All Cambridge Admissions Office courses

Tom Levinson, Head of Widening Participation and Regional Collaboration, will discuss the new Access and Participation Plan agreed between the University of Cambridge and the government regulator, the Office for Students. This briefing will cover the contents of the plan and discuss the new targets agreed with the OfS, as well as the impact they may have on outreach and widening participation activity.

VENUE CHANGE: Due to a clash, the venue for this event has changed and is now to be held in the New Wing Seminar room in the SSC.

PLEASE NOTE: if you wish to join this session remotely, please say so in the special requirements section of your booking so we can manage numbers in the room and ensure we send you a Teams link.

This is an opportunity for staff supporting students with their transition to undergraduate study to share good practice and useful findings from their experiences working with Cambridge students. There will be showcases by speakers working with current students with an opportunity for Q&A, as well as time for networking and building connections with colleagues across the Collegiate University.

Any colleagues interested in contributing a short (ten minutes max) presentation to the showcase would be very welcome to do so and should email apevaluation@admin.cam.ac.uk in the first instance.

NOTE: if you wish to join this briefing remotely, please state this in the special requirements section of your booking (so we can manage expected numbers in the room).

A series of briefings from the ADS team taking you through recent research they have produced examining admissions and widening participation at the University of Cambridge.

This session from Andrew Avery will provide an overview of some analysis of UCAS EXACT data exploring regional patterns HE application and progression. Through a series of Tableau dashboards, Andrew will show the observed application and destination patterns for high-achieving applicants and explore what implications this might have for Cambridge outreach and recruitment in the UK.

This session will be recorded and made available afterwards for those who can’t attend.

Please note that this is for Schools Liaison Officers only. This session offers training to enable Schools Liaison Officers to deliver CPD training in schools and colleges to help teachers support student’s progression to leading universities.

This session is aimed at colleagues across the collegiate University who work with prospective students through admissions and outreach activity. In this session, the Director of Admissions, Sam Lucy will run through some of the common but trickier questions and how to answer them well.

We’re keen to include as many of the questions you find challenging as possible. Please add any questions you would like included here, or send via email to departmentliaison@admin.cam.ac.uk.

This session will be held via Zoom, the details of which will be circulated before the event. The session will also be recorded.

Attainment Raising presentation by The Brilliant Club for outreach staff from across the university who can benefit from free professional development to improve their practice.

Behaviour Management training for outreach staff from across the university who can benefit from free professional development to improve their practice.

This training focuses on managing the needs and behaviour of both the group you and individual pupils. It will provide you with techniques and strategies you can use when delivering sessions to students. In this session, you’ll explore how your own behaviour influences your students’, and learn how to control your emotional responses when you’re interacting in the classroom. You’ll discover the latest techniques in classroom management and develop your capability to achieve consistency

This is a session aimed at outreach staff, working with school-aged young people. We will be learning and practising strategies for managing low-level disruption, based on ‘Teach Like A Champion’. We will also discuss the importance of behaviour management for effective delivery, and how to know when behaviour management is your responsibility, or the school’s.

Cambridge Admissions Office have organised a series of briefing sessions in the coming weeks aimed at Schools Liaison Officers, Faculty/Department Outreach Staff, and any academics and staff members who will communicate with potential students.

This session will be useful to anybody who delivers academic workshops, particularly to young people at an outreach related event, though the skills developed will also help to improve general presentation and teaching skills. It will be delivered by The Brilliant Club (https://thebrilliantclub.org/)

The course will be split into three main sessions:

• Working with Pre-Undergraduate Students -including understanding of disadvantage in the school, overview of WP (widening participation), managing behaviour and creating a positive environment.
• Designing Engaging and Interactive Sessions
• Turning your Research into a Taster Lecture or Course for School Pupils

The session will help participants to consider the various audiences that they might deliver to in their roles, with a focus on those in a widening participation context. It will explore ways to engage those audiences and how to embed interactivity and higher order thinking skills into sessions delivered in person and virtually.

The course will be run via Zoom and these details will be circulated to registered participants.

NOTE: if you'd like to join the session remotely, please let us know in the Special Requirements section when booking. This will help us plan the session and manage physical numbers in the room.

This hybrid session, delivered online and in person, will outline and explain a simple 6-step process for designing and embedding evaluation for Access & Participation interventions and programmes. The process has been developed by the Cambridge Admissions Office and is flexible enough to be applied to many A&P interventions, regardless of the student lifecycle stage in question.

This online session will explore ethical considerations and principles within evaluation and how to ensure ethical practice in your evaluation. The session will comprise of practical guidance and the opportunity to work through real ethics scenarios relating to evaluation within a group.

This online session will explore why and how interviews can be a valuable method in the evaluation of access and participation, outreach and public engagement activities/interventions.

NB: if you would like to join this session remotely, please let us know in the special requirements of your booking and we can send you a Microsoft Teams link.

Surveys are a very common data collection method in Access & Participation evaluation. This session will review why they are so ubiquitous, their strengths and some common pitfalls to look out for. Great if you're new to survey design or want to refresh yourself on this method, we'll be going over some examples from recent programmes' evaluation and sharing good practice in design, collection, and analysis.

Please note that both workshops will be suitable for both beginner and intermediate levels of expertise, with different activities designed to stretch participants of all levels.

If you are joining either of these sessions remotely, please indicate this in the 'Special Requirements' box and you will be send a Teams Link nearer the date *

Session 1 Introduction to devising an Evaluation Strategy

• Producing a Theory of Change
• Moving from a ‘Core’ Theory of Change to an ‘Enhanced’ Theory of Change
• Designing research questions for your evaluation using your Theory of Change

Session 2

• Designing research questions for your evaluation using your Theory of Change
• Selecting appropriate indicators and success metrics
• Selecting appropriate methods
• Understanding the strengths and limitations of various methodologies

The series aims to help outreach practitioners at the University develop Evaluation Plans for their current projects and embed evaluation into the development of any future outreach activity.

To get the full benefit from the series, participants are expected to attend all three workshops. We understand that for practitioners this may be difficult due to workload, so we have allowed the option to sign up and indicate if you are unlikely to make one or more of the sessions. If you are unable to attend a session the expectation would be that you read up on the content before the subsequent session and complete any tasks.

Cambridge Foundation Year – Admissions and Outreach Briefing 2021

The Cambridge Foundation Year is a new opportunity that offers a stepping stone to Cambridge for those who have experienced educational disadvantage. This innovative route is designed for a new field of candidates to help them realise their academic potential through a full-time, residential programme fully embedded in the Collegiate University. It is a fully-funded opportunity so comes at no cost to students.

This high-profile initiative for the University will launch on 13th January 2021 with the first students expected to begin their studies in Michaelmas Term 2022. This session will let you know how you can best respond to any enquiries you might get from prospective applicants or advisors in this coming year.

The session will be of interest to anyone working in widening participation or outreach, but particularly those most typically dealing with enquiries. For more information contact please contact: foundation.year@admin.cam.ac.uk.

This session will be held on Zoom and a Zoom link will be circulated to those registered on the event.

These sessions are aimed at those who are brand new to HEAT (Higher Education Access Tracker) and who will want to be added to the live database as their institution’s Operational Lead or User with all Reports. If you need Read Only or Read Only with Export permissions this training is not required.

The Cambridge Admissions Office HEAT Team will organise termly HEAT User Group Meetings. The aim of these meetings is to inform users of HEAT updates and raise any common issues to the group. There will also be time for any questions and/or feedback.

These meetings are primarily aimed at Operational Leads, however if these representatives are unable to attend the proposed dates, other HEAT users are more than welcome to come along. We hope to see as many of you attend these meetings as possible in order to make them as beneficial as we can.

HE Fairs presentation for outreach staff from across the university who can benefit from free professional development to improve their practice.

These sessions are aimed at those who are brand new to HEAT (Higher Education Access Tracker) and who will want to be added to the live database as their institution’s Operational Lead or User. 

If you are only going to need Read Only or Read Only with Export permissions this training is not required.

Impact Reporting training for outreach staff from across the university who can benefit from free professional development to improve their practice.

This introductory session will explore what qualitative data analysis can tell you and the implications of different kinds of qualitative data collection.

A training session for people working in access & participation who wish to develop a better understanding of the stats techniques and numbers that you may encounter when evaluating programmes.

We'll be covering the basics, including descriptive statistics and some inferential statistics techniques. We'll also have a worked example from Rebecca Middleton at NEACO on analysing survey data. All welcome, be great to see you there (albeit on Teams).

An interactive session exploring partnership working; identifying where partnerships already exist, what makes a successful partnership, and what are the challenges with partnerships working.

This session will include a presentation, round table discussions and opportunity to feedback.

Policy in schools - providing the context (understanding deprivation and attainment) training for outreach staff from across the university who can benefit from free professional development to improve their practice.

Cambridge Admissions Office have organised a series of briefing sessions in the coming weeks aimed at Schools Liaison Officers, Faculty/Department Outreach Staff, and any academics and staff members who will communicate with potential students.

This will be an informative session detailing examples of good practice in monitoring and evaluation, specifically related to outreach projects including those funded by the Widening Participation Project Fund. The session will cover general good practice in monitoring and evaluation, as well as featuring presentations from previous outreach projects detailing specific examples of monitoring and evaluation in practice.

Behaviour management training for outreach staff delivered by the Cambridge Admissions Office.

This training focuses on managing the needs and behaviour of both the group you and individual pupils. It will provide you with techniques and strategies you can use when delivering sessions to students. In this session, you’ll explore how your own behaviour influences your students’, and learn how to control your emotional responses when you’re interacting in the classroom. You’ll discover the latest techniques in classroom management and develop your capability to achieve consistency.

The training will take place in A329 - Counselling Service (Student Services Centre).

The goal of our next Community of Practice is to map the support networks which are already established across the University. We aim to compile a document specifying who is doing what, where, to allow us to work in a more connected way across the University. In anticipation of this, you might want to think about which pieces of work you would like to bring up at the meeting, if you know anyone who is doing anything similar already who you would like to collaborate with, and what support you could use. We will also have a great speaker coming along to this session, with details to be provided soon!

Looking forwards to seeing you all again in April!

NOTE: if you'd like to join the session remotely, please let us know in the Special Requirements section when booking. This will help us plan the session and manage physical numbers in the room.

This hybrid session, delivered online and in person, will explore how to present and disseminate evaluation findings in appropriate ways for intended users, and to support wider strategic use.

A brief history of the last 20 years and the huge change in structures, breakdown of LAs, creation of Trusts and what that means in terms of accountability, stability, and school leadership. The differences between Grammars, Academies, All through trusts, Chains/trusts that transcend region etc., LA schools, faith schools (VA and VC), Free schools, and FE colleges. We will explore how best to work with these schools- do they have partnerships with other institutions (Universities, businesses, charities)? The benefits of working across a trust rather than just with one school How to overcome challenges faced by schools to ensure meaningful, long-term relationships?

Led by CAO's acting Deputy Head, Paul Potter. Paul is a former Vice Principal of a large state comprehensive (11-18) school and Head of Sixth Form.

This online session will address how to scope the requirements and boundaries of your evaluation in terms of purposes, questions and scaling. It will particularly explore how evaluation could be used constructively and strategically, and five potential areas that you could explore in your evaluation. This is the second step in the 6-Step Evaluation Process. The session will comprise of practical guidance, opportunities for discussion, and introduce some practical resources you can use in your own evaluation planning.

Social Media training for outreach staff from across the university who can benefit from free professional development to improve their practice.

Student Led Outreach training for outreach staff from across the university who can benefit from free professional development to improve their practice.

Cambridge Admissions Office have organised a series of briefing sessions in the coming weeks aimed at Schools Liaison Officers, Department Outreach Staff, and any academics and staff members who will communicate with potential students.

This session is aimed at outreach professionals and those who frequently speak to prospective students at Open Days or similar events, who would like to increase their knowledge of the services offered to students across the University. Representatives from CUSU, the Disability Resource Centre, the Counselling Service and the Careers Service, will discuss the services they offer students.

NOTE: if you'd like to join the session remotely, please let us know in the Special Requirements section when booking. This will help us plan the session and manage physical numbers in the room.

This hybrid session, delivered online and in person, will cover the basics of an underpinning Theory of Change for access & participation interventions.

This online session follows on from the Theory of Change - part 1 session on 23rd February. Part 2 will be an interactive session looking at worked examples.

NB: if you would like to join this session remotely, please let us know in the special requirements of your booking and we can send you a Microsoft Teams link.

This hybrid session will cover the basics of an underpinning Theory of Change for access & participation interventions and focus on worked examples. It will also involve playing the Changebusters game developed by Advance HE, which aims to develop your understanding of the concepts by developing a hypothetical theory of change.

Cambridge Transition Year – Admissions and Outreach Briefing 2020

What is the Transition Year? This new programme is mentioned in the Cambridge APP. You might have been involved in University-wide consultations and discussions already, but you also might know nothing at all at this point.

This briefing will bring you up to date with the development of the programme. It is a high-profile initiative for the University and while the programme isn’t due to launch until 2021 and the first students aren’t anticipated to begin their studies until 2022, you may be asked for more information. This session will let you know how you can best respond to any enquiries you might get from prospective applicants or advisors in this coming year.

Cambridge Admissions Office has organised a series of briefing sessions in the coming weeks aimed at Schools Liaison Officers, Faculty/Department Outreach Staff, and any academics and staff members who will communicate with potential students. There are two sessions - attendance at both it not compulsory. Both will be run by Dr Sam Lucy (Director of College Admissions).

• Session One: Undergraduate Admissions - An Overview (14:00-15:00)

This session will aim to explain the University’s admissions process and provide advice on how to communicate this to prospective applicants. These sessions are aimed at any academics and staff members wishing to increase their knowledge of the application process, and will be particularly useful to those who may communicate with prospective students at University Open Days or similar events. Please note that this session is aimed at those who are new to the University, or have little previous experience of the undergraduate admissions process in Cambridge.

• Session Two: Undergraduate Admissions- Answering Difficult Questions (15:15-16:30)

This session is aimed at academics and staff whose role may frequently involve talking to prospective students, parents, and teachers and will offer advice on how to respond to difficult or controversial questions.

Undermatch research and implications for supporting competitive applications seminar by Causeway Education for outreach staff from across the university who can benefit from free professional development to improve their practice.

Representatives from the Communications Office Social Media team will take you through how to best use social media to communicate with potential applicants, schools and students. This session will suit College, Faculty and Department outreach or communications staff, whether you currently have a social media account or are looking to set one up.

NOTE: if you'd like to join the session remotely, please let us know in the Special Requirements section when booking. This will help us plan the session and manage physical numbers in the room.

This hybrid session, delivered online and in person, will explore the role of stakeholder analysis in programme/intervention design, evaluation planning, and reporting. It will also look at ways to undertake stakeholder analysis and stakeholder management. The session will comprise of practical guidance and opportunities for interaction.

Cambridge Admissions Office have organised a series of briefing sessions in the coming weeks aimed at Schools Liaison Officers, Faculty/Department Outreach Staff, and any academics and staff members who will communicate with potential students.

The Working with Student Ambassadors Session will be led by the Cambassador team at the Cambridge Admissions Office, and cover the steps involved in recruiting, training and using student ambassadors for events such as open days and masterclasses. This briefing will be suitable for Faculty, Department or College staff who may wish to set up their own ambassador scheme, or who wish to improve ad-hoc events which require student volunteers.

WP Groups and Criteria - What do all the acronyms mean?

Don’t know your POLAR from your TUNDRA? Is FSM the same as PP? Are all students with disabilities considered SEN?

This session aims to demystify the wonderful world of widening participation terms and provide an overview of different groups which may be considered ‘WP’. Using the WP Selection Criteria paper (enrolment key: WP@CAM) as a basis, we will define each term/group and discuss the research behind whether they are underrepresented in higher education or face educational disadvantage, as well as any considerations or shortcomings in some of the criteria. At the end, we will talk through how the priority criteria was constructed.

This introductory session would be suitable for anyone with an interest in widening participation, including both practitioners, managers and senior leads, and will be of particular use for newer staff in this area.

Note: this session has a follow up session which will focus on the more practical side of implementing the WP Selection Criteria.

This training will be held via Zoom, the details of which will be circulated before the session.

Cambridge Admissions Office has organised a series of briefing sessions in the coming weeks aimed at Schools Liaison Officers, Faculty/Department Outreach Staff, and any academics and staff members who will communicate with potential students.

Aimed at all outreach practitioners at the University of Cambridge, this briefing will provide an overview of the recently revised WP Participant Targeting/Selection criteria for use on outreach initiatives. The authors of the paper will explain the rationale behind the paper's revised weighting of WP measures and some of the research underpinning the paper. There will also be some discussion on why targeting/selection is important as opposed to using first come/first serve or relying exclusively on teacher nominations.

This session is accompanied by a skills-based session in April aimed at those with less experience implementing targeting/selection criteria.

Cambridge Admissions Office has organised a series of briefing sessions in the coming weeks aimed at Schools Liaison Officers, Faculty/Department Outreach Staff, and any academics and staff members who will communicate with potential students.

Aimed at outreach practitioners with less experience using targeting/selection on their outreach programmes, this skills-based session will provide examples of good practice implementing targeting/selection drawn from experience running CAO programmes. The session will also explore ways to use other data sources and HEAT to make the process easier.

This session follows on from a briefing delivered in March explaining the new targeting/selection criteria adopted by the Collegiate University.

“Help, my WP programme is so popular I have 10,000 students for only 10 spaces, what do I do?” We’ve all been there, but whether you have an incredibly oversubscribed programme or just want to make sure your programme is working with the right people, this training is for you.

In this session we will go through the University’s agreed upon WP Selection Criteria and discuss how practitioners can implement this in their own activities. We will start by looking briefly at targeting and the tools available to help outreach practitioners target their programme to the right people. We will talk about selection: what types of programmes this type of selection criteria is most suitable for, run through some practical considerations in applying the criteria and suggest some methods for easily sorting your data to help with selections.

This session assumes you have either read the WP Selection Criteria paper (enrolment key: WP@CAM) for background, or have attended the previous WP Groups and Criteria training session.

This training will be held via Zoom, the details of which will be circulated before the session.

This online session will explore how to clarify and use outcomes in a way that supports programme/intervention design, and helps support comprehensive impact evaluation. The session will comprise of practical guidance, interactive activities, and examples of practice.