Collaboration award

Andy Marriott, Rebecca Martin and Steve Marchant comprise a small team in the professional services staff managing UCL Computer Science.

Through collaboration, the team has developed strategies to maximise student recruitment and student experience in the department in the areas of communication, student and alumni relations and student work opportunities and events. 

The team has continually improved the web and social media presence of UCL Computer Science, creating public profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn as well as advertising on Google AdWords and Facebook. 

Another crucial area in which UCL Computer Science maintains high visibility is through keeping in touch with applicants, ensuring that as many as possible do take up their offers to study at UCL. 

For the many students who do enrol, the team is central to organising vital parts of their experience, such as the Imagine Cup. 

UCL hosted a 2013 regional final and then the 2013 UK finals. 

This is a small sampling of the many ways that the administration team in UCL Computer Science go above and beyond to secure and facilitate great opportunities for students and staff.

Recently, in collaboration with UCL Science and Technology Studies, the UCL Public Engagement Unit (PEU) developed a suite of collaborative public engagement training opportunities for postgraduate students at UCL, titled 'Connecting with the public: research communication, public engagement and outreach'.

These interactive sessions provide practical opportunities for students at UCL to explore the variety of ways in which researchers can effectively interact with public groups, from straightforward communication of research findings to dialogue about controversial issues. 

The sessions are available to postgraduate students of all backgrounds and levels of experience and are designed to build on their existing skills and interests. 

Students who attend this training are also eligible to apply for 'Train and Engage' funding of up to £1,000, organised by UCL PEU.

The ingenuity and effectiveness of the training format is evidenced by the extremely positive student feedback to date, for example: "I thought the course was super useful, particularly in terms of thinking about who the public are and what they would enjoy."

Although recognised as core aspects of graduate employability, skills such as 'engagement' and 'impact' are not often found within standard postgraduate experience.  

The new training programme is designed to fill such gaps and broaden the students' experience and perspective.

The 'Connecting with the public' training courses are an example of a collaborative approach to designing and delivering effective, enjoyable and valuable public engagement training opportunities for students at UCL.

Started in February 2012, Creating Connections is a once per term networking event that brings together UCL staff, postgraduates and representatives from London's voluntary and community sector. 

It aims to foster better understanding between UCL and local communities and identify areas of mutual interest and potential collaboration.  

Creating Connections is itself built upon collaboration - between UCL's Public Engagement Unit (PEU), UCLU's Volunteering Services Unit (VSU), and Camden Shares, a resource-sharing network run by Holy Cross Centre Trust, a local charity that has pioneered the use of co-production and timebanking. 

The UCL Academy, University of East London and London Borough of Newham have also been involved with organising specific events. 

In addition, Camden Borough Council has sent several of its staff to attend each event.

Networking sessions typically include round table discussions around five or six key themes followed by an open format networking session. 

Recent topics under consideration include: mental health and different cultures; evaluation and impact; and the digital divide.

To date, 170 non-academic attendees and 215 UCL staff and postgrads have participated in an event.

You can find out more, and see quotes from participants and photos, on the Creating Connections website.

The formation of the UCL Faculty of Population Health Sciences in 2011 out of four pre-existing institutes (Cardiovascular, Child Health, Epidemiology and Women's Health) meant that immediate administrative integration would be difficult to achieve.

At the same time, bringing together professional services staff who shared common roles and a common purpose had the potential to yield enormous benefits. 

In response, three professional networks were created and volunteers were sought to lead each: human resources, finance and research administration, and communication. 

The stated objectives of the networks are to improve communication, provide training and development and encourage interactive dialogue across the faculty and central service departments. 

All network members and leaders are contributing over and above their existing roles.

The group's achievements so far include facilitating workshops and training across all areas, regular meetings to share information, best practice ideas and informal feedback and developing standard operating procedures, guidance notes and checklists.

In Finance, the lead worked with colleagues across UCL Life and Medical Sciences to develop business procedures that are now being rolled out across the whole school. Other networks are conducting similar work.

The collaboration of the faculty network leaders puts UCL's goals first by working in partnership to bridge a vital link between local and central staff and sets the standard for broader, pan-institutional partnerships in the university. 

The UCL Institute of Child Health (ICH) and UCL Institute for Global Health (IGH) share a Taught Courses Administrative Team (TCAT) dedicated to providing seamless teaching support for the institutes' joint activities at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. 

Manager Ruth Harper leads this team, which supports over 350 students and countless academics.

The work conducted by TCAT involves extensive collaboration between ICH and IGH. 

The team is constantly exploring and adopting practices that suit both institutes, in their scheduling of teaching activities as well as in their improvement of services offered to academics and students.

The team was originally the TCAT for ICH programmes, which at the time included global health programmes. 

When IGH became an independent division, the team ensured that the ability of administrators to support each other's work across the new institutes was not compromised.

This is all the more impressive given the extremely diverse student population that they manage, across disciplines and a range of international backgrounds.  

Annual programme surveys reveal that the team is regarded by students as providing a high quality service. 

The high number of applications to the shared degree programme shows how much prospective and current students value the ability to take an inter-disciplinary approach to their modules and attest to how well this process is conducted both academically and administratively.

In March 2013, the UCL Events team managed and hosted an evening to honour the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the Choshu Five - the young Japanese men who secretly left Japan and came to Britain to study at UCL.

This anniversary marks 150 years of academic interaction between the UK and Japan, as well as a reminder of UCL's historic place as the first university in England to open its doors to students of any race or religion.

UCL Events worked collaboratively with the UCL Office for International Affairs, UCL Development and Alumni Relations as well as academic colleagues to create a full day of celebration that highlighted the importance of the Japan-UCL relationship.

Although the event was challenging to organise due to the involvement of so many diverse parties, the project team worked extremely well together. 

They collated a guest list to maximise the impact of the event, managed the expectations and demands of external sponsors, set up a marquee and seating in the Japanese Garden and incorporated various Japanese customs, traditions and musicians to welcome international guests.

Further, a number of UCL Japanese students assisted in translating at the event to ensure that language barriers would not be an issue.

The event was a celebration of the powerful historical connection between UCL and Japan and the strength of collaboration between our institutions that continues today. 

Read this UCL News article to find out more about the anniversary event.

Life Study (LS) is a high-profile, complex £38.4m Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded research programme of strategic importance to UCL School of Life and Medical Sciences (SLMS). 

In order to manage and deliver LS, John Ferady (Director of Procurement) and Jack Foster (Direct of Special Projects) and their colleagues within UCL Finance and Business Affairs collaborate with a complex network of related stakeholders. 

Mr Ferady chairs a procurement sub-group that has met monthly over the last two years to guide and support the procurement of a range of services for LS, including an information systems supplier, a biorepository and fieldwork agency. 

Mr Foster is responsible for the overall financial plan for LS. This is a key document in acquiring the approval of funders and an essential component when submitting the project for review.

The collective award value of LS is in excess of £8.4m. 

The team at UCL Finance and Business Affairs provides professional leadership, co-ordinating a range of relevant expertise and guiding high-level discussions with the ESRC and their nominated representative. 

Their work stands out as an example of putting UCL's goals forward by working in partnership. In addition to liaising with external bodies, their work involves UCL Contracts Department, UCL Legal Services and the UCL Institute of Child Health. 

Procurement Services and Special Projects have enhanced UCL's reputation among key external stakeholders for managing large-scale projects professionally and collaboratively.

The redevelopment of the UCL Museums & Collections website was a collaborative project involving staff members from UCL Communications & Marketing, UCL Web & Mobile Services, as well as the wider UCL Public and Cultural Engagement (PACE) team overseeing the project. 

UCL Museums & Collections website is a core element of PACE's digital communications and marketing work. 

In 2012, PACE management identified areas in which the website could better raise the profile of museums and collections as well as provide visitors with key information more quickly and easily. 

To achieve these improvements, the website would need new content as well as a new structure and design. 

Researching the needs and issues of the website was also an inter-departmental affair. It involved looking at existing audience research, website traffic analyses and website user testing. 

Web and Mobile Services assisted by conducting a series of card-sort workshops with samples of target audiences and by sharing best practice in developing websites. This helped to develop a user-centred website structure and navigation. 

The Communications team also became involved, helping with the design aesthetic of the website, key areas of content and providing general advice in the ultimate development. 

Developed in June and launched in September, the website received positive responses both anecdotally and in user testing. 

It continues to be evaluated and redeveloped in small areas so that it can keep achieving departmental goals.

The Part-Time Doctoral Researcher Programme is a one-day event organised through UCL Graduate School's Skill Development Programme (SDP) and presented in collaboration with UCLU and the UCL Institute of Education, University of East London and Brunel University.

The inaugural event, held in June 2013, involved over 45 participants from a variety of disciplines studying at the four academic institutions.

The programme gave part-time researchers the opportunity to share and discuss with peers and academics what research is, how research quality is assessed and how to develop strategies that help researchers encounter the challenges of undertaking a part-time degree. 

The event focuses on key areas for doctoral research, such as how to manage time effectively, how to maintain momentum and how to approach thesis writing.

The 2013 event was facilitated by a team of researcher development professionals from all the partner institutions, and included facilitated discussions with academics from various UCL departments.

The programme aligns with UCL's vision to support the development of all research students and ensure quality of research.

Community engagement around Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is a new activity for UCL and started in earnest only in mid-2013. 

After conducting a survey to establish the needs of the community in the area, the UCL Public and Cultural Engagement team was made aware that people living in east London were keen to work with UCL but unsure of how to begin this process. 

At UCL, teams who work with external communities are spread throughout different departments, and this can be difficult to navigate for those unfamiliar with the system.

However, with the aim of promoting UCL in east London and making the university more accessible, a team comprised of groups from a number of departments are working together to approach the community in a more simple manner. 

Kim Townsend, Public Engagement Coordinator (East), was established as the single point of contact for the East London community. 

The whole project is supported and funded by UCL Estates New University Quarter (NUQ), who play an active role in decision making about what initiatives are offered in the community, attend all of the events and build feedback from external facing staff into their plans for the NUQ.

This collaborative approach to community engagement is a new way of doing things primarily because of the collaboration between UCL and host boroughs. 

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014, submitted in December 2013, was the seventh national research assessment process. Compliance is a regulatory requirement. 

Comprised of members of staff from Student & Registry Services, the Office of the Vice-Provost (Research) and the Office of the Vice-Provost (Enterprise), the REF team at UCL is responsible for coordinating and delivering UCL's REF submission. 

This included managing the new element measuring research impact and administrating data collection processes to create a submission of the highest possible quality. 

The team also developed and shared comprehensive guidance for academic and professional services staff involved in handling research. 

Despite numerous challenges, such as the unprecedentedly complex nature of the project, the new and unfamiliar guidelines of the REF 2014 and the wide variety of stakeholders across UCL, the team easily met their deadline.  

The final submission included more than 1,598 pages of text. 

The value of this process is that REF can now provide quality ratings (likely to last until 2020) for research across all disciplines as calculated by peer-assessment panels. 

Outstanding REF results are critical to UCL's mission to uphold its high standing in league tables and reputation for research excellence and impact.

In this way, the 2014 UCL REF submission represents the pinnacle of what the university can achieve when all its disparate elements pull together. 

The UCL School of Life & Medical Sciences (SLMS) Intranet Project team, drawn from staff and students across UCL, collaborated on a self-initiated project to review, redesign and build five integrated flagship intranet websites.

The new websites aim to improve internal communications for the SLMS staff community with added tools for enhanced user interaction. 

Led by Eleanor Day, SLMS Faculty Officer, and Morgan Williams, SLMS Communications Manager, the team ran a thorough consultation process, frequently bringing together people from different communities across UCL to discuss best practice and identify shared information requirements. 

Working with Anthony Peacock from UCL Information Services Division, and collaborating with two PhD students from the UCL Maths and Physical Sciences, the team also developed a software entitled OPTIC (Optimised Professional Team Information Centre). 

The tool is designed to answer the need, identified in feedback from the SLMS community, to have a better way to find contacts, counterparts and teams in different areas of the school. 

The intranet sites (UCL log-in details required) were launched on 12 May 2014.  

This diverse team united under a common aim, bringing in expertise from across the widest possible range of staff at the disposal of SLMS and the wider UCL population. 

Their collaboration shows the benefit of developing online areas and resources as tools for creating a close virtual community out of geographically remote 'actual' locations.

Led by Claire Glen, the Research Coordination Office in UCL School of Life & Medical Sciences (SLMS) is an integrated team of research facilitators and coordinators who work to encourage cross-disciplinary research communities and strategic collaborations across grant applications, events and communications activities. 

Their work increases the success of research funding applications and develops UCL's health-related research strategy.

In 2013 alone, the team successfully coordinated a number of large funding applications, including an NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Blood-Borne Virus and STIs (£4m) and the ESRC Administrative Data Research Centre - England (£9m total, £2.4m to UCL). 

They also made important contributions to the re-accreditation of UCLPartners as an Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC). 

Beyond grant applications, the SLMS Research Coordination Office worked hard to transfer the success of the UCL SLMS Domains into the pan-institutional UCL Research Domains, leading the development of the website in collaboration with the Office of the Vice-Provost (Research), UCL Communications & Marketing and UCL Web & Mobile Services. 

The website and related communications activities will help to galvanise cross-disciplinary research communities through supporting interactions across the whole institution. 

The SLMS Research Coordination Office is a vital guide in helping staff effectively navigate a large organisation and its attendant systems. 

They help to build relationships internally and externally through a wide range of activities, inspiring and allowing colleagues to achieve cooperatively.  

In February 2013, UCL School of Life & Medical Sciences (SLMS) held a Research Services Workshop involving representatives from every division and institute within the school. 

The representatives identified three main areas for improvement in research processes and enlisted a volunteer team from SLMS and UCL Research Services to assist in planning the changes. 

These priorities were: a) to enhance access to management information on research grants; b) the production of a SLMS Research Grant Checklist; and c) generating guidance and tips for how to improve overhead recovery on grants and contracts. 

To scope the project, team members were variously tasked with consulting the SLMS community on their requirements, meeting with representatives of the SLMS faculties and liaising with professional services colleagues to ensure alignment with UCL policies and procedures. 

Once the project deliverables had been met in a draft format, a second SLMS Research Services Workshop was organised in November 2013. The team presented the work they had performed and sought feedback and ideas to enhance it further. 

As a result of this collaboration, the initial priorities were all addressed through the creation of relevant information sets. 

The work by the team and the workshops through which it was organised has improved the financial return generated from the UCL portfolio of research grants, making the grant approval process more efficient overall. 

The Teaching Administrator Conference (TAC) Organising Committee, comprised of staff members from across UCL, develops an annual event for teaching administrators and central services colleagues from across UCL and the UCL Institute of Education.

It is an opportunity for participants to network, exchange ideas and cultivate best practice.

The conference is, on average, attended by 120 colleagues drawn from all UCL faculties and relevant central services divisions.

It features 25 workshops on topics relevant to teaching administrators, which range from managing student expectations and supporting students with disabilities to improving the way Moodle is used within departments.

The event helps to raise the profile of Teaching Administrators (TAs) and build their confidence, inspiring them to support innovation in their departments and to challenge systems that are inadequate.

The conference is reviewed annually based on feedback received by participants and in response to sector-wide developments.

The annual event is supported by the TA Forum on Moodle, a platform providing year-round opportunities for networking, collaborating and sharing ideas. 

The Teaching Administrator Conference (TAC) Organising Committee, comprised of staff members from across UCL, develops an annual event for teaching administrators and central services colleagues from across UCL and the Institute of Education.

It is an opportunity for participants to network, exchange ideas and cultivate best practice.

The conference is, on average, attended by 120 colleagues drawn from all UCL faculties and relevant central services divisions.

It features 25 workshops on topics relevant to teaching administrators, which range from managing student expectations and supporting students with disabilities to improving the way Moodle is used within departments.

The event helps to raise the profile of Teaching Administrators (TAs) and build their confidence, inspiring them to support innovation in their departments and to challenge systems that are inadequate.

The conference is reviewed annually based on feedback received by participants and in response to sector-wide developments.

The annual event is supported by the TA Forum on Moodle, a platform providing year-round opportunities for networking, collaborating and sharing ideas. 

The UCL Communication and Culture Awards were organised for the first time in 2014 and recognised the hard work done by staff at UCL in sharing their research, teaching and learning through media and cultural partnerships. 

The managing team was made up of staff from the UCL Public Engagement Unit (PEU), Bloomsbury Theatre, Development & Alumni Relations Office and Communications & Marketing team, particularly the Corporate Events team.

All stages of the event were collaborative, from the structure of the awards categories to the design of the application form.

To evaluate the 29 nominations submitted, a judging panel was selected from across UCL, emphasising the collaboration behind the awards project and the diversity it aims to celebrate.  

None of the teams involved could have delivered this project alone, and its success depended on trust and close working relationships between them.

The awards scheme that existed previously, the Public Engagement Awards, were run in-house by the PEU. 

The Communication and Culture Awards thus mark a major shift in work style by welcoming new collaborations. 

The awards were the instigator of further collaboration between the PEU, Corporate Events team and Media Relations team, who later joined forces with the British Science Association to organise an event for scientists to network with the media.

Read a full review of the Communication and Culture Awards ceremony, with photos, on the UCL Events blog.

UCL Publications and Marketing Services (PAMS) led the review, research, redesign and delivery of the 2014/15 entry UCL Graduate Prospectus in print and web formats. 

The existing printed prospectus design had been in place for six years and was no longer meeting the needs of prospective graduate students, evidenced by a dramatic drop in demand for printed prospectuses alongside a vast increase in visits to the Graduate Prospectus website. 

PAMS sought to take a cross-team approach to the redesign and to ensure institution-wide input in order to deliver a prospectus that fully represented the range of what UCL has to offer. 

Stakeholders were invited to attend a workshop to evaluate UCL's current Graduate Prospectus alongside those of competitors. 

Following the workshop, PAMS wrote a design brief and distributed this among those who had attended the workshop to ensure the brief was in line with the outcomes of the meeting.

This feedback system continued into the design phase, during which academic and professional staff were consulted on the suitability of template pages and often instigated substantial improvements.   

The collaborative approach followed here resulted in a fresh, audience-focused and modern printed prospectus that places UCL in an optimal position for recruiting the best students.

Further cooperative activities focused on how graduate marketing and communications are now being investigated, including an open day and a graduate marketing network of staff and students.

The UCL HR Consultancy team, together with UCL Organisational Development, work with faculty managers to increase the professionalisation and skills of administrative staff across three UCL faculties and UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). 

Over the four years in which this relationship has been running, the teams have held information sessions educating administrative staff about all aspects of the university as well as sessions to address training needs and skills development. 

There are now two days per year devoted to this purpose with typically 50 attendees on each day. 

Keynote speakers in the past include deans of faculties, Rex Knight, UCL Vice-Provost (Operations), and Charlotte Croffie, Director of Organisational Development.

The focus of the days so far has been on customer service, personal presentation, body language, improving leadership, team building and unconscious bias.

This is an example of cross-departmental collaboration working towards the persistent, long-term goal of staff development. 

The UCL International Office (IO) has been pro-active in suggesting and developing innovative digital marketing and recruitment support for the UCL Joint Faulty of Arts & Humanities and Social & Historical Sciences while working closely with staff members from these areas.  

The IO provided Hobsons Connect support for the Joint Faculty graduate open day in 2014, the inaugural year of using automated registrations for this event.

Registrations and attendance both increased while the number of errors was reduced. 

Further, a link to a live stream of the event was provided to overseas enquirers who could not attend. Current students in the Joint Faculty answered queries received by email on the day. 

Working with staff from particular departments, such as UCL Hebrew & Jewish Studies, UCL Anthropology and UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, to name only a few, the IO has also developed a range of subject-specific emails designed to direct enquirers to specific content on a department's particular website. 

The IO is also on the front line of using Chinese social media channels Youku and Weibo to advertise and promote UCL among students from this region. 

Developing digital marketing and collaborative recruitment activities with faculties are areas of an increased priority for the IO. 

The new projects to date have been creative and innovative, allowing prospective students to interact with UCL in new ways more tailored to their individual needs and interests.

The knowledge gained from these pilot collaborations will inform the development of similar activities with other departments and faculties. 

The Admissions team in UCL Student & Registry Services (SRS) is responsible for much of the operational work involved in admitting undergraduate, postgraduate and affiliate students to UCL. 

They also develop the policy and strategy that underpins these procedures. 

In collaboration with the Admissions Project team in UCL Information Services Division (ISD), these groups worked to design, develop and deliver a new admissions software - UCLSelect. 

After an initial attempt to create paperless workflows stalled in 2012, the teams realised that a closer working relationship between SRS and ISD would be necessary to deliver a program that met the needs of users while also keeping within the extremely tight timeframe for delivery.

The teams used innovative and creative solutions to design the program, layering enhanced technology onto an existing database solution. 

The final product is an attractive, user-friendly system that has completely eliminated the use of paper in admissions processes from the central divisions involved and vastly reduces its use in faculty departments. 

The software has also made it possible to deliver complete visibility, transparency and auditability of all actions taken in the admissions and selection process. 

After launching in October 2013, UCLSelect is now has more than 1,000 users across UCL. 

Both teams have since worked together to take the program to the wider UCL community and educate and support its end users.

In 2011, staff from UCL Public and Cultural Engagement began developing a highly innovative core module for the BASc Arts and Sciences degree, titled 'Object lessons: Communicating knowledge through collections'. 

The class was developed in collaboration with colleagues from the BASc programme, the UCL Institute of Archaeology, the UCL Centre for Learning and Teaching (CALT) and UCL E-Learning Environments (ELE). 

It focuses on the integration of objects from UCL Museums, with this process known as object-based learning (OBL). 

CALT was key in guiding the assessment criteria for the module and advised on how best to integrate different learning styles into the curriculum, while ELE used the project as a pilot to test the capabilities of MyPortfolio, UCL's in-house learning platform.  

Through a series of innovative collaborations, 'Object lessons' employs a range of novel forms of teaching and learning. 

This includes OBL research-based learning and team working as well as written work, the development of a group virtual exhibition on UCL's online student learning spaces and a group oral presentation. 

A key benefit of the course is the range of staff involved in its delivery. This affords students a wider, cross-disciplinary perspective on their learning.

The experience of collaborating to deliver and teach on this project is to form a chapter in a book on OBL. 

The book itself is a collaboration between UCL and external partners from the United States, Italy, China and other nations.

Employed through UCL Careers and funded by UCL Engineering, UCL Laws, UCL BASc and UCL Management Science and Innovation, UCL specialist careers teams provide bespoke employability counsel for students within the participating disciplines. 

This guidance is more important than ever before - higher fees and a volatile economy mean that students benefit greatly from help in their career decision-making. 

Partnering with academic departments allows UCL Careers to ensure their teams are both accessible to students and properly embedded within the relevant industries. 

Working solely within faculties also allows these teams to optimise relationships with alumni, connecting them to current students as well as reinforcing the existing graduate network.

Some of the teams' achievements include setting up a new event in UCL Engineering to encourage students to work with engineering companies in their summer vacation; establishing a compulsory placement element in the UCL BASc programme and sharing feedback from employers in the legal industry with students in UCL Laws.

In 2013, UCL Careers won a national 'Excellence' award from the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS) for its collaboration with academic departments. Details of this prestigious award can be found on the AGCAS website.

UCL Student Advisory and Events Services provides a range of support and administrative assistance to a range of students at different levels of their education. 

Many of the events and services offered by the Student Advisory and Events Services team are collaborative across these teams and many other professional services and academic departments from across UCL. 

These events include the bi-annual opening of session orientation programme for new students, the study abroad fair and the new UCL Student Centre, a centralised location for students with queries about their student record.  

The opening of session, held every September and January, is one of the team's busiest and most co-operative programmes. 

As well as enrolling the majority of new students, this event also encompasses the International Students Orientation Programme (led by the International Student Support Team), designed to give new overseas and European students a smoother start to life at UCL. 

In recent years, UCL has been the highest scoring institution for orientation events on the International Student Barometer. 

This and the vast range of work undertaken by the Student Advisory and Events Services team clearly marks them as a vital component in UCL's structure, directing students to the range of services the university has to offer.