Universities are now compelled to attend to metrics that (re)shape our conceptualisation of the student experience. New technologies such as learning analytics (LA) promise the ability to target personalised support to profiled 'at risk' students through mapping large-scale historic student engagement data such as attendance, library use, and virtual learning environment activity as well as demographic information and typical student outcomes. Yet serious ethical and implementation issues remain. Data-driven labelling of students as 'high risk', 'hard to reach' or 'vulnerable' creates conflict between promoting personal growth and human flourishing and treating people merely as data points. This article argues that universities must resist the assumption that numbers and algorithms alone can solve the 'problem' of student retention and performance; rather, LA work must be underpinned by a reconnection with the agreed values relating to the purpose of higher education, including democratic engagement, recognition of diverse and individual experience, and processes of becoming. Such a reconnection, this article contends, is possible when LA work is designed and implemented in genuine collaboration and partnership with students. ArticleWe live in uncertain, unpredictable and super complex times, which, as Ron Barnett writes, produce a 'fragility in the way that we understand the world ' (2000, p. 257). Indeed, if the world and the society contained within it are part of an open, indeterminate, 'messy' (Law, 2004), and thus unpredictable but self-organising system (Prigigone & Sten-gers, 1984), how might our universities resist the lure of developments in technology, such as learning analytics (LA), that seek to 'tidy up' this messiness but, at the same time, risk diminishing the underpinning values of higher education? This article argues that the popularity of LA as a solution to the 'problem' of student retention, experience and performance (Olmos & Corrin, 2012) fails to attend to the complexities of collective and individual existence. Shaped by historical drivers for the massification and marketisa-tion of HE as well as the current, fundamental tenants of neo-liberalism that position English universities as 'schizophrenic transnational business corporations' (Shore, 2010, p. 15), universities routinely fail to account for students' 'continual change[s] of form' (Bergson, 1911, p. 301) and the 'processes of becoming that are fostered in a culture of affirmation that acts through either empowering or confining powers' (Braidotti, 2012, p. 173). Students who transition through university thus emerge in and through educational processes in unique and unpredictable ways (Biesta, 2010;Postma, 2016).What is needed in Higher Education (HE) is an 'alternative work model' (Freire, 2007, p. 4) that recognises our complicity in the neo-liberal world. Here, we reject both the concept of student as consumer or product of HE, as well as the liberal tradition of students as apprentice academics in search of knowledge for its ...

BackgroundIn 2014 the WHO declared that ‘early palliative care not only improves quality of life for patients but also reduces unnecessary hospitalisation and use of health care services’. Following an audit in 2014 the Contact Centre at our hospice were aware that there were a number of patients who would benefit from our services but were either declining the services or being declined due to not being able to meet the criteria for specialist palliative care and end of life care.AimsTo develop an early palliative care service which allowed the patients and families/carers to experience a modern hospice approach of living well and palliative reablement. This included:· Advance care planning· Early support for families and carers· Networking with other agencies e.g., CAB, carers support· Live well approach· Opportunity for referral to hospice services to prevent crisis e.g., 24 hour advice line, H@H· Psychological support.Methods· Outpatient style appointment at an Outreach Centre close to home at the patient’s/family convenience with a named nurse.· Patient centred approach· Referral to other internal and services· Flexible approach to use of hospice services.Results· Significant increase in the number of patients/families gaining access to hospice services· Extension of lighter touch services· Increase in referrals of non-cancer and long term conditions· Positive feedback from patients/families· Earlier referral for some patients to complex specialist services· Development of the nursing team’s skill mix· De-stigmatises hospice care.Conclusion· Further investment in the early referral services as patients and families/carers are utilising living well and palliative reablement services· An opportunity to encourage end of life conversations and advance care planning for patients with dementia· Potential to extend into GP surgeries/satellite clinics to reduce anxiety around being referred to a hospice· Potential to extend into outpatient services at local hospitals to support patients who are newly diagnosed as palliative.

UK Universities are increasingly being 'encouraged' to focus on student engagement, retention and performance, with learning analytics becoming commonplace. Based on inter-related student-staff partnerships, this study adopted a human and compassionate approach to the use of student data and subsequent interventions. Analysis of focus group and interview data from 86 student participants explored key themes: peer-mentoring increasing engagement with the communal-habitus; increased confidence and engagement; and the demystification and humanisation of the university environment.Findings highlight the importance of emphasising human and compassionate support for students within rapidly developing learning analytics approaches, with subject-specific peer-mentoring found here to be beneficial.

This commentary reflects my evolving understanding of the problematic nature of identity and how this relates to notions of professional identity for those in learning development (LD) roles who engage with and produce research. If identity is, as Quinn (2010) asserts, boundary-less, and experienced as a perpetual becoming between multiplicities, what does this mean for questions of identity? This paper suggests that perpetual becoming is reflected in LD roles that operate within a third space, crossing or spanning the boundaries of traditional institutional sites of research, teaching or services, administration or knowledge transfer (Whitchurch, 2013). From such a place, LD practitioners can become what Ball (2007) calls cultural critics, who through their experiences and knowledge of the variety of institutional practices and cultures, are in an enviable place to critique them.LD practitioners need to maintain a dialogical position that enables reflection-in-action (Schön, 2001) to understand and respond to the multiplicities present in competing individual, institutional and societal discourses. By way of an example, consider the contrast between the pervasive neo-liberal drive for quantification and performance, set against the complex and often messy realities (Biesta, 2010) of LD issues that we, along with our students, often experience.Learning developers cannot however ignore the current political and social contexts that represent the environment within which our work exists. Nonetheless, LD practitioners must maintain their access to, engagement with, and production of a disparate range of research from across varied institutional and sectoral domains that go beyond seeking evidence of effectiveness. Hence, the need for and purpose of LD practitioner research is to create knowledge-of-practice (Cochrane-Smith and Lytle, 1999) that generates ontological understanding of, and exposure to, the epistemological bases of LD practices.