How Buckinghamshire New University is revolutionising student and campus experiences with digital literacy skills

Providing education and employability

Buckinghamshire New University (BNU)’s mantra is: ‘Where education meets employability.’

To achieve this, the university highlights that its role as an educator and an employer must go hand-in-hand.

“Learning should be hard, everything else that sits around the university should be easy. But university systems are notoriously complex and bureaucratic. So, it’s about breaking that down. That’s why we measure ourselves not against other universities, but companies that do it really well.” – Damien Page, Vice Chancellor

The university has set three goals across its students, research and talent.

• Students: Enhance student experience and drive growth, while retaining its 84% student satisfaction score. 
• Research: Unlock new revenue streams and institutional capabilities by developing the data proficiency required to expand the university’s research output. 
• Staff: Promote employee satisfaction, increase talent and foster digital inclusion by upskilling staff to thrive.

All three goals require a certain level of digital literacy for employees to deliver. So, building on the university’s partnership with Multiverse and the launch of its Data and AI Academy, BNU is expanding its upskilling activities to enable scalable growth, create high-quality experiences and strengthen data ownership.

“If we want to increase student outcomes, we have to increase the development of our colleagues.” – Damien Page, Vice Chancellor

In partnership with Multiverse, BNU has launched a range of data and AI courses for employees across marketing, student recruitment, academic registry, and digital and technical services. 

Improving student experience starts with data quality and digital literacy

With students now accustomed to seamless, consumer-grade experiences – from the likes of Amazon to banking apps – the university is looking to brands and companies as its competition for digital services, not other universities. 

Delivering on this ambition means enabling personalised, reliable and frictionless student journeys that meet consumer-level expectations. For example, identifying opportunities to improve timetable distribution for new students.

Yet, the university’s ability to report – from statutory reporting, to Nexus Student Management and enabling its ‘Digital Campus Vision’ – is challenged by its access to quality data. And the problem is two-fold, with limited data literacy skills across the organisation impacting the full lifecycle of data, from input to extraction and insights. 

In partnership with Multiverse, BNU is training staff on advanced data skills to reduce its reliance on manual reporting – such as spreadsheets – but so it can improve the student application experience and drive growth.

“Upskilling staff at our university is really important for our vision of a digital campus. Because we want to create a digital environment that’s accessible, inclusive and empowering. Staff and students can only take advantage of benefits if they have the right skills to operate inside of it.” – Nicholas Roussel-Milner, CIO

Learner impact

Case Study: Revolutionising NHS Compliance Reporting

The Challenge

A critical NHS compliance report at BNU required ten hours of manual Excel work per cycle. The process was labor-intensive and carried a high risk of human error due to manual data entry and fragmented datasets.

The Solution

Following training with Multiverse, Nicoleta Buzea, Returns Support Officer, initially automated the workflow in Power BI, cutting reporting time by over 50%.

Building on this success, Nicoleta has since scaled the solution into a reusable Power BI template. Key technical enhancements include:

• Automated Data Transformation: Leveraging Power Query to handle data preparation and postcode logic, eliminating the final manual steps of the pre-upload process.
• Advanced Analytics: Developing complex DAX measures to provide instant insights into key demographics (ethnicity, disability, age, and gender).
• Enhanced Data Integration: Merging employer and placement data to provide a richer, more holistic view of the student landscape.

The Impact

The refined dashboard now functions as a scalable, "refresh-ready" tool. By automating the most granular steps of the workflow, Nicoleta has ensured that each reporting cycle is consistent, accurate, and actionable, drastically reducing manual intervention while empowering stakeholders with dynamic trend analysis.

“Nicoleta’s work… is already bringing benefits… which has already seen added efficiency in terms of the time taken to compile and assure the core data.” – Jeremy Dye, Head of Statutory Returns at BNU

Empowering employees with a BNU-owned digital, data & AI model

To enable its Digital Campus, the university needs to leverage technologies such as AI. 

"Data is the blood of the organisation... it needs to be managed like an asset." – Nicholas Roussel-Milner, CIO

The university has set out to improve its ability to forecast demand and optimise recruitment and conversion and scale operations, without incurring costs. Together with Multiverse, BNU is working to improve control over institutional data and student experience.

“We want to make university as easy to access and as easy to get through as possible, while making sure the learning stays hard.” – Damien Page, Vice Chancellor

“I found working with the coaches to be a really positive experience. They really support you, challenge you. They’re empathetic and they provide useful feedback in the progress reviews.” – David Woolley, International Admissions Manager

Hear David’s story in the video at the top of this page.

Multiverse learning in action

Measuring learner impact is a critical part of any upskilling initiative. But, for BNU, demonstrating the delivery of tangible benefits is paramount to measuring itself against companies – not other universities.

That means giving employees the skills to apply on-the-job and instantaneously alongside their learning. By enabling those being trained to find relevant ways to apply their learning, this also creates tangible impact early on as employees progress through their courses.

“Using apprenticeships for growth and development is such a great opportunity, not only because you get a qualification – you get external support and the social learning aspect is really good – but also you apply your learning almost in the moment. You learn something in a workshop, and then you are literally doing it in your day job. The practical application is almost instant.” – Rachel Hemingway, People Development Partner

Want to find out how data and digital literacy skills could help your organisation? Chat to an expert.