About the Scholarship Project

How did the project work?

The project explored different forms of scholarship, including student scholarly activity, creating a community of practice and employer engagement. This conceptual underpinning then guided the exploration of scholarship policies and practices within colleges. The next phase involved developing, testing and embedding different measures that could be developed into resources that could be used across the sector to support and enrich a wide range of scholarly activity and outputs for the sector.

A key outcome was to establish a Scholarship Framework that can be adopted by all colleges and is firmly centred on advancing relevant forms of scholarship within technical and professional curricula and which aims to enhance the learning experience for students.

The project ran for three years from 2015-18 and involved over 40 colleges. It was funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), now the Office for Students (OfS), Catalyst Fund and managed by AoC with support from the National Union of Students (NUS), The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), and Advance HE (formerly Higher Education Academy).