Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR)
The HEAR (Higher Education Achievement Report) is an enhanced transcript that provides information on academic achievements, prizes and awards as well as selected extra-curricular achievements such as elected positions on societies. HEARs may be used by employers or educational institutions to verify the results and achievements of applicants. HEARs are issued to undergraduate and postgraduate taught students at Exeter.
The HEAR will contain activities that have been approved for inclusion by the University and the achievement is verified by the University.
All students who are eligible to receive a HEAR are invited, by email, to check their additional achievements and activities prior to graduation. Any omissions, corrections or exclusions can be reported at this time.
The final HEAR is usually issued during the week before a graduation ceremony.
HEARs are stored on the GradIntel platform and graduates can issue tokens to allow others such as employers to view their HEAR. We set up GradIntel accounts for all who will be getting a HEAR.
Providing the HEAR is not a statutory requirement, but it is a nationally recognised document and many higher education institutions issue HEARs.
Visit the HEAR webpages for further information.
Briefing papers
The following briefings offer useful national guidance and background information on the HEAR:
The Higher Education Achievement Report: what might it mean for academic colleagues
Hear Reference Pack
Achievements captured on the University of Exeter HEAR
A comprehensive list of the achievements included in the HEAR can be found here.
Non credit-bearing work experience/volunteering opportunities undertaken in colleges
There are not presently the resources available to support the inclusion of college based work experience and volunteering projects in the HEAR. Students engaging in these schemes should be encouraged to accredit their experience via the Exeter Award, which is included on the HEAR.
Faculties currently enter information on student performance-related prizes and commendations in SITS (there is a useful HEAR guide for colleges on the SITS how to page). This information will feed an important section of the student’s HEAR relating to extracurricular and co-curricular achievements (section 6.1).
Please note the following:
Dean’s commendations
Dean’s commendations are entered into SITS by inputting one of the following three values in SPR_UDF6:
DCA DCA (Exceptional circumstances)
DCB DCB (Exceptional performance)
DCAB DCAB (Exceptional perf & circ)
The output on the student’s HEAR will simply read ‘Dean’s commendation’, regardless of what value is entered.
Full details can be found here.
Prizes/awards/college commendations
Given that these are currently entered into the College Prizes application via the Staff tab in the Student Record System, and that this text is extracted for publishing in the HEAR, it is essential to provide full details so that an employer is clear what the award was for (i.e. full title of the award/prize/commendation and why it was awarded). One sentence should be sufficient, if the student has more than one award/prize commendation please ensure that these are each separated by one carriage return. Full instructions on inputting College prizes/awards/College commendations are available on the SITS website: Add College prizes to student records.