Lesson Plan: University choices with Unistats
Year group
Year 12
Subject
Duration
Resources
Careers / future
60 minutes
ICT suite
choices
unistats.direct.gov.uk
Purpose of lesson
Students have access to an abundance of information regarding Higher Education (HE)
choices. This information varies in terms of its source and how subjective and
comprehensive it is. This lesson will introduce a website that has a comprehensive set of
objective information that is designed to support students when considering their HE
choices.
Overview:
 A lesson promoting discussion about HE choices.
 Students will discuss, the questions students would like to know the answers to
and the information available, using key information collated from present
students.
 Students will use the Unistats website as the foundation for making some initial
choices about their university and course.
 They will undertake some research tasks by reviewing some essential statistics
that students care about to help them make informed choices about their
university and course.
Learning Outcomes:
 Clarifying students’ understanding about the different HE options available to
them.
 To be able to understand the type of statistics and information that universities
and colleges provide about their courses.
 To be able to conduct independent research that objectively compares key
information about HE course.
Activities
Timing
Activity
5 minutes
Introduction
Introduce the concept of HE. Discuss the key 3 questions to be answered
when choosing a course:
1. Should I go into higher education?
2. What course should I do?
3. Where should I go?
N.B. There may be students in your class that have no interest in
continuing in HE. It is suggested that this is welcomed into the initial
discussion and students are made aware of alternative paths they may
choose to follow. However, they would be asked to engage and explore
the options of HE for the rest of the lesson.
15 minutes
Group work
5 minute to
Start off by splitting the class into pairs to consider the factors that
complete
might influence their HE choices. Provide students with the handout and
handout
ask them to complete it in their pairs. Introduce it as ‘what questions are
still in your mind about HE?’
10 minutes
for
discussion.
15 minutes
15 minutes
Get the students to share some of their answers with the class:
 Which questions were difficult to answer?
 Which ones couldn’t they answer?
 What additional questions did they feel should have been on the
questionnaire?
 What issues do you think are important to students currently at
university?
Using the Unistats website demonstration
On a computer, lead the students through the key journeys on the
Unistats site (unistats.direct.gov.uk):
 Introduce the site – Highlight key features such as the search and
course assistant
 Demo the course assistant – Select a course and lead the students
through the steps
 Pick an individual course page – Lead the students through the stats
on the page. Are they useful?
 Highlight the shortlist functionality and show how they can do a
comparison
 Show them the options for exporting the data
Optional: You may want to get one of your students to volunteer to use
the website for the demonstration to see what is of particular interest
to them.
Independent Research and Discussion
Get your students to research a subject that interests them. Ideally there
would be individual computers available, then encourage them to work
through the following steps.
 Find out information about the course
 Compare two or more courses
 Create a shortlist on the site with courses and institutions of interest
 Register for an account
 Download a pdf report
If only a single computer is available, then ask the group to suggest
popular courses. You can then run through the researching steps for
these courses, encouraging the students to comment.
10 minutes
Reflection
What did the students find out from Unistats?
 Did the information surprise them?
 Was it useful?
 What was the most interesting piece of data?
 How could you use this website at home to help inform your
decisions for HE?
Other resources
UCAS http://www.ucas.com/
Institution websites – example of KIS widget on course pages