Tag Archives: Pre-University Summer School

King’s Summer Programmes lead sector discussions at EAIE conference

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Alexander Heinz

As the international education sector is discovering its promising and changed future, Dr Alexander Heinz, Senior Associate Director Summer Programmes, and Gorka Hernandez Ortiz, Senior Programme Developer Summer Programmes, spoke at the EAIE 2022 conference in Barcelona. The discussions they led were attended by 500 industry experts. Gorka Hernandez Ortiz spoke about the future of hybrid learning. Dr Heinz’s contribution explored thinking and practice around overt and covert choreographies in experiential learning interventions. Together, they presented on the potential of arts-based pre-departure programming. As re-elected chair of the EAIE Summer School Expert Community, Dr Heinz also provided a session on custom programming, led through a campfire session on the International at Home potential of short-term programming and addressed the community at a summer school-specific reception with 120 experts from across the world.

King’s Summer Programmes at EAIE 2018

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King’s Summer Programmes will be participating at the 30th Annual EAIE Conference and Exhibition in Geneva, Switzerland which will take place from 11th to 14th September 2018.

Dr Sarah Williamson, Director Summer Programmes, will be speaking at a leadership and strategy workshop titled Summer school euros: costs, resources and business models, where she will discuss different business models for summer schools, including their relative advantages and disadvantages and how to determine which model fits best with your institution’s strategic objectives. Dr Williamson is also a speaker at the session titled All eyes on us: how established summer programmes overcome challenges which looks at challenges facing successful summer schools.

Joint summer schools: Win-win or double trouble? is the title of our poster presentation by Dr Alexander Heinz, Education Programme Lead Summer Programmes, showcasing a live London–Amsterdam case study. He will also be participating in a networking and learning event known as the Summer Schools health clinic as a summer school doctor. We are very proud to announce that Dr Heinz has been voted as the incoming Vice Chair of the Summer Schools expert community, an EAIE forum for all things related to running and establishing summer programmes.

Ian Fielding, Deputy Director Summer Programmes, will be meeting with partners to discuss feedback and provide updates and developments on the undergraduate summer school and summer exchange programme. Ian would also be delighted to hear from other universities interested in our partnership agreements or our Summer School and Education Abroad planning and design services. Make sure you drop by our Summer at King’s exhibition stand (G22).

If you are not physically attending the EAIE conference and exhibition but still want to stay updated with our news you can follow us on Twitter @KingSummer. Further information about EAIE can be found here.

Academic discovery and personal development: the Pre-University Summer School

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Untitled design 2As we said farewell to the 255 high school students who joined us this summer for the Pre-University Summer School it struck us once again how dramatically the programme has grown since its inception in 2013.

Starting with 50 students in its first year the programme now looks and feels very different, but its core objective remains the same: to offer students a taste of university life in London at one of the world’s best universities, King’s. With a packed timetable of lectures, seminars, group activities and skills based workshops this two week programme allows students to experience the style and demands of undergraduate level study and to build their skills and confidence for the future. Many of them also opt to live in our halls of residence which provides a valuable cultural opportunity, as one student put it, “to understand how people from all around the world think and live”*. It is an intensive and highly rewarding experience and as we begin to plan for our 5th summer we have been reflecting on the successes of this year’s developments to inform our approach.

Diversifying our offer
Summer 2016 was when we launched a newly designed Pre University Summer School. It had a lower cost to participants than previous programmes that we had offered and had a larger range of academic course options that we’d been able to offer in the past. As a result, we were thrilled to receive 40% more students on to campus and into our learning community.

Medicine, Psychology, Law, Business Management, Politics opened King’s doors to a whole new set of students. The appetite for the health-related courses in particular was huge. Student feedback suggests that in the case of vocational subjects, where study involves a heavy investment of time and energy, the chance to ‘try out’ the subject and find out what it entails is an attractive proposition –“I came in being unsure about my future prospects, I left almost positive that I wanted to pursue psychology”.

Untitled design

Developing the curriculum
We recognised that the students applying to our summer school had strong academic capabilities so we designed the 2016 programme accordingly to be as challenging and immersive as any of King’s rigorous undergraduate level programmes. An extended timetable included afternoon seminars in the daily schedule, allowing students to engage with academic literature and case studies which would feature in degree-level study. All courses also set their students two assignments, designed to mirror the undergraduate assessment patterns of the relevant subject. One class was even asked to submit their written assignment (to critically assess a referendum as a decision making tool for government) via the plagiarism software Turnitin.

Summer learning is a natural extension of King’s faculties’ teaching agenda and so summer students get access to the same active and experiential learning as year-round degree students, with hugely popular visits to laboratories, research facilities and training centres. On the Medicine course, for example, students spent a morning gaining valuable clinical skills experience at the Chantler Simulation and Interactive Learning Centre and this was cited as one of the best aspects of the course in the end of course evaluation. With 96% of students stating the programme helped them develop their academic skills and with a 10% increase to 91% of students agreeing that the overall programme met their expectations we will continue to challenge and extend our students through a dynamic and rigorous academic offer.

Enhancing our pastoral care
At its heart the Pre-University Summer School is also designed to offer an insight into university life: independent living, being a responsible adult and building positive relationships with a new and diverse group of people. As such, and with a 54% increase in the number of residential students this summer, we implemented a change within our pastoral staffing to better support students outside of the classroom. Every year King’s employs current King’s students as student ambassadors to supervise the Pre-University students due to their age (mostly under 18). However, this year we refined the staffing structure and placed a greater emphasis on the role of specialist pastoral ambassadors, who were assigned a discrete group of students within the accommodation for the duration of the programme. These ambassadors were instrumental in enhancing the feeling of a safe and secure environment and we therefore scheduled more time on arrival day for introductions, icebreakers and briefings about the programme which were all conducted within these pastoral groups. This allowed students to get to know their assigned ambassador, and vice versa, but also fostered a sense of community within these small groups. One of our returning students noticed these subtle developments, commenting that it “was amazing to see that by the end of the programme the flats were more like small families”.