Project Name: Increasing and Evaluating Student Impact in Knowledge and Learning Exchange (ISIKLE)
Funders: OfS and Research England
Funding Period: September 2020 to September 2022
Principal Investigator: Andy Green
Co-Investigators at UCL : Brad Blitz (DEPS); David Gough and Janice Tripney (EPPI – Centre); Lindsey Macmillan and Gill Wyness (CEPEO); Laura Cream (UCL Culture); Gemma Moore (UCL Bartlett School); John Braime (UCL Students’ Union); Anne Laybourne (Faculty of Brain Sciences); Jerry Allen (UCL Enterprise); Olivia Stephenson (UCL Public Policy).
Co-Investigators at University of Manchester : Andy Westwood (Faculty of Humanities); Lynn Sheppard and Fatemeh Salehi Yazdi (Masood Enterprise Centre).
Project Objectives
This is a UCL-wide project, in partnership with University of Manchester and led from the LLAKES Centre in UCL Institute of Education.
The project aims to demonstrate and evaluate effective practices in student engagement in KE activities to assess their economic and social benefits to individual students and to external partners and communities. It will develop and evaluate four initiatives at UCL (two of which jointly with University of Manchester) where students participate in KE activities through: engaging in entrepreneurial and start-up training activities; working with VSOs, or undertaking placements in policy settings. The activities involve masters students conducting collaborative research as part of their dissertation work, and doctoral students developing business ideas and start-ups or contributing their research skills to VSOs to address an evaluation or impact challenge crucial to service delivery or organisational sustainability. The four sub-projects provide different KE activities which will be scaled up to include a larger and more diverse range of students and external partners, and improved through the adoption of new pedagogic approaches.