Students' experience of higher education has been transformed over the past 10 years. Not only are there more students, from a wider range of learning backgrounds and with different expectations of what student life can offer, but the introduction of fees in 1998 has turned them from disciples into customers.
Nor has there ever been so much effort put into finding out what they want, through inquiries set up to explore the learner experience to student juries allowing them to contribute directly to policy debates, to the National Student Survey, which, for the past four years, has sought student views on the quality of their education.
Institutions increasingly include student representatives on university bodies, and seek student feedback on more day-to-day aspects of their learning, while new emphasis on collaboration means many students expect to learn as much from discussion with their peers as at the feet of their tutors.
Much of this has been made possible thanks to web 2.0 technologies, and the user-generated content it allows.
This supplement examines the role played by these technologies in shaping the new student experience, from the way students listen to lectures to the way they are assessed.
It looks at efforts by the government and higher education institutions to respond to present and predict future developments, and to cater for both through new capital projects. And it hears from students and academics about how they are using the new technologies, exploring the generational divide between those who have grown up in the computer age and those who haven't.
Finally, it investigates some of the challenges technology raises, including plagiarism and the apparently never-ending capacity for change.
