Environment submissions database

The impact of the pandemic has affected the University’s REF submission in the following ways: 1. The student experience, revising teaching virtually, and ensuring no detriment were prioritised at Bath Spa University for the period March 2020 - March 2021. An email from the VC to this effect was sent to all staff on 3 April 2020 recommending this action., This placed a significant burden on the time SRR staff were able to give to finalising their REF submissions over this period. We are grateful to our staff for working on REF as well as the extra pedagogical burdens which they faced. 2. Much of our research is within the cultural and heritage sector which has been particularly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, and has affected our submission in the following ways: rescheduling of the outcomes of practice-based research due to ongoing closures of performance and exhibition venues (7 single-and-multi-component items and ICS UoA27-2 LLC, and delays to conferences affecting publication dates (2 articles). Inability to undertake evidence work for Impact case studies amongst the following groups: schools, charities, local communities and voluntary groups (ICS: UoA33-3 DMG; UoA27-3 NWB; UoA4-2 PHW). In many of the above cases, the types of planned community interaction and engagement events were no longer possible to undertake. Although workshops were moved on-line where possible, there were ethical and moral issues that had to be taken into account in relation to whether or not it would have been appropriate for the university to ask the public to engage in evaluative activities of this type whilst in the midst of a global pandemic. We also found that the community organisations and groups had other priorities during this period which meant that it was not possible to reschedule these events. 3. Evidence gathering activities were also cancelled with NHS partners which has affected ICS UoA4-2 PHW . As above, the moral and ethical issues of asking NHS staff to engage in these activities were assessed, and it was recognised that the health sector had other priorities to focus upon. 4. The University prohibited all international travel in Semester 2 of 19/20 and Semester 1 of 20/21 which had a significant impact on the international activities that had been planned to support areas of emerging impact and with evidence gathering activities where visits had been planned in 2020. This resulted in one ICS having to be abandoned and another prepared at short notice to take its place, and ICS UoA14-1 RRS having impact activities affected. Many of the evidence activities that had been planned involved engagement with community groups, often with limited technological resources, and therefore virtual replacement events were not possible, or would not have been appropriate, during the pandemic. 5. 7 PhD student submissions/vivas were delayed during the period January 2020 - August 2020 to enable virtual solutions in place for the vivas and related exhibitions. This impacted on the number of completions we had intended to include in our REF 4 environment data metrics.