Developing a UK widening participation forum

Widening Participation in Higher Education

Higher education (HE) has the potential to be transformative: for individuals, local communities and for the wider society. The extent to which HE succeeds, however, depends on many factors. At a minimum, for higher education to transform lives, individuals from a wide range of backgrounds must apply to and participate in HE [1]. Certainly this has been the rhetoric of successive UK governments...

e-Participation and Governance: Widening the net

As a solution to declining political and civic participation, many governments are seeking to increase the number of citizens who participate in policy-making and governance. Contrary to early expectations, recent research suggests that new information and communications technologies (ICTs) may not increase participation rates in formal organisations, and so may not improve participation rates....

Assessing Online Discussion Forum Participation

As a socially constructive learning tool, discussion forums remain central to online education. They have continued to evolve in functionality, acquiring ever-increasing usability features. However, development has lagged in providing instructors the means to assess student work in forums. The author submits an overview of his software program that provides instructors with the means to evaluat...

Working towards widening participation in nurse education.

The widening participation agenda has particular significance for worldwide nursing since it is a profession which is under increasing scrutiny in its recruitment and retention practices. Debate about this agenda within nurse education is strengthened by careful scrutiny of the research within the wider context of higher education, some of which challenges commonly held assumptions. This paper ...

Increasing or Widening Participation in Higher Education? — a European overview