Collaborations: smoothing the transition experience

A unique approach to providing students in transition to a new HE experience is for HE and FE institutions to offer collaborative delivery and management of courses. Abertay University works in collaboration with Fife College and Dundee & Angus College to offer two innovative undergraduate courses, each course delivered by all three institutions. In another collaboration, Abertay offers their MSc Construction Management as a course of study where the students are sponsored by their employer in France and complete one third of the MSc at Abertay, one third in the collaborating private education institution in Paris - Ecole Supérieure de Conduite de Travaux (ESCT) and one third with their employer on a work-based project. Collaborative models of delivery appear to provide students with familiarity of learning experience and staff engagement along with introducing them to newer learning environments and experiences with fewer transition problems experienced by other students. In addition to providing students with a learning transition that offers some reassurance of familiarity the collaborative model of delivery enables each institution involved to offer their strengths, share best practice and derive benefits from the collaboration. However, the complexities of day-to-day management of such collaborations are not without challenges, but as a recent quality review has confirmed, there is considerable value to students in a new model of working with others in shared organisational delivery and management of courses at both undergraduate and post-graduate level.