On Tuesday morning I attended Maria Carnegie's workshop. After a game of 'spot the FE/HE student', which is not as easy as you might think, she presented with admirable clarity a case-study of the development of the University of Derby's Buxton campus, which 1636 HE students and 2520 FE share. The campus contains Buxton College and the School of Culture and Lifestyle, which includes hair and beauty, public services, sport and catering. They open for seven days a week, through the Easter break and the service needs to function for 40 weeks a year, because of the disparities between HE and FE term and semester dates. She mentioned one inequitable aspect: while FE students have access to all the University's licensed content, the HE students can see everything except the FE content. Their student data systems make it easy to distinguish between FE and FE students, using different prefixes for the student number. On the other hand FE students are not entitled to inter-library loans. There are some tensions between the groups, and HE students sometimes blame the FE students for behaviour which they too exhibit. On the whole, the experience has been very positive, and there have been benefits for all, and cross-fertilisation between the two sectors.
For more detail see her article in SCONUL Focus:
Carnegie, Maria
Library services for all ages, all abilities, and all levels - welcome to Buxton!
SCONUL Focus 45: 125-127 (2009)[pdf]
In the afternoon I went first to hear Emma Illingworth and Jo Alcock (aka @wigglesweets and @joeyanne) on library brands and the student experience. Once again I found this a difficult session to summarise and would refer the curious reader to Lex Rigby's far better account at http://www.lexrigby.com/2010/06/23/cofheucr-fifth-joint-conference-%E2%80%93-day-2-pt-3/
Finally Ihar Ivanou of North Warwickshire and Hinckley on professional development and career progression in FE. Ihar had posted a survey on the CoFHE Jiscmail list, and summarised his results. This is vey timely work and deserves wider dissemination: I suggest he might want to write it up and consider publishing. A lively discussion covered areas such as the educational levels required of non-professional staff, the fact that very many of us appoint very highly qualified people into these roles, and some of the deficiencies of the current routes to qualification and progression.