from the conference:

• The contribution of location to the HE service scope
  
        A really good session which was run by Portsmouth Business School looked at the research they had done into how UK universities talk about themselves and how the majority of universities use location as a main focus. They also spoke about other factors such as physical, social and sociological dimensions that universities use when communicating to their audiences, and there was a group discussion about whether an emotional or cognitive response is more important. The conclusion was it doesn’t seem to make a difference in ‘who’ a university is or where they are in the UK; all universities want to ‘tick all boxes.’ As we’ve recently embarked on a verbal branding project, which we are now rolling out across the University, this was a particularly interesting session for me to take part in.

• Working with your research community
  
        Another great session run by the University of Huddersfield in which they presented the ways they worked with their research community to produce valuable content to show the gravitas of the university and its achievements. This was really interesting as the University of Bedfordshire have had a real focus on this, and it was good to see how another university has tackled this. They discussed the research literature they produce, including how items are distributed and to which audience and also discussed how they encourage academics to use social media to showcase their work and also link in with the universities core strategy around research. Food for thought…

The overarching themes that stood out in the sessions which I attended were the value of authenticity, producing more dynamic content and being more interactive are key to reaching the student audiences in 2016 and beyond!  

Events like these are invaluable for networking, meeting peers and sharing knowledge with people in the same industry. Market research is a big part of Marketing, and events like these go that little bit further in terms of discussing what’s happening within other institutions and learning from each other.

I hope I get the opportunity to go again next year.

Speak soon,

K

Who knew I could juggle?!

It’s been quite a while since I blogged! As the team is expanding, we are sharing the blogging, so I don’t get to bore you quite so much! Hurray! The team have all been really busy over the last couple of weeks, this is our busiest time of the year as we gear up for Clearing, start to evaluate the academic cycle and start to look ahead to next year’s cycle too. We're juggling a lot of work between such a small team, but we always manage to do what we gotta do!

How I think I look juggling all of
my work

Next stop…my desk!

Well, I’ve been out and about a lot since I last blogged. I’ve been assisting the Recruitment team with UCAS events. I attended one day of the event in London last month and I also attended one day at the Leicester event last week. It’s really nice going out and talking to prospective students and not only showcasing what Bedfordshire has to offer but also offering advice and guidance to people who have some big decisions to make about their future and careers. I’m not sure I would want to go back to that age! We had a lot of people come over for a chat, and got some really nice comments that we had provided them with some useful information, which is lovely.

I also attended a CASE conference in London on Tuesday. For those not familiar with CASE, they offer support to people working in the Education sector through the likes of forums and conferences, where people who work in Education can network and share best practice. This particular event looked at student communication. There were a couple of really interesting presentations on the use of social media, and using students in communication, through blogs (which we already do might I add).  It was great to see how other institutions run similar activities, but managed in a completing different way. Food for thought!

Take a look at our blogger page here.

Open days

Not again, I hear you cry! I feel like I always mention open days in every blog, so I won’t bore you too much with the details, but we had our latest (and last) undergraduate open day on 25 April for this academic cycle. And we’re currently working on our last PG open day campaign for this cycle on 21 May. So lots of emails, media, and social media activity taking place.

Reports

Which leads me nicely on to another thing I always mention…REPORTS and EVALUATIONS! I’m still working on my annual evaluation reports for our UG and PG open day campaigns, which are progressing slowly but surely. We’re at the end of this year’s open day cycle now, so I can now get on with analysing the full cycle of open day campaigns. They’re providing some good insight and showing some great successes in terms of the activity we have put together which is really nice to see. I look forward to sharing them with the wider MARC team.

Conversion communications

We’ve also now started sending two monthly e-zines to undergraduates, so I’ve been out filming videos and creating some new content for these. They went out yesterday, so it’s now on to this month’s editions - we’re in May! Woah! But fear not, I have my content planned for each edition up until the end of August, so all is under control.

Publications

Work is well underway on our 2016 UCMK prospectus now; we’re due to get the second proof from the designer on Tuesday and it’s looking nice. The PG prospectus is moving a little more slowly, but we’re starting to get there, so in the next few weeks we’ll be fully consumed by all things PG! I'm also working on the new student guide for this September. There’s lots of work going on behind the scenes around our ‘Welcome’ for new students, so I can slowly start to work on this publication and feed in new information once decisions are finalised. Working to a tight deadline of 6 weeks! Crikey!

You guessed it- how I look right now
in reality

I’ve also been working on some adhoc bits such as a flyer for our UCMK campus and a pull up banner for an event that’s being held in the Computing department next month. Oh, and a fair few meetings.

Hmm, I think that’s enough for now. Roll on the bank holiday...I’m going to Newmarket races so let’s hope the sun comes back out.
   

Speak soon,

K