 Hello everyone and welcome back to UCAT Festival TV. You'll all be watching this on the morning of the final day of the conference. It's been fantastic thus far and I'm really excited to have the opportunity to speak to my next guest, Professor Michael Draper and Alison Braddock from Swansea. How are you both doing? Brilliant, thank you very much Colin. It's great to be on TV. Yeah, very well. Fascinating festival. Absolutely, yeah. It has been a wonderful three days and people will be watching this just prior to I suppose the last session or thereabouts. How have you both enjoyed the festival thus far? Oh, it's been amazing. I mean the sessions have been really diverse, really practical, really useful. I've just come off a panel session with colleagues from across the UK from different institutions, which was chaired by, I say chaired very well by Emily McIntosh from Middlesex University, basically talking about the relationship between personal tutoring and student services. I think we had over 150 delegates attend that particular session and the questions just kept on coming and coming. We could have gone on far longer and it was a fascinating discussion. You learn off each other when you talk into each other anyway and you spark off each other, which is great. But the level of the questioning was very insightful and people really wanted to know how they could improve personal tutoring within their institution. You tell us the questions. They really do care about students, the people attend this conference. Absolutely. That was a great session. I'm not surprised given like the caliber of people involved in the two organizations and I'm delighted that I suppose delegates will also have the opportunity to watch back because everything is being recorded, which is one of the benefits to the virtual environment. And what about you, Alison, any particular highlights? Absolutely. I attended a session by Catherine Mann from the University of Melbourne about advising by design. And she explained how the design methodology worked and most of us in universities strive to include the student voice. We talk a great deal about partnership and co-creation. But for me, this is a methodology that you can use so that right from the beginning before you come up with initiatives, policies and strategies, you are co-creating them with the students and you can bring in the diversity of students to ensure that you are making the opportunities fully inclusive. Alison and I had a catch-up at 12 noon today after the session and we've all decided to press the go button on that for our institution. Alison was so enthusiastic about it and I caught the enthusiasm and said, this is going to work. It sounds really good to me. I think it's transformational. I really do. Well, that's exactly I suppose what you're hoping to get from a conference or a festival. And I suppose the timing has almost worked nicely in some respects because everyone is gearing up for the next academic year and suddenly you've kind of had this influx of new kind of great ideas and ideas around best practice. You've met new colleagues. So it's actually worked really well. I feel there's definitely things that I've taken that I can already see myself implementing. And sometimes I feel if I go to a conference over the summer, I maybe lose a little bit or I come back and somebody's on annual leave. But I feel this year I might be able to really implement some of the things that I really would like to. So it's good to hear that that seems to have been the case all around. Yeah, absolutely. I think personal tutoring is probably one of the most important relationships between an institution and their students. I think given the situation around COVID, given that there's going to be more blended learning, that relationship is going to be even more important going forward. So I think the more that we can engage with the agenda that UCAS has set and of course institutions are also setting around person tutoring and academic mentoring, the better it will be for student experience. Absolutely. And now both of you are going to be involved in the UCAS 2021 conference, which we are hoping there have been wonderful aspects to the virtual world, but we are hoping it will be in person and that we will all be able to gather together. Maybe you could tell me a little bit about what we can look forward to in Swansea next year. Right. Well, there will certainly be a warm welcome in the hillsides. I mean, that's Wales for you. We're along the song and hospitality. I suppose other countries may claim to that as well, but a very warm welcome in Wales. Swansea is a dynamic institution. We've grown, I think over the last decade, quite rapidly, progressively but in a controlled manner so that we can make sure the student experience is absolutely right. We currently have around 22,000 students in total. And obviously we hope to retain those students going forward, which we will make sure that we do with the student experience that we offer. It is our centenary year as well, which will be playing over into 2021, so there will be celebrations around that. And I think when you come to Wales, when you come to Swansea, you'll see the perfect physical location of our institution. Not many institutions can claim to be on the beach. Well, one campus is almost on the beach. But the Singleton campus, where the conference will take place, is separated from the beach and the Mumbles village, which most people know, simply by a dual carriageway over which there is a walkover. Behind us is the brilliant and beautiful Singleton Park ornamental dark gardens, which are lovely. And of course, Mumbles, I think he is very well known as a village, but we are the gateway to the wonderful Gower Peninsula, the first area of outstanding natural beauty made in the UK. And rightly so, we have some world-class beaches, and I mean world-class beaches, stunning landscapes and stunning history as well. Both prehistoric on the Gower Peninsula, and also within Swansea itself, where not many people may know this, but we were known for our copper industry in the past. The reason why Nelson's fleet at Trafalgar did so well against certain countries, not naming, was because they were copper bottomed. And so the manoeuvrability of the boats through the water was made possible by the copper produced in Swansea. Not many people may know that, but I will pass over to Alison because I think that's really cool. I just say I hope it will be a physical conference because we're planning lots of exciting aspects which introduce delegates to Welsh culture. So Croeso Egid and Welsh food and unmissable Welsh singing. I am, I am. That was extended to my Welsh, by the way, which Alison- Oh, Bentegeti. Yes, see, there you go. But the theme of the conference, just to come back to the conference that we're going to be hosting for UCAT in 2021, is all about directed independent regulated learning by students. As most people will probably realize, the key part of the step up from schools to ecologists into institutions, higher education institutions is around that step into independent learning by students. And really, how do we best support students so that they progress through their levels of study through level four, level five, level six undergraduate students so that they achieve an outcome, not just an academic outcome, but also an outcome in terms of their personal development, which is what they want. And I think it's important to have that conversations past a person tutoring relationship, academic mentoring relationship to establish what it is a student wants. And not everybody wants a first. Not everybody wants a two one. Most people will be satisfied with a two two depending on where they come from. So having that conversation and coming to some agreed outcomes for the student, which a student is aspiring to and perhaps stretching those outcomes of this as well. Well, you've sold me on it certainly I can tell you that I've growing up in Cork, we used to get S for C rather than channel four so I already know how beautiful Wales is on screen and I really look forward to seeing it in person. And I think that the theme of the conference sounds fantastic so I hope you know to meet you both in in Swansea next year I want to thank both of you for taking the time to chat to me today. And I think it's going to be a fantastic event in 2021. Thank you very much color we really do look forward to it.