Innovative Projects
The Knowledge Partnership has been at the forefront of the development of new frameworks and models to enable education organisations to evaluate and benchmark their practice, and then guide the creation of plans and strategies.
Part of our business philosophy is to innovate and create new knowledge and methods. Our Australian Director Dr Stephen Holmes was one of the first in the world to complete a PhD in education marketing.
Our head of UK education marketing practice, David Roberts, is attributed with coining the term “the student journey” now a widely referenced by policy makers and professionals to mean the phases through which an individual student passes from enquiry to and beyond graduation, and their associated information and service priorities.
Louise Simpson our head of reputation and strategic communications practice has led the development of models for internal communication and the evaluation and management of university reputations.
Read more about our contribution to innovative thinking in education marketing:
Course development and programme portfolio management
The Knowledge Partnership was the consultant to the i-MAP project (2010-2012) that has developed a set of best practice recommendations for the market assurance of new higher education programmes. We also led the analysis of new course recruitment patterns that created new insights into success rates and the profile of students attracted to new courses.
Marketing excellence in education
David Roberts, who leads our education marketing practice, was the consultant to the original HEFCE funded marketing excellence project (2002-2003) which created the first comprehensive framework for best practice in university marketing. The Knowledge Partnership subsequently led the creation of versions for the FE college sector (LSC funded) and the schools sector. In 2010 we revised the original framework based on feedback from the institutions that had used the system (known as MaXimizE) to benchmark their organisations.
Reputation Management
The Knowledge Partnership is the leading international centre for the research and management of reputation in the education sector. Recognising that reputation is the major asset in the intangible high value market for education, we have completed a series of original research projects designed to understand the meaning and nature of reputation amongst key stakeholder groups including parents, employers, students, academics, political and governmental agencies and the wider public.
We have researched the market impact of rankings and league table performance (widely cited by international academics) and published comprehensive reviews of the professional and academic literature on reputation and associated topics such as word-of-mouth marketing. The head of our reputation and communications practice, Louise Simpson has completed her postgraduate research degree under the supervision of Prof Gary Davies one of the world’s leading academics in the reputational field.
We have turned our knowledge of this topic into tools and methods designed to support both the measurement and management of education reputation – including the College Reputation Toolkit (FE) and ADMIRE (HE).
Internal communications
The Knowledge Partnership was the consultant to the HElix project (2007-2008) which mapped a framework for best practice in staff communications and engagement in universities. A set of good practice case studies have been published (free download) to support development, and there is a suggested process and tools for evaluating current practice.
Understanding education markets
The best marketers understand their markets and seek out to collaborate with those with special insights into those markets. In 2007 we undertook the most significant study ever into university-parent relations, exploring the role and influence of parents in student choice and transition, and university approaches to communicating with parents along the student journey.
In 2011-12 we are analysing the UK international market. We have discovered that a large slice of international students are actually based in the UK when they apply for university study. This has implications for how and where universities promote their offer, the information needs and expectations of the students and which office in the university is tasked with engaging this segment.
Working with our strategic partner OpinionPanel we co-designed the scope of the annual Higher Expectations survey which reports on the decision-making process and university choice factors of over 12,000 undergraduates. This delivers robust insights and invaluable time series data which shows, for example, that as fees have risen so has the centrality of course and study-related factors in the decision where to study.