This book has been primarily written for people who are interested and involved in helping students maximise the learning and development they gain from their higher education experience. The authors contributing to this book hope that their attempt to examine and give practical meaning to the idea of lifewideness makes sense to you and helps you support and facilitate development of people in your professional context. We hope also that it might have meaning for you in your own life. The book is also written for people who are helping higher education institutions develop a better understanding of the ways in which students engage in and are shaped by their whole life experience while they are studying. And for those people who are trying to bring about change in institutional practice, particularly those who are finding it challenging, we hope the contributions in this book will reinforce your conviction that this is a worthwhile thing to do. In recent years, Universities in the UK have been encouraged to evaluate what they do through the lens of the students' experience.
This has resulted in an increasing institutional interest and awareness in the way in which students integrate higher education with their life beyond the campus. Student Support Services in some universities have been inspired by the visionary report 'Learning Reconsidered: A Campus-wide Focus on the Student Experience' (NASPA and ACPA 2004). We hope that this book will encourage and be of value to those who make decisions or who create policies relating to the student experience.