Enhancing impact through collaborative partnerships in UK Higher Education

Since 2020/21, the UK Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) has offered funding for small groups of institutions to work together on projects to enhance the quality of their students’ learning experiences and develop outputs that benefit the sector as a whole. Advancing knowledge and practice around priority topics – including generative artificial intelligence, assessment and flexible delivery, education for sustainable development, innovative quality processes, student engagement, and enterprise and employability – the Collaborative Enhancement Project (CEP) programme has funded over 60 distinctive projects to date involving over 125 UK and international partners. Creating valuable opportunities for topic experts from different disciplines and institutions to collaborate and develop new tools and communities of practice, the programme has been a welcome catalyst for change and emboldened a spirit of community and cooperation in the English sector. This paper focuses on the design and management of the CEP programme and how it enables thought leaders and expert practitioners to meaningfully address increasingly complex challenges at local, national and global levels. Specifically, it considers the role of quality assurance agencies in pioneering research and practice in partnership with higher education (HE) institutions, and enhancing engagement with the academic third mission. Developed jointly with Liverpool John Moores University, which led a collaboration focused on enhancing the impact of work-based learners on global issues, the paper considers the experience of completing a CEP and how this particular project has empowered educators and students to enhance the societal impact of academic learning.