Access Practitioner

Group Meetings

November 2014

These took place in early

November and we would like to extend our thanks to the host providers—Barton Peveril College, City of Oxford College, MidKent College and Sussex Downs College.

The updated discussion

document has been circulated by Nicola, along with several other documents and these can be found on the events section of the website here.

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY!

Spring APG dates on page 2 of the newsletter!

access.enquiries@laser- awards.org.uk

Access News DECEMBER 2014 ISSUE 3

Welcome to the third and final LASER Access Newsletter

before Christmas! We have had a busy but productive year

with both challenges and achievements, and are looking for-

ward to entering the forthcoming year with exciting new op-

portunities as well as potential new providers coming on

board!

Throughout the year we aim to keep you updated via a se-

ries of regular newsletters and bulletins to ensure you receive

all the latest information on Access to HE.

The latest bulletin—Roles and Responsibilities for Access

Coordinators—has recently been circulated and provides

some information you may find helpful.

Please contact us if you have a topic you would like to see

covered or wish to submit an article.

Access Practitioner Group (APG) Meetings provide an

opportunity for staff working in college as tutors and man-agers to come together, share views and discuss best practice for Access across the region. Your LASER Access Officers are also present and each term we try to have a lead theme for each meeting.

Following our successful Autumn APGs we are pleased

to confirm the following dates and locations for our Spring 2015 APGs:

Tue 3rd March 3-5pm Central Sussex College, Crawley

Thur 5th March 3-5pm Canterbury College, Kent

Tue 10th March 3-5pm East Berkshire College, Slough

Thur 12th March 3-5pm Chichester College, West Sussex

There will also be a dedicated Standardisation meeting

held at each venue prior to the APGs. These will start at 1pm and finish at 3pm. Further details to follow.

Please encourage several members of your team to

come to each meeting as they provide valuable staff de-velopment opportunities and there is no fee to attend!

Do mark these dates down in your diary

and if there is a particular date which you would like to attend, please

Case Study: Anna Morgan

Anna was the runner-up in the 2012—2013 LASER

Access to HE Student Prize, in the Outstanding Aca-demic Achievement category and was kind enough to give us a short interview about how she found her way into HE.

The full interview can be found on the website by

clicking this link.

If you know of a former student that could be ap-

proached as an Access Student Case Study, do drop us an email at s.hatherly@laser-awards.org.uk.

.

Chichester College

Biodiversity & Ecology

Conference 2015

Chichester College is host to an

annual Science Technology & Engi-neering Festival which has proved to be a roaring success among the students.

This year, the two day festival intro-

duced the students to TITAN the robot—the 8ft costume creation of Cyberstein Robots—star of Big Brother, the Winter Olympics 2014 at Sochi and backing dancer to the stars, including Will.i.am and Rhian-na.

The college has announced that

next year’s Biodiversity & Ecology Conference 2015 is now open to 80 HE students from across different pathways, as opposed to just Ac-cess students as it had been previ-ously.

For further information or to put

your name down for next years con-ference, please contact Graeme Elliot at :

Graeme.Elliot@chichester.ac.uk.

Independent Academic Study Units

Oops! We have spotted an error!

There is a rogue assessment criterion (AC) in many (but not all) of the IAS units.

The AC in question is 6.3 ’Critically analyse

and integrate at least one relevant theoretical framework or interpretation within the re-sponse to the study’ which should NOT be as-signed to learning outcome 6 (‘Be able to evalu-ate the investigative process and findings’) as it doesn’t belong there. Please ignore AC 6.3 in any of the IAS units.

We have updated the downloadable online ver-

sions that are available from the Access Unit Bank.

We apologise for this error which seems to

have stemmed from a simple cut and paste mis-take in one of the original unit templates.

In the meantime, all the very best for the inevitable final

rush before the Christmas break is here, and may we take

this opportunity to wish you a very happy holiday season

from all of us at

Laser Learning Awards

HOLD THE DATE!

The LASER Access to HE

Annual Conference will take place on Friday 10 July 2015 in Central London.

The theme for the day will be ‘Using technology to support Access’

Please contact Sue if you have anything you would like to be considered for inclusion in the day.

More details to follow.

Contact Us:

Laser Learning Awards Innovation Centre University Road Canterbury CT2 7FG T:01227 811827

accessenquiries@laser-awards.org.uk

Visit us on the web at :

www.laser-awards.org.uk