https://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/issue/feedJournal of Learning Development in Higher Education2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Alicja Syskaalicja.syska@plymouth.ac.ukOpen Journal Systems<p>The Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education is an open access peer-reviewed international journal that provides a forum for researchers writing about educational practices and rethinking theoretical and methodological approaches to learning in higher education. We invite contributions in the form of research papers, case studies, opinion pieces, book reviews, and brief communications, but also welcome visual submissions including poster presentations as well as audios and videos. In addition to our regular editions, we release special issues on topics reflecting current debates in learning and teaching as well as the conversations relevant to the field Learning Development.</p> <p>We are indexed by the <a href="https://doaj.org/toc/2227-6068?source=%7B%22query%22%3A%7B%22filtered%22%3A%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22bool%22%3A%7B%22must%22%3A%5B%7B%22terms%22%3A%7B%22index.issn.exact%22%3A%5B%222227-6068%22%5D%7D%7D%2C%7B%22term%22%3A%7B%22_type%22%3A%22article%22%7D%7D%5D%7D%7D%2C%22query%22%3A%7B%22match_all%22%3A%7B%7D%7D%7D%7D%2C%22from%22%3A0%2C%22size%22%3A100%7D">DOAJ</a> (Directory of Open Access Journals) and Google Scholar. </p>https://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1150Editorial2023-10-27T03:33:17-07:00Alicja Syska2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1148Ripping up the keynote rulebook: ALDCon23 guest editorial2023-10-27T02:30:58-07:00Ian JohnsonLaura Barclay<p>The Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE) conference was hosted at the University of Portsmouth in June 2023 (ALDCon23). When planning for the keynotes - both online and in-person - we were guided by our commitments to: students at the centre; playfulness; and working to unmask events that are tacit and seldom discussed yet strongly affect both the student experience and our LD practice. </p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1143What’s in a name? study skills? academic skills? academic literacies? Does it really matter and to whom does it matter?2023-10-13T05:24:50-07:00Maddy Mossman<p style="font-weight: 400;">As a growing and maturing profession, Learning Developers are still crafting their space within their institutions and face constant conversations with academic and professional colleagues, as well as students, as to who we are and what we offer. Whilst we are protective of the terms we use, and resist using ‘study skills’ to describe our work in favour of the concept of Academic Literacies, it seems that the rest of the academy is slow to follow suit.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">Working on a joint project with our Careers service to develop an institutional capabilities framework really highlighted the difference in terminology used, and the sense that, no matter how much I tried, academic and professional colleagues were unwilling or unable to engage with our service offer as delivering anything other than ‘study skills’, despite our insistence on using Academic Literacies to refer to our embedded teaching. It made me wonder whether the terminology matters or might even be counterproductive. Does the term ‘academic literacies’ serve as a barrier to staff and students, even when intended to explain the pedagogical approach that informs our practice? Our students won’t necessarily understand what academic literacies or Learning Development means, which results in using two names to describe our service – one a student-friendly ‘Skills@Library’ name, and the other ‘Learning Development’, intended to demonstrate that we are an academic unit that staff can consider peers in curriculum development and design. Does this approach just serve to dilute our offer to both parties, and cause confusion as to what we actually do?</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">Through three small open discussions, held as part of the mini keynote session, we explored how LDers refer to their service, why they have chosen those terms, and how they think they are received by their colleagues. With the aim of identifying barriers that this terminology causes for engagement from both staff and students, the following questions were used as prompts for the discussions.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">Questions:</p> <ul> <li>Is using the term ‘study skills’ really that problematic? Does it truly challenge our professional identity, and if so, is that challenge significant?</li> <li>How do you refer to the service that you run?</li> <li>How do your cross-institution colleagues describe your service?</li> <li>What have you done to challenge their assumptions?</li> </ul>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1142From the conference and beyond: collaborative writing with the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education and the learning development community2023-10-13T04:36:32-07:00Carina BuckleyLee FallinNicola GraysonEleanor LoughlinTom LoweCathy MaloneCraig MorleyGita SedghiAlicja Syska<p>This workshop set out the process of collaborative writing explored by the JLDHE editorial teams in partnership with the ALDinHE community at and following ALDCon’22 through The Collaborative Conference Proceedings and Reflections. We discussed how the collaborative writing venture gave presenters an opportunity to open up their work to community responses and to document their experience of this dialogue with the LD community. We described how, using their conference abstract and Google docs, presenters engaged with their audiences to record live responses to their work, to reflect and respond to these responses, and to generate ideas in respect to taking their research forward or enhancing their practice. We examined how working with the JLDHE on this collaborative writing venture gave presenters an innovative way to open up a dialogue with our community of readers, providing a unique opportunity to extend their conference conversations in a way that shapes LD practice for the future.</p> <p> </p> <p>In the session, we shared the steps involved in the collaborative writing process and invited questions and reflections. Using testimonials from writers who participated last year, we opened up discussion and sought to reassure and address any concerns in community with editors and writers who have previously negotiated some of these challenges. We welcomed community input into how to make the Collaborative Proceedings more inclusive and open, to benefit all those who wish to be involved in the future.</p> <p> </p> <p>Attendees participated in shaping the collaborative partnership going forwards; they left with an understanding of what it means to be involved, a sense of how this innovative work enriched their conference experience, and how it is being received across the sector.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1140Going beyond remedial learning support: reframing learning development as a catalyst for practice learning. A case study exploring father involvement in social work education.2023-10-10T14:09:10-07:00Kevin Brazant<p>This conference paper presents Learning Development as transcending remedial and deficit notions of academic support. A Learning Developer based at London Metropolitan University, presents a case study that illustrates the values and impact of Learning Development and Praxis.</p> <p>This research project piloted a Problem Based Learning (PBL) methodology in the curriculum area of Social Work. The project worked in collaboration with social work students, lecturers and university partners between 2019 to 2021. This session may be of particular interest to those working with students in the social professions and work based learning courses.</p> <p>Key challenges and implications for practice:</p> <ul> <li>Subject specialists seeing the Learning Developer role as one of ‘fixing students’.</li> <li>Potential of Problem Based Learning as part of accredited Social Work courses.</li> <li>Integrating Learning Development; embedded vs bolt on quick fixes.</li> <li>Learning Development as scaffolding reflective writing practice.</li> </ul> <p>The project overcame these issues with a reach that rippled across six north east London Local Authorities as part of a Teaching Partnership. It has also been included as a topical issue for reflection, titled: ‘Promoting Positive Father Involvement’ as part of modules in practice learning. Both students and staff engaged in a workshop programme that scaffolded a dialogue between them, addressing issues of father engagement as part of practice.</p> <p>Students were able to synthesise themes of theory, policy, legislation and its application to practice. As a result, some students developed substantial case studies at both level 5 and 6, and these even informed their later dissertations and research projects. This demonstrates the social value and wider impact that Learning Development has had on improving outcomes for not only students, but fathers, children and their families.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1135Fostering belonging: an interdisciplinary journal club2023-10-06T05:16:23-07:00Katie WinterJennifer McLay<p>This session explored the evolution of an interdisciplinary journal club open to undergraduate and Master’s students, the challenges faced, and how we plan to develop the project going forward.</p> <p>The aim of the club is to empower students through an initial staff-led workshop, followed by student-led peer-to-peer discussion sessions, developing their confidence in group working (and indirectly meeting new people), critical reading and analysis. The club also provides the opportunity to analyse and interpret statistical data, an area that can be daunting for students (Mezgebe, Chesson and Thurston, 2019). Articles for discussion in the club are chosen to be accessible to students from all disciplines, with a focus where possible on aspects of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Collaboration between different facets of our learning development team allow our Librarian, Writing, and Maths and Statistics advisers to bring their specific expertise to the initiative, resulting in a holistic approach additionally underpinned by students’ increased ownership.</p> <p>Impact is measured through pre- and post-participation surveys* with mostly positive comments, touching on benefits beyond obvious ‘skills development’, most notably participation being seen to instil a sense of connection and belonging with fellow students, contributing to students’ sense of wellbeing and the appreciation of having a space to explore learning outside of the core assessed curriculum.</p> <p>We hoped to tap into delegates’ experiences of any similar initiatives and explore possibilities for further developing our initiative, which could include embedding subject-specific clubs within course programmes (i.e., empowering academic staff to facilitate these), with the aim of further enhancing a sense of belonging across the institution. Equally, the model we have developed is adaptable to different contexts, so we would encourage delegates to consider the potential for adaptation to their institutional contexts.</p> <p>*Ethical approval has been obtained to use survey responses for research.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1134Learning development mentor provision – how it’s going2023-10-04T07:59:15-07:00Sheryl MansfieldSam ThomasHelena Beeson<p style="font-weight: 400;">Continuing from the presentation in 2022 (see Thomas and Mansfield, 2022), the University of Northampton Learning Development Team used this session to share how the second year of their Learning Development Mentor Project has progressed.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">Our session discussed the impact of utilising student mentors on the provision of our service with the objective of reducing barriers to accessing support. Our nine Learning Development Mentors (LDMs) replicate that of Price et al.’s (2018) Student Learning Assistant Model where we offer support to students from any disciplinary subject via drop-ins, tutorials and other formal events. All LDMs are current second- and third-year students and work four or six hours a week to supplement the LD provision by offering a peer perspective to academic and study skills. Furthermore, they are seeping into spaces unable to be penetrated by Learning Development. The talk evaluated how the role was co-created with the LD Mentors and the benefits and impact it has had on the LD provision. We discussed how the Learning Development tutors, mentors and users of the service differentiate the roles. In addition, the impact of the following projects which the LDMs have been involved with was considered:</p> <ul> <li>University of Northampton Plagiarism Awareness Course (UNPAC).</li> <li>Social media and marketing outputs.</li> <li>Pathways project to support students’ understanding of Learning Development and how to access the service.</li> <li>Other institutional events such as open days, exam ready project and many more.</li> <li>The conference presentation will describe how we have navigated the project and how measuring impact with the project is not always straightforward.</li> </ul>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1132Mentoring in learning development2023-10-04T06:33:36-07:00Silvina Bishopp-MartinUrsula CantonJane McKayChenée PsarosAlicja SyskaSamantha Thomas<p style="font-weight: 400;">Learning Development is still a relatively young field (Syska and Buckley, 2022), and despite a growing body of research, it remains strongly practice-oriented. This means that experience, in this case of individual Learning Developers, takes an even more central place than it does in more established fields, and sharing this experience through mentoring takes on a central role. This is why the mentoring working group has developed a Learning Development focused ALDinHE Mentoring Scheme, together with a Certified Mentor recognition that helps experienced mentors be recognised for their contribution to growing and sharing LD knowledge. This mini keynote briefly introduced the Mentoring Scheme and the CeM recognition before exploring the role mentoring can play in the professional development of Learning Developers with the audience.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">The questions we asked were:</p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400;">What benefits would you expect for mentees?</li> <li style="font-weight: 400;">What benefits would you expect for mentors?</li> <li style="font-weight: 400;">What kind of experience can be best shared through mentoring?</li> </ul>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1131Higher recognition for learning developers: NTF and PFHEA discussion session 2023-10-04T03:57:07-07:00Carina BuckleyDebbie Holley<p style="font-weight: 400;">Although it might sometimes seem as though PFHEA and NTF are high-level and strategic forms of recognition for those working in high-level and strategic positions, this is not necessarily the case, and both have been achieved by an ever-increasing number of Learning Developers. Join us in this session if either of these is something you’ve been mulling over or a goal you’ve set yourself, and we will outline what’s involved in writing an application, share with you the kinds of evidence we used in our own applications, explore how you can meet the requirements, and hopefully answer your questions about how you might proceed. Aim high!</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1130Professional identity and the LD project podcast 2023-10-04T03:20:58-07:00Carina BuckleyAlicja Syska<p>The Learning Development Project podcast was established in summer 2022 to open up the conversation around writing in Learning Development, as we believe that publication should not be the end of the story. We always ask our guests about their relationship with writing since part of the reason we invite them onto the podcast is because they have written something that has resonated with colleagues or had impact on practice. They are writers, and we invite them in that capacity. But how do we see ourselves? And how do others see us? We are writers, authors, podcasters, academics, leaders, colleagues, editors, amongst other labels. However, while there are certain stable aspects to our self-identity, there are less stable ones – such as being a writer – that need to be constantly negotiated. If writing is an important aspect of your identity, how do you get others to see that importance, and support it?</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1129Great expectations: four writing tendencies for actionable self-knowledge2023-10-04T02:03:10-07:00Carina BuckleyAlicja Syska<p>We all know that writing for publication is a valuable activity and one that many of us aspire to. We have previously presented it as a form of liberatory practice for Learning Development (Syska and Buckley, 2022) showing how it allows us to shape and develop our ideas as part of a wider conversation in LD, and how in doing so it helps to build the field and our own professional profiles. Yet many of us struggle to write. We explored some of the reasons behind this in a small study and although lack of time is consistently cited as a factor, we believe the root of the issue lies in managing the expectations we have for ourselves alongside those that others have for us and, most crucially, how we respond to those.</p> <p> </p> <p>In her book <em>The Four Tendencies</em>, Gretchen Rubin identified that internal and external expectations, enmeshed with our particular predisposition when it comes to responding to tasks, go far to explain ‘why we act and why we don’t act’ (Rubin, 2017, p.12). While her Tendencies relate to the four possible combinations of meeting or not meeting inner and outer expectations generally, we have translated this specifically to writing as a way of understanding why many people struggle to write and how they can be supported. The four writing tendencies we have identified – Strivers, Pragmatists, Actualisers and Freelancers – have their own blocks to writing, but also have their own strategies for effectively overcoming those blocks. In this presentation we therefore outlined the nature of the four writing tendencies, helped participants identify their own, and showed how self-knowledge can have a significant impact on our approach to writing, which we can then pass on to our students.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1128Better student outcomes at University of Portsmouth – how data informed targeted intervention can support student success.2023-10-03T05:40:53-07:00Tom LoweHarriet Dunbar-Morris Natalie Dutka-Bowskill Dominic Owen<p>Learning Developers are increasingly asked to conduct targeted work with certain student groups and areas of academic provision to respond to an outcomes and target-focused English higher education sector. This paper presentation offered an example of practice from the University of Portsmouth Students’ Union (UPSU) and University of Portsmouth (UoP), where a funded pilot to better support student outcomes has run since 2022, to address the above challenges. This substantial investment of increased staffing, student-staffing and non-staffing resources in UPSU, has led to supporting targeted solutions to improve student outcomes, in partnership with course teams and students. This project offers an example of a cross-university enhancement project for Learning Development teams and shared practice in approaching timely and targeted intervention.</p> <p>Presenting as a cross university team, the session outlined how the university is working collaboratively between different services and teams to better support student success through curriculum enhancement consultancy. The team shared recommendations to the Learning Development community, introducing Portsmouth’s timely response framework to support future targeted response activities when working collaboratively across a university. In the pressured context of English Higher Education Regulation from the Office for Students, recently produced national student outcomes benchmarks, by programme and by university (B3 Measures see OfS 2022a and 22b), have threatened fines for universities where there are lower metrics in retention, graduate outcomes and student satisfaction (for context see Advance HE Governance Alert 2022). It is therefore critical for timely intervention, with data sources feeding quickly into actionable staffing resources in time for relevant intervention, which will increasingly include the work of Learning Developers. Therefore, this presentation highlighted Portsmouth’s story from the Student Outcomes Project and disseminated a framework for data-informed intervention to support universities during a time of accountability and emphasis on student success.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1126Increasing neurodiversity awareness through a community of practice2023-10-03T04:13:29-07:00Jennie DettmerKaren Welton<p>During this wildcard session, we will present the journey of the ALDinHE Neurodiversity/Inclusivity Community of Practice (CoP) up to the present time and invite new members to join. This will include why the CoP was set up, what we have achieved during our two years of meetings, and the exciting future work of the group in relation to increasing awareness of neurodiversity through a resource bank to be hosted on the ALDinHE website. Participants will also have the opportunity to reflect on their knowledge of neurodiversity, their institution’s training on neurodiversity and how they might benefit from access to additional training and/or resources.</p> <p>An awareness of neurodiversity is important for all educators as there has been an increase in the number of neurodivergent students accessing Higher Education (HE) in recent years (HESA, 2022). One of the main reasons behind this increase is the Widening Participation (WP) initiatives of institutions (Office for Students, 2022). Additionally, under the Equality Act 2010, institutions are legally obligated to create inclusive learning environments for their students from the outset (Equality Challenge Unit, 2010), and this emphasis has increased since Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) funding for certain individual reasonable adjustments was removed (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2014).</p> <p>Communities of Practice are ‘socially configured spaces that necessarily involve learning as an aspect of membership’ (Tummons, 2018, p.4). Through provocation, discussions and the analysis of lived experience, the Neurodiversity/Inclusivity CoP members have gained valuable insights and enhanced their knowledge leading to a more developed practice; we invite you to do the same during this session.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1127A manifesto for the metaverse: opportunities and challenges for learning development2023-10-03T03:11:47-07:00Carina Buckley Debbie HolleyLee Fallin<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Drawing upon a section of the co-created Learning Development (LD) Manifesto (ALDinHE, 2018), in this workshop we invite participants to come and be creative – and imagine beyond what Learning Developers do now into what they may do in the future, inspired by the metaverse. The metaverse is a science fiction hypothetical iteration from the book ‘Snow Crash’ (Stephenson, 1992) set in a near future where the global political structure has collapsed (!), a tiny number of super-corporations control most aspects of life, and the rich spend their time in the metaverse (Ball, 2022).</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Today the metaverse is the Facebook-owned platform Meta, which Mark Zuckerberg (2021) explains as “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it”. Rather than our current 2D, screen-based internet, the metaverse will be a 3D virtual space, accessed by either a VR headset or AR (augmented reality) glasses, which superimpose a layer of digital information on top of the visible world. What impact might this have on LD practices, knowledge and beliefs? The metaverse is highly contentious, and we invite Learning Developers to take the challenge and look to possible futures and their potential value to the sector. The educational possibilities of the metaverse will build from the UNESCO (2022) ‘Reimagining education’ discussion paper.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There is also a need to focus the conversation on the ethics of the metaverse (Fielding, 2021), to consider how we can embed safety, privacy and inclusion at the core. It is fair to argue that these values closely align with LD, yet in the metaverse there is the potential for violence, harassment, isolation and bullying. How can we promote and enhance equality, diversity and inclusion in this space?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We will invite participants (who will work in teams) to co-create a #Take5 blogpost with us from our mapping and debates.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">No technology is needed for the session, and no previous knowledge of the metaverse </span></p> <p><strong>Our manifesto</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">What does Learning Development do? </span></p> <ul> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">It contextualises, embeds and maps knowledge, and contributes to learning gain </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">It teaches how to learn and scaffolds learning </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">It widens opportunity, not participation; it can trouble what we mean by participation </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">It infiltrates throughout the university and operates in a 3rd space, connecting and </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">collaborating with the wider community </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">It works with the hidden curriculum </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">It legitimises the different forms of knowledge our students have </span></li> <li><span style="font-weight: 400;">It levels the playing field and widens the academy </span></li> </ul>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1125How a learning skills course addressed transition, diversity and inclusion, and a sense of belonging for mature students seeking entrance to university: reflections of a Canadian learning specialist2023-10-02T20:46:34-07:00Heather Grierson<p style="font-weight: 400;">Universities across Canada offer bridging programmes for mature students who would not otherwise have access to post-secondary education. The College of Arts at the University of Guelph developed their Academic Transition Program to support these students, with the cornerstone of the programme being a learning skills course, launched in Autumn 2022, that students must complete in order to be accepted into an undergraduate programme.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">In the Canadian context, it is unusual for a learning specialist to act as course developer for the creation of an undergraduate credit course. This presentation shares a reflection on the theories that underpinned the course creation, most notably Kolb’s (1984) theory on experiential learning, Baxter-Magolda’s (1999) theory of self authorship, and the learning gained after wearing many hats – learning specialist, course developer, and sessional instructor.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">The presentation explored:</p> <ul> <li>The tripartite arrangement developed to create the course.</li> <li>Ways in which the course addressed students’ transition to university.</li> <li>Considerations around diversity and inclusion.</li> <li>How the coursework supported a sense of belonging.</li> <li>Feedback from the students’ experience of the course.</li> <li>What was learned when the course was made available to traditional undergraduate students from first through fourth year.</li> <li>How this course intersects with the Canadian model of learning support.</li> <li>Sharing examples of course content, including weekly reflection questions.</li> <li>Lessons learned and plans for the future of the course, including alternative formats.</li> </ul> <p style="font-weight: 400;">Making learning strategies explicit can support mature students’ level of success in higher education (Erb & Drysdale, 2017). This course combined theoretical and practical learning skill applications and opportunities to develop a sense of belonging for a diverse cohort of mature students.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1124Tales of a three-year journey to integrating academic and information literacy skills in an education course2023-10-02T08:51:16-07:00Silvina Bishopp-Martin<p>This session explored the journey to integrating academic and information literacy skills into CCCU’s BA in primary education. The session began by presenting a rationale for the project and the principles underpinning it, in particular, by referring to the Academic Literacies approach. The presentation subsequently introduced the staged approach taken to fully integrate learning development work into the curriculum, including concrete examples of what that integration looked like for a range of modules. The presenter also introduced staff and student feedback from the ongoing project, and a range of future steps which will be taken to continue the process of integration. A key aspect of the session included reference to: (a) how this process has allowed students to navigate academic expectations at different points in the course; (b) staff’s perceptions on the value of the collaboration needed to realise this project.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1123Developing through mentoring or being mentored: ALDinHE’s new mentoring scheme and certified mentor recognition2023-10-02T08:47:08-07:00Silvina Bishopp-MartinUrsula CantonJane McKayChenée PsarosAlicja SyskaSam Thomas<p>ALDinHE is launching its new mentoring scheme and mentorship recognition to acknowledge, promote and recognise the importance of mentoring for LD as a field that does not offer an official route into the profession. This Professional Development session introduced the mentoring scheme, explaining how to get involved, what support mentors and mentees can receive from ALDinHE and what benefits both sides can get from mentoring or being mentored. If you’re new to LD or keen to develop more experience in a specific area with the help of a mentor, the mentoring scheme will offer you a brilliant framework to broaden your expertise. If you’re an experienced Learning Developer or have specific expertise you could share, find out how you could become recognised as a Certified Mentor (CeM) in LD by ALDinHE.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1122Academic integrity and the role of learning development2023-10-02T05:13:30-07:00Ed BickleSteph AllenMarian Mayer<p>Learning Development (LD) is a supportive function within an educational environment. Learning Developers walk alongside students to develop academic skills and practice, and guide individuals throughout their academic journey through a variety of empowering approaches. One such function is raising awareness of academic integrity within academia and the role individuals can play to uphold it. Academic integrity is concerned with six key principles: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage (ICAI, 2021).</p> <p> </p> <p>Across the UK, many institutions and LD practitioners have designed and delivered courses, quizzes, tutorials, and events to promote academic integrity. These range from whole institution activities through piecemeal touchpoints. Academic integrity sessions are designed to encourage individual and original work, building on the shoulder of others, giving credit where due and avoiding plagiarism and unfair practice.</p> <p> </p> <p>Emerging from a global pandemic and experiencing a technological revolution, such as ChatGPT3, in this brave new rapidly expanding digital world, several questions arise:</p> <p> </p> <ul> <li>What is the role of Learning Developers in assessment design?</li> <li>What is the role of Learning Developers in academic offences panels?</li> <li>What training do Learning Developers need?</li> <li>How can Learning Development take leadership in promoting academic integrity?</li> <li>What forms of collaborative cross institutional research on academic integrity would be advantageous?</li> </ul> <p>This workshop provided participants with an opportunity to discuss the role of LD within the ever-developing world of academic integrity. Following a quick-fire quiz, participants had the opportunity to work in small groups. Each group was assigned one of the above questions in order to contribute to a 5-point action plan for how LD can be at the forefront of the academic integrity agenda. Participants took away ideas with them that they could apply within their own role and teams.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1121Green and academic literacies: embedding sustainability into learning development practice2023-10-02T00:30:05-07:00Rhiannon Parry Thompson<p> </p> <p>Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), an internationally understood educational concept, ‘equips learners across all disciplines with the knowledge, skills, attributes and values required to pursue sustainable visions of the future’ (Advanced HE, n.d.). The potential for learning development (LD) to contribute IN this endeavour by embedding green literacy into LD practice while supporting students to develop their academic literacies is a longstanding professional interest of the author. There is broad agreement that effective ESD necessitates supporting students to develop self-reflection, systematic thinking, problem solving and collaborative learning skills, some of the key competencies that LD seeks to foster.</p> <p>This mini keynote briefly presented the nature, scope, and purpose of the author’s work in embedding ESD within their LD practice. It aimed to provoke a discussion about the potential of LD to contribute to the ESD agenda within higher education by, for example, participating in departmental, faculty or institution-wide Climate Themed Learning events or by integrating ESD into regular LD practice. It also aimed to encourage information and ideas exchange, and a consideration about the formation of an ALDinHE Education for Sustainable Development Community of Practice.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1120Hey you! They're calling you Tinkerbell! What are you going to do about it?2023-10-01T14:17:05-07:00Steven WhiteHelen Webster<p>Critiques and polemics calling for ‘doing away with study skills’ as an ineffectual ‘Tinkerbell’ mirage that plays into neoliberal, deficit, anti-academic agendas have appeared both in academic scholarship and the higher education press (see, for example, Richards and Pilcher, 2021, 2023; Wingate, 2006). Often originating from outside the learning development community, misinformed and misdirected, these criticisms gain traction with senior leadership and academic colleagues, and cannot be ignored, avoided, or dismissed if we are to promote our ethos (and preserve our jobs). So nearly right in many ways, but for the wrong reasons, they come too close to the mark to shrug off. Yet there has been very little response—let alone rebuttal—from the learning development community, individually or collectively. Robust critique is fair and demands a reply: ‘rising above it’ is not a scholarly response. Any reluctance to engage in outward-facing debate is surely a problem given that there is so much at stake for students and for ourselves.</p> <p>Are we going to let them talk about us like this?</p> <p>Questions:</p> <ul> <li>Are they right?</li> <li>Can you prove it?</li> <li>How will anyone know?</li> </ul>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1119Reflection on the highs and lows of written feedback2023-10-01T10:34:23-07:00Eva Shackel<p><span data-contrast="auto">In-person, dialogic feedback tends to be prioritised in learning development (Babcock and Thonus, 2018) and is generally regarded as the most effective option (Hattie and Clarke, 2019). However, there are times when written feedback is more convenient (Burke and Pietrick, 2010). As students’ reactions to written feedback cannot be easily gauged (Dison and Collett, 2019), it is difficult to know if it is being given in the right quantity, depth, and format, to be most helpful (Nicol, 2010).</span><span data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":160,"335559740":360}"> </span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">This presentation outlined research conducted to find out how students feel about the written feedback they receive from a UK university writing centre where written feedback is offered to students on placement. Examples of this feedback was provided to the audience for a sense of what this looks like, as the format and tone can vary between institutions.</span><span data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":160,"335559740":360}"> </span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">249 students who had sent an essay for email feedback were invited to complete an online survey using Google Forms, for which there was a response rate of 22%. This was followed by semi-structured interviews with 11 students, to explore responses in more depth.</span><span data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":160,"335559740":360}"> </span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">Most students requested written feedback due to its convenience, however some students who identified as neuro-diverse preferred written feedback over in-person feedback as it allows them to process information in their own time. That written feedback could help foster inclusion in this way was an unexpected finding. Additionally, rather than finding the feedback overwhelming, the detailed nature of the feedback increases the students’ perception that the university cares about them. This made them feel valued and important and improved their sense of belonging.</span><span data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":160,"335559740":360}"> </span></p> <p><span data-contrast="auto">This talk concluded by looking at how the findings of this research have informed the team’s written, and verbal, feedback.</span><span data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":160,"335559740":360}"> </span></p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1118Using podcasts to create an online community2023-10-01T03:10:01-07:00Shipa Begum<p>In this poster, I outlined how an existing podcast within the Health and Social Work (HSK) School at the University of Hertfordshire was developed to include a segment that the Student Success and Academic Support (SSAS) team used to share content relevant to the needs of its students. Given the nature of the courses within the School, students are often unable to attend workshops and one-to-one appointments and drop-ins due to their busy timetables, which consist of back-to-back lectures, practicals and long-hour placements. Consequently, not all students were able to access the support available to them via the SSAS team. As a result, a segment called ‘Just a Moment with SASS’ was developed in the HSK podcast.</p> <p>The aim was to create an online community for students within the School where they can tune in once per month to listen to tutors from the SASS team share advice and tips on common student queries, listen to interviews of staff and students from the School and find out what is happening in the School. This creates a sense of belonging for students who are unable to attend support sessions and/or networking events but still want to feel part of the School.</p> <p>The poster offers guidance on how to get started using podcasts and some of its limitations.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1117Apps in LD: gifts or gimmicks?2023-09-29T07:58:13-07:00Amy West<p>In ‘one-shot’ Learning Development (LD) teaching, how much space is there for using apps (and similar technologies) creatively? Can they further students’ understanding and enable active learning within workshops; is there even potential for using them in tutorials? What barriers are there to their use, how could we remove these, and indeed should we – is there enough to be gained or are they just a gimmick?</p> <p> </p> <p>This Wild Card session was an opportunity to collaboratively explore the potential of a selection of apps and technologies which are used in other areas of education, and consider whether they can augment provision in LD. The apps and programmes chosen for this session were used in an international Erasmus+ research project, which worked with lecturers, teachers, students, and school children who observed their strengths and limitations in use (Digital Learning Across Boundaries: Developing Changemakers (DLAB), 2017-2022). This Wild Card session looked to evaluate how these apps might be applied in the LD world by reviewing benefits and barriers to their use in an LD context, and considering how we might maximise any usefulness and contend with limitations or concerns. I wanted to explore how they might support transition through familiarity and links with previous education experiences, and whether the activities which use them might impact on belonging. Participants were encouraged to evaluate and share their thoughts on the apps, and collectively generate a resource of ideas as to their use in LD. This resource could then be shared and drawn on by others.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1116Nurturing learning development through student feedback2023-09-29T07:53:12-07:00Colette MairKieran BrownEmma BeekmanEsther OloweCallum Macaulay<p>Student evaluations of both teaching and student services are increasingly embedded into higher education. There is debate surrounding the reliability, effectiveness, and bias of such evaluations (Hefferman, 2022) and National Student Survey (NSS) results (Office for Students, 2022) show that students typically respond poorly to questions relating to their learning community and their opportunities to give feedback on their experiences (student voice).</p> <p> </p> <p>After receiving ethical approval to conduct research on evaluations, four students and a member of staff worked together to address how staff and students within the School of Mathematics and Statistics engage with student evaluations. Two surveys were conducted, the first aimed at staff (63 responses, 90% response rate) and the second at students (53 responses, 17% response rate). The results suggested that both staff and students agreed that evaluations are necessary and useful in building relationships. While staff implement the feedback they receive, students currently do not see it, and their learning may not benefit from being part of this process.</p> <p> </p> <p>When asked to describe the purpose of student evaluations, participating staff expressed that they provide students with opportunities to have direct input to courses, influence their learning environment, and feel part of the school. Students expressed that their feedback could improve a course’s content, quality and delivery, and provide a learning opportunity for lecturers. Students indicated a preference for informal mid-term feedback since they could see their feedback acted upon in real time. In response, we propose the use of student evaluations as a feedback dialogue tool to encourage and enhance relationships between staff and students and help develop self-regulated learning. We will exemplify a feedback system that uses short, direct, and frequent surveys that students complete at the time of learning (Rowland, 2021), providing time to reflect on learning and creating a line of dialogic communication with the lecturer who can respond to the feedback to inform future learning. The system is applicable to any continuous student-staff learning-focused interaction.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1112How can collaborative reading techniques impact confidence and belonging? 2023-09-29T06:35:46-07:00Jane SavilleTasha CooperTom EdgeSteve Hunt<p>Recent barriers to engagement in higher education (HE) – including economic, geographic and post-COVID anxiety (Dickinson, 2022; Morgan, 2022; Bennett et al., 2022) – may result in students being less inclined to develop relationships with their peers, share ideas, and invest time in their learning. This challenges our efforts to develop students’ academic skills as they are transitioning into and through HE. </p> <p>Academic reading is often neglected in favour of academic writing, largely due to the assumption that competence in reading is an existing skill (Kimberley and Thursby, 2020). However, students report that they lack confidence, resulting in avoidance of reading complex texts (St. Clair-Thompson, Graham and Marsham, 2018). In addition, subject lecturers may not refer to the importance of reading in their teaching. This ‘invisibility’ (Baker et.al, 2019) can lead to a devaluation of the skill, which has serious consequences: reading remains a critical foundation for much thinking and writing in HE (Maguire, Reynolds and Delahunt, 2020). </p> <p>Collaborative reading techniques can address these challenges by promoting reading as social practice; improving confidence to tackle texts; and boosting belonging within a cohort and discipline (McCollum et al., 2017). At UWE Bristol, we have a two-year project within Learning Services to promote and improve reading skills, including reading within the disciplines. During 2022, we piloted academic reading circles, textmapping and jigsaw reading. Since then, we have embedded some of these activities across all three colleges at module level. </p> <p>Initial student and lecturer feedback has been positive, with participants reporting increased levels of confidence. However, is this a sufficient indication of potential long-term impact? How do learning developers influence an improvement of competence and confidence in reading, and move towards a more mature model of embeddedness (Wingate, 2016)? Our presentation explored possible answers to this question by presenting case studies and sharing the lessons learnt. </p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1115Equality, diversity and inclusion: learning from laying our cards on the table (resource showcase)2023-09-29T05:59:04-07:00Matthew SillenceHanh DoanAmanda Clark<p>In this showcase, we presented a card resource for learning developers who work with staff or students to set up an inclusive learning environment. These are often personal interactions and need to be explored respectfully (Love, Gaynor, and Blessett, 2016; Mahmood, Gray and Benincasa, 2022). The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) cards were created by the University of Hertfordshire and comprise 26 topics and illustrations, ranging from ‘belonging’ to ‘trust’, and exist in both a physical and digital format. Resources used as games can encourage participation, reflection, and transformational thinking (Peabody and Noyes, 2017; Clark, Dickerson, and Jarvis, 2022), which are all important for encouraging respectful conversations about EDI issues.</p> <p>A collaborative project with the University of East Anglia to explore the use of the cards was funded by ALDinHE. Full ethics approval was gained from both universities before beginning. It recruited staff and students at Hertfordshire and East Anglia who worked with EDI issues and gathered reflections from facilitators and participants who used the cards in different learning contexts, such as academic support staff development exercises and student representation workshops. They reported that the card prompts allowed for personal storytelling and they suggested further topics for the cards set.</p> <p>This session, led by learning developers and teaching staff, explored the idea of the ‘brave space’ (Arao and Clemens, 2013, p. 142; Palfrey, 2017) and why ‘serious play’ is important in learning (Rieber, Smith and Noah, 1998, p. 29). It discussed where and when the cards can be used, in terms of: a physical or digital space; the curriculum or disciplinary context; and the stage of the learner’s journey. The EDI cards and new guidance booklet were made available for delegates to take away.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1114Integrating education for sustainable development in learning development practice within a university humanities and social sciences faculty2023-09-29T05:54:49-07:00Rhiannon Parry Thompson<p>This talk focused on a Learning Development (LD) approach to the integration of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the production and delivery of self-directed and classroom LD resources within a department under a humanities and social sciences faculty. This was partly a response to a recently published framework for ESD in higher education (Advance HE, 2021) which encouraged students and staff, across disciplines and service areas, to identify their potential in advancing sustainability in their institutions and wider communities. ESD as ‘a lens that permits us to look critically at how the world is and to envision how it might be and equips us to deliver that vision’ implements and embeds pedagogies, enabling students to discern their roles in addressing ‘integrity, social justice and economic prosperity’ (Advance HE, 2021).</p> <p> </p> <p>The role of universities in contributing to the United Nation’s Global Sustainable Development Goals (UNDP, 2022) through research, teaching, skills development, and civic engagement, in positioning ESD strategically across the curriculum, and student expectations around ESD and SDG learning opportunities (SOS-UK, 2020) provided additional context for this session.</p> <p> </p> <p>The talk included a succinct overview of ESD in higher education and, informed by the author’s practice, a concise explanation of the distinctive role of LD in contributing to the integration of ESD within the formal and informal curricula. This was illustrated by presenting self-produced materials (or, reflecting participatory practice principles, co-produced with students or colleagues), based on a range of sustainability themes, and focusing on such skills areas as critical reflection, communication, collaborative learning and research. The observed impact on students from different subject areas, working collaboratively to apply academic skills to real-world challenges was addressed.</p> <p>Embedded high-impact ESD in LD fosters students’ green literacy skills, enabling them, when they transition out of higher education, to build, and maintain environmentally and socially just communities and workplaces. A comprehensive resource document, with example material, will be hosted on Learn Higher.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1110Why students engage in simulation and how it prepares them for work2023-09-29T03:36:54-07:00David BigginsDebbie HolleyBen GoldsmithJacqueline Priego-Hernandez<p>In the future, learning will take the shape of a story, a play, a game; involving multiple platforms and players; driven by dialogue and augmented with technology, an interplay of immersive experiences, data, and highly social virtual worlds (Lee et al., 2021).</p> <p>Employers seek graduates who demonstrate attributes that organisations require to develop in the future. As students transition out of higher education, they should have the ‘abilities and capabilities to maintain employment’ (Asiri et al., 2017 p. 2). The transition out of university can be perceived as particularly stressful, with uncertainty about what is required for a successful career (Jackson and Tomlinson, 2020). This is exacerbated in the post Covid-19 environment when, even as the graduate job market has started to recover, students’ confidence about finding a job after graduation remains low (Curnock Cook, 2022). Our simulation methods are aligned to the theories that underpin these transitions, and designed to support students ‘becoming’ professionals in their field. Simulations can be designed for cognitive absorption, the psychological concept of flow and deep absorption in learning (Kukulska-Hulme et al., 2022). Premised on the innovation of best learning moments, the student tasks shared in this workshop engender deep involvement, through memorable learning activities. This reflects the ‘ways of working’ of the Learning Development (LD) community, and evidence suggests that reflective practice, learning complex skills and scaffolding learning are the transferable aspects of these technologies (Chernikova et al., 2020).</p> <p>Widening participation research has provided evidence that students’ movements in and out of experiences such as care, work and studies are dynamic, non-sequential and context-dependent (Holley and Priego-Hernández, 2021). With the move to hybrid learning, students want their learning materials to be well-designed. However, 43% of students do not perceive their learning materials to be engaging/motivating (Killen and Didymus, 2022). Immersive technology and simulation may offer the solution to this disconnect, as simulations offer an immersive and embodied experience (Bayne 2004; Bayne et al., 2019). Signature pedagogies (Thomson et al., 2012) for professions can provide a means for institutions to achieve the requirements of Office for Students’ B3 (2022) which is now assessing student continuation, degree outcomes, including differential outcomes for student characteristics, and, framing this workshop, graduate employment and progression to professional jobs and postgraduate study.</p> <p>Learning Developers have a pivotal part to play operationalising actions that result into students’ graduate outcomes, and responding to this, our workshop invited participants to experience three types of simulation: a) a business game; b) a mass casualty evacuation; and c) a community project responding to a scenario.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/990Helping students to learn how to critically evaluate a source: how effective are the tools we use?2023-09-29T03:28:49-07:00Edward PowellSonia Hood<p style="font-weight: 400;">What does evaluating a source involve? What aspects of the source are being evaluated? On what basis do we determine a source’s strengths and weaknesses? And how do we explain this to students who are learning the basics of critical analysis?</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">The Study Advice team at the University of Reading recently developed a new online guide introducing students to critical analysis. The guide includes a selection of exercises and visual and mnemonic tools that cover the basics of critical analysis, including Bloom’s Taxonomy (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001), the Seven Pillars of Information Literacy (SCONUL, 2011), C.R.A.A.P. (Blakeslee, 2004), B.E.A.M. (Bizup, 2008), and the University of Plymouth’s (2006) Model to Generate Critical Thinking, along with a new resource called S.P.E.A.R. that focuses on how to analyse and evaluate an individual source. We developed the latter after noticing in one-to-one appointments that students appeared to find this aspect of critical analysis particularly difficult to understand. Moreover, we felt that existing tools like C.R.A.A.P. and the Seven Pillars did not provide enough clarification of how to identify a source’s strengths and weaknesses.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">In this workshop, participants will consider how well these tools work in helping students understand how to evaluate a source’s analysis and, by extension, its claims. This process can differ significantly across the disciplines. As such, we will also explore how to better capture the full breadth of critical analysis at degree level, without overwhelming students who are new to the concept with its full complexities.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1111The black award gap2023-09-29T03:19:48-07:00Kate Coulson<p>The Learning Development team at the University of Northampton has been developing research projects to understand the extent and potential causes of award gaps (Coulson and Loddick, 2020; Loddick and Coulson, 2020; Coulson, Loddick and Rice, 2021). However, the team was not prepared for other findings that emerged from this research related to the Black award gap. Firstly, Black students who engage with a tutorial can see an improvement of up to 4 sub grades. Secondly, analysing award gap data revealed that the Black award gap could be reduced by 50% by eliminating non-submission of assignments.</p> <p>This mini keynote outlined the projects that have been developed: a project with Black students within the Foundation degree framework to ascertain why they might not submit their assignments and a second project to engage ‘Black Student Advocates’ will also be outlined. The challenges of this work were also shared.</p> <p>Questions posed:</p> <ol> <li>How has your institution approached the Black award gap?</li> <li>How might you contribute to the reduction (or elimination) of the Black award gap?</li> <li>Can we eliminate the Black award gap?</li> </ol>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1103Reflections on a peer-led Writing Café2023-09-29T00:14:44-07:00Emily WebbFelicity EdwardsZoe HarringtonEve MiddletonAmy SomekhTharushi Wijesiriwardena<p>Academic writing can often be a solitary, even isolating, experience for students. For those new to UK higher education institutions, as well as those seeking to develop their academic skills, academic writing can be a daunting task. Supporting students with academic writing is a significant element of the work of the Learning Development team at the University of Leeds. Established methods of support, including co-curricular and embedded workshops, online resources, and one-to-one appointments, are effective, but they do little to promote a sense of community or belonging. Instead, the power dynamic between student and learning advisor remains very similar to the one students experience with academic staff. Peer support has proved to be a powerful tool in learning development, especially in academic writing (Longfellow et al., 2008; Pritchard, 2015; Tamachi et al., 2018). Building on the successes of PASS/PAL schemes and peer-led support at other institutions, the LD team at Leeds opened a Writing Café in October 2022 to support undergraduate students in the development of their academic writing. Led by five student ‘academic writing mentors’, the Writing Café offers an opportunity for undergraduates to have a less isolating experience of writing while building their communities and networks within the institution.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1109Enhancing attainment and belonging at the London College of Fashion: a proactive, personalised approach to address limitations of the academic support provision2023-09-28T10:33:09-07:00Emma Shackleton Jo Peel<p>This paper shared a proactive approach, developed by the Academic Support department in London College of Fashion (LCF), designed to enhance equity of take up of the department’s tutorials and contribute to reducing awarding differences. The paper uses the term Black, Asian and minority ethnic students because University of the Arts London (UAL) uses it as one of the categories for students as part of its collection, analysis and reporting of institutional data. We recognise and acknowledge the terminology is overly broad and contested. Since the paper used UAL’s institutional data, it was working with UAL’s definitions, terminology and categorisations.</p> <p>In late 2019, examination of university data indicated lower bookings by Year 3 Home Black, Asian and minority ethnic students (Malik et al., 2021) and International students, and lower enhancement for degree awards, compared to Home White students. LCF has an open-to-all offer of tutorials and dedicated final-year workshops. However, research identifies systemic obstacles encountered by some students within and outside universities (Snoussi and Mompelat, 2019; UUK, 2019). While the department’s offer appeared popular, it required self-initiation by students, which could be a barrier for students experiencing a limited sense of belonging within the College. </p> <p>Drawing on compassionate and solutions-focused approaches, the generic offer was adapted to enable a lecturer-team to offer personalised support to students identified as having the greatest opportunity to benefit from tutorials. Now in its third year, the Proactive Approach has led to greater equity of take up of the department’s provision and higher outcomes for students taking it up. The intervention is being evaluated for the UAL Access and Participation Plan, and data to date suggests it can contribute to enhancing a sense of belonging and unit grades.</p> <p>This learning development offer was tailored to be flexible for delivery within restricted time frames and the existing resource of the Academic Support department. Our hopes when sharing it with delegates included giving space to consider its benefits, limitations and potential opportunities to use institutional data to stimulate a redesign of a learning development offer to contribute to universities’ work for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.</p> <p><strong>Keywords: </strong>proactive, personalised, equity, awarding differentials, learning conversations.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1106Establishing faculty-based peer-led Pomodoro® online study communities2023-09-28T08:44:45-07:00Amy May<p style="font-weight: 400;">The University of Nottingham Libraries’ Learning Development (Academic Skills) team started hosting ‘Study With Us’ (online study community utilising the Pomodoro® Technique) sessions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as a means to provide an online community and a connection to the University for students during lockdown periods. Post-pandemic, these sessions continue to be hosted once a week during term time with an average attendance of 12 (minimum 4, maximum 23, between October 2022 and January 2023). There has been a demand for an increase in the frequency of the sessions from the existing participants. The team have limited resources and would struggle to host any additional sessions on a regular basis.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;"> </p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">Following some initial research with the current ‘Study With Us’ community to discern the actual requirements for additional sessions, there was some demand for faculty-specific sessions to be hosted. Therefore, we teamed up with the Faculty of Engineering to work with their peer mentors to establish the efficacy of running a regular peer-led Pomodoro® online study community specifically for engineering students with the aim of establishing if this model was suitable to be rolled out across all five faculties and hence cater for the increase in demand for the study sessions. The aim of the session is to share: the research so far; an evaluation of the process of setting up the initiative with the faculties and the peer mentors; some initial analysis of the experiences of the session participants to establish the success, demand for and future direction of ‘Study With Us’ at the University.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1108Seen and heard: what role can learning development play in LGBTQ+ inclusion?2023-09-28T08:04:35-07:00Beverley Hancock-SmithZara Hooley<p style="font-weight: 400;">An inclusive approach to teaching LGBTQ+ students in university is vital. LGBTQ+ people are more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers (Friedman et al., 2011; Miranda-Mendizábal et al., 2017; Craig et al., 2020). They suffer minority stress (Meyer, 2003) and are more likely to have experienced early trauma (Craig et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2021). Particular attention is needed for the most vulnerable LGBTQ+ students such as bisexual and transgender individuals (Gnan et al., 2019). Whilst literature exists on LGBTQ+ inclusive teaching (Moore, 2014; Mikulec, 2016), there is a considerable research gap specifically addressing the pedagogical potential of learning development as a vehicle for this.</p> <p style="font-weight: 400;">Building on the foundation of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and decolonisation, Trauma-Informed Pedagogy (TIP) acknowledges the barriers to learning faced by trauma-experienced students and promotes inclusive approaches (Baker, 2022). Using the TIP framework, the session invited delegates to consider how the trauma-informed educator can create and maintain a safe, inclusive and empowering learning space. We invited delegates to reflect on their own inclusive practices in relation to LGBTQ+ students and how to best support the needs of a group who can remain largely invisible. Using case studies, we explored how TIP approaches can be applied in a learning development context to benefit not only LGBTQ+ students, but the student body as a whole.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1105The problem of inclusion and invisibility: working with disabled students in HE 2023-09-28T03:53:15-07:00Julian Ingle<p>For many, the word ‘inclusion’ has not only become emptied of meaning but also sets up a problematic contradiction. To be included depends on the willingness of those who hold this power to allow entry. Being allowed entry doesn’t change the power relationships but merely allows access to already ‘existing cultures, structures and practices’ (Biesta, Wainwright and Aldridge, 2022, p.1). For disabled people and minoritised groups, the problem of equity and participation in education is one that runs deep and, for many, extends right the way through their educational trajectories.</p> <p>What’s overlooked and not recognised is the invisible work of being disabled. Similarly, and to paraphrase Donna Williams (1996), from the start, disabled people have been judged from the outside, by their appearances, rather than from the inside and according to how their disability is experienced. This mini keynote opens up a space to discuss the problems inherent in inclusion and what this means for disabled people and other minoritised groups.</p> <p>Questions:</p> <ul> <li>Inclusion has been co-opted into HE’s performativity agenda; does this create more problems than it pretends to solve?</li> <li>How do we acknowledge and understand the invisible work of being disabled?</li> <li>As practitioners, how can we create a more authentically democratic environment for disabled people and other minoritised groups in HE?</li> </ul>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1104Learning development and English for academic purposes: opportunities and challenges in collaboration2023-09-28T02:42:28-07:00Emily Webb<p>The aim of this practitioner’s mini keynote was to reflect on the experiences of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and learning development (LD) practitioners from across UK higher education institutions to explore how we can collaborate to benefit students’ educational experiences and outcomes. Despite different pedagogical and professional contexts and identities, both EAP and LD practitioners aspire to develop students’ understanding of, and engagement with, key academic and disciplinary literacies (McCulloch and Horak, 2019). Within many institutions, however, EAP and LD colleagues deliver provision separately – either to different cohorts or through different teaching models (pre- and in-sessional delivery, for example). Although this separation speaks to specific disciplinary identities and points of theoretical and pedagogical difference (see, for example, Wingate, 2012), it can cause duplication of content, confusion for students, and competing demands for institutional funding and support. Given increasing student numbers, widening diversity of student needs and experience, and funding concerns, it is more important than ever to understand how EAP and LD practitioners can collaborate in the best interests of our students.</p> <p> </p> <p>Prompt questions:</p> <p> </p> <ul> <li>What opportunities for collaboration between EAP and LD colleagues are available at your institution, and what challenges or barriers have you experienced?</li> <li>How can EAP and LD practitioners effectively collaborate while maintaining their professional identities?</li> <li>How can effective collaboration between EAP and LD practitioners benefit student education experiences and outcomes?</li> </ul>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1102Impact assessment of academic support provided by tertiary learning advisors2023-09-28T02:32:58-07:00Mona Malik<p>In New Zealand higher education (HE), there is a lack of consistent ways of collecting evidence of the impact made by academic literacy support from Tertiary Learning Advisors (TLAs) on students’ academic performance, retention, and success. TLAs in New Zealand and Australia are primarily involved in providing learning support to students in post-secondary education to encourage development of their academic literacy and essential study skills. They are professional educators who advise students on issues related to academic writing and other academic skills, such as time management or exam preparation, to facilitate achievement of students’ goals of tertiary study (Griffith University, 2021). While it may be recognised that provision of learning support is desirable for a meaningful and successful HE experience for many students, hard evidence that learning support makes a difference to student retention and academic performance is difficult to find (Acheson, 2006, as cited in Breen and Prothero, 2015).</p> <p> </p> <p>This presentation sought to share an attempt to address this issue by investigating the impact of embedded academic literacy support provided by TLAs to three cohorts of students enrolled in undergraduate social work and early childhood education programs at my ITP (Institute of Technology and Polytechnic) in Auckland, New Zealand. Existing research in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom suggests that support that embeds academic literacy development in disciplines, rather than academic support that is generic and/or provided through foundation courses, represents a best practice model (Glew et al., 2019).</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1101Generating threshold concepts for impactful learning development: exploring a new perspective on our work2023-09-28T01:32:04-07:00Steven White<p>Threshold concepts (TCs) represent pivotal ‘eureka’ moments in learning, where a person makes a leap in understanding or ability ‘akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something’ (Meyer and Land, 2003, p. 1). Crossing these thresholds can be transformative, integrative, and irreversible, but also troublesome. Discussion of threshold concepts may provide a novel way of surfacing the core challenges of learning development work—whether in terms of helping students to progress or informing how we operate within the university context.</p> <p>Research in learning development has identified ‘generic’ threshold concepts that students might need to support their studies. However, it is also worth considering whether we as learning developers can collectively identify threshold concepts that increase our impact when working with students, academics, and other stakeholders. This session contextualised the idea by first looking at threshold concepts for student development. This activity aimed to enhance participants’ understanding of threshold concepts.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1100Why inclusive learning shouldn't always be fun2023-09-28T01:27:37-07:00Steven White<p>A recent blog post on the SEDA educational development forum led to a stimulating discussion about whether learning should be fun (Saunders, 2022). As learning developers, it makes sense to make learning activities enjoyable for students where we can. However, this lightning talk contended that some aspects of learning are unlikely to - and perhaps even cannot - be fun. Indeed, we may limit the inclusiveness of our approach if we fail to address this idea in our work. As such, it is important for learning developers to be clear with students that some aspects of their learning experience may involve struggle and discomfort.</p> <p> </p> <p>Whilst it is pleasant for us when students end interactions with learning developers feeling reassured and with a smile on their face, it may at times be more helpful to see them leave with a look of grim determination. For example, threshold concepts scholarship identifies dimensions of learning that may require transformation not only of one’s understanding but also elements of one’s identity. Wrangling with troublesome knowledge within often uncomfortable liminal states of ‘in-betweenness’ is therefore necessary for students to progress in their understanding or ability (Land et al., 2008).</p> <p> </p> <p>Drawing on recent educational and learning development discourse, in this talk White argued that recognising that learning cannot always be fun is important in creating an inclusive learning experience for students. Indeed, students can take comfort, confidence, and even a sense of belonging from understanding that their peers and lecturers struggle with some aspects of learning. At times, we may need to ‘suffer now’ to gain satisfaction and achievement in the longer term. We need to be up front about this in our interactions with students.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1099(Re)Imagining higher education: an inspirational guide for academics2023-09-27T08:27:34-07:00Sandra AbegglenSonia KamalTom BurnsMaryam AkhbariSandra Sinfield<p style="font-weight: 400;">We live in times of certain uncertainty with Higher Education in constant need of reflexive adaptation. The Reimagining Higher Education project, funded by the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE), explored creatively and playfully the future of education. It invited the academic community to participate in workshops to reflect on the current status of Higher Education and, at the same time, to conceptualise what form a humane and integrated Learning Development, the holistic and sustainable fostering of academic literacies and practices, would take within that Higher Education system. The outcome is an open-source guide of Higher Education models, real and idealised, that potentially have the power to change perspectives and attitudes. In this short presentation, we (the project team) will showcase the guide, outlining what a more inclusive, empowering, and creative academia would look like. Our research participants have imaged the unimaginable: universities open, accessible, full of trust, care and laughter. Please join us to further reflect on the future of academia, with hope and positivity.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1097The 'master's dissertation fair': reflections on impact and future development2023-09-27T05:25:58-07:00Georgia KoromilaSonia Hood<p>Every year in early spring, postgraduate taught (PGT) students start preparing for their dissertation project. At the University of Reading, this time coincides with the end of teaching, including the Library seminars supporting skills development. Acknowledging that our sessions were ill-timed to support effectively our PGT students at a challenging stage in their degree trajectory, the Study Advice and Academic Liaison teams at the University of Reading Library trialled in June 2020 a week of webinars tailored to PGT level and focusing on elements of the dissertation. The Master’s Dissertation Fair was born! The popularity and positive reception of the initiative took us by surprise and motivated us to continue running the Master’s Dissertation Fair as an annual tradition ever since.</p> <p>In this session, we shared our reflections on the successes and lessons learnt from the first three iterations of this programme, focusing on its Study Advice component. We reviewed the student feedback collected post session and explored what the impact was on our one-to-one service in supporting PGT students with dissertation projects over the summer. We also discussed how this initiative impacted our team, as it provided a (rare for us) opportunity to plan and develop collaboratively a coherent and complementary set of sessions. Finally, we explored how this reflection on impact can inform our planning for a more holistic approach to PGT support. For example, are there opportunities to use new formats beyond the webinar? What else could we do to improve our reach and inclusivity?</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1098How can we incorporate nature connection into our work as learning developers?2023-09-27T05:22:53-07:00Jodi Gregory<p style="font-weight: 400;">This poster presents reflections on a year of facilitating regular outdoor ‘walk and talk’ activities embedded within a taught academic skills module. The aims were to foster connections between students, to deepen their sense of belonging, and to positively impact on their mental health by inviting them to spend time in local green spaces during timetabled class hours.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1096Ways of rethinking inclusion for disabled students in Higher Education2023-09-27T04:46:53-07:00Julian Ingle<p>The word ‘inclusion’ now frequently appears in the marketing strategies of many UK universities, despite the equivocal ways the term is used across the sector (Koutsouris et al., 2022). For some of us in the field of disability studies, these ambiguities in the ways the concept of inclusion is used are one of the reasons why it has become emptied of meaning. While notionally disclosing the invisible work entailed in being disabled (Wertans and Burch, 2022), inclusion also implies a form of privileging: those on the inside determine who is included and on what grounds. This assimilationist discourse reproduces the socio-political structures and practices that categorise those who are outsiders (Biesta 2010; Biesta, 2019). Moreover, the technocratic nature of the current political context in which performance and its measurement are the main drivers of how higher education (HE) is required to address <em>underrepresented</em> groups and their performance (Peters, 2020; Supiot, 2021), for example, through access and participation plans, not only homogenises disability but inevitably excludes others (Evans and Zhu, 2022). For example, this may happen to postgraduate students, international students or those who, because of the discrimination and stigma they experience, choose not to disclose a disability. This presentation explored the problematic nature of inclusion in relation to disabled students in HE and how it might impact on the work of learning developers. The paper explored Biesta’s concept of ‘transclusion’ as a way of transforming and rethinking how we conceptualise and enact equality of access, participation and social justice and what this could mean for practitioners. It highlighted the extent to which we, as practitioners, could contest and respond to the complex demands of inclusion in ways that might help change institutional cultures and thinking about disability so that disabled students (and staff) remain less invisible.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1095Bridging the transition gap 2023-09-27T04:15:58-07:00Liv Jonassen<p>Issues around transition to university have been widely discussed, with the recent pandemic highlighting issues such as students’ lack of confidence in engaging in higher education and lack of knowledge around some of the expectations and skills required (Advance HE,2020), but one aspect which has been somewhat under researched is the link between academic skills required by 6th form students and stage 1 undergraduate students (Baker, 2016) . The Bridging the Gap project is a collaboration between students, the Academic Skills team and the Education Outreach team at Newcastle University. Our project co-created accessible, engaging, interactive resources based on feedback from both 6th form students and (undergraduate (UG) students with the student voice at the heart of the project. We worked with paid interns to not only use the information gathered from focus groups to inform resource development but also to consider how our message was communicated to students. To date, several resources have been developed around topics such as time management and evaluation of sources. Although still in the development phase, the project team has been able to gather some formative feedback from UG students, 6th form students as well as teachers. Further, the impact of the project has been highlighted by gaining additional funding for a two-year project coordinator.</p> <p>This session outlined what we have learned about working collaboratively with students to provide resources to help develop core academic and research skills to build confidence and support the transition from secondary to higher education. We highlighted the project phases, how we were able to work collaboratively and how we were able to ensure that the student input and evaluation were central to the project in order to provide a good practice framework.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1094Do institutional or subject referencing style choices create barriers for students with specific learning disability?2023-09-27T04:04:21-07:00Fiona Watkins<p>Models of information literacy (Coonan et al., 2018; SCONUL, 2011) are explicit: critical thinking and ethical information use are essential skills within higher education (HE). Referencing is key to this, demonstrating how students select and apply information to create knowledge (Buckley, 2015; Angelil-Carter, 1995). </p> <p>Within HE there has been an increased focus on inclusivity and accessibility (Equality Act, 2010; United Nations, 2015; Department for Education and Department for Health, 2015). Growing numbers of students are declaring a disability (Advance HE, 2019) and reports suggest they are increasingly dissatisfied with their courses (Office for Students, 2020). Proportionally, students with disabilities achieve lower grades than students without (Advance HE, 2019), suggesting needs and expectations of students with a disability are not being met within HE provisions.</p> <p>The presentation discussed an ethically approved small-scale mixed-methods study carried out as part of a MA in Special Educational Needs and Inclusion. The research investigated student perceptions of referencing, whether adherence to specific referencing styles is a barrier for students with dyslexia and began investigating the impact of referencing styles on reading comprehension. </p> <p>The largest disability declared within HE is Specific Learning Disability (SpLD) (Advance HE, 2019), which includes dyslexia (American Psychological Association, 2013). Students with SpLD report lower confidence with academic writing than non-SpLD students (Kinder and Elander, 2012). Academic literacy skills are arguably intertwined with a sense of legitimacy and belonging (Gourlay, 2009): it is therefore vital to consider ways of improving inclusion for all students (Office for Students, 2020). </p> <p>The presenter observed that students with SpLD spent more time and energy on referencing than their non-disabled peers. This perception is corroborated by others (Sanders, 2010) and when combined with slower reading speeds (Hendricks and Quinn, 2000; Sanders, 2010; Serry et al., 2018) reduces time students have for critical subject engagement (Wengelin, 2007). </p> <p>Attendees gained an understanding of how students view referencing and whether the choice of referencing system disadvantages students with dyslexia. Attendees also took part in a reading comprehension test giving a taster of the next steps for research which requires collaborative partners.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1093Expanding your provision across the whole institution 2023-09-27T03:57:52-07:00Andrew StruanJennifer BoyleScott Ramsay<p>This joint case study, delivered as a mini-keynote, presented and reflected on the ways in which we had adopted a whole-institution response to transition to new stages of learning and research. The case study highlighted the ways in which Learning and Researcher Development teams can offer a transformational transition experience for our students and researchers (Cage et al., 2021; Thompson, Pawson and Evans, 2021), and provided evidence of impact through evaluation and analysis.</p> <p>We discussed two institution-wide projects, designed and implemented by the Learning and the Researcher Development teams at the University of Glasgow, to transform our approaches to transition for key groups of students. We also discussed the ways in which we adopted a large-scale approach that provided for excellence in student and researcher transition into our institution.</p> <p>The questions used the focus the small group discussions were:</p> <ul> <li>What are the key needs of students transitioning into, through and out of your institution?</li> <li>What are the key challenges and opportunities for working at scale across (large areas of) your institution?</li> <li>In an ideal world, what large-scale initiative would you pick to do first to most benefit your students? Why?</li> </ul>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1091Mattering vs belonging and the impact of academic advisors: online professional part-time students – a case study2023-09-26T09:34:36-07:00Jacqui Thijm<p>Belonging is not a new concept, it has been around for some time in Higher Education. The “What works? Student retention and success” report concluded that “belonging is critical to student retention and success” (Thomas, 2012). However, this can be difficult to achieve for some students such as those who study online. The research around a sense of belonging amongst online students is limited (Peacock et al., 2020), who have limited time and opportunities to participate in activities used to promote belonging at universities. With an increase in online and blended courses within higher education (Dunford and Miller, 2018), mattering maybe a more important factor for such students.</p> <p> Mattering as defined by Dixon and Tucker (2008), is an individual’s perception that they are important and are valued in their interpersonal relationships (2008). Academic advisors have a key role in mattering, by building individual relations with students they can have a positive impact on feelings of mattering. McIntosh et al. (2020 [online]) found that students who feel supported by their academic advisors go on to have successful tutoring relationships.</p> <p>In a case study conducted within a Higher Education institute that provides fully online courses for part-time professional students, the author examined feelings of mattering and belonging amongst level 5 and 6 undergraduate students. The case study found that the individual mattering relationships were more important than belonging to students who participated in the study. Students valued members of staff who went “above and beyond” and showed care and mattering. Academic Advisors were key members of staff for these mattering relationships.</p> <p>If students feel that they matter, this may well lead to an increased feeling of belonging and this is something that should be explored further.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1090Co-creating LearnHigher: demystifying and shaping what we do2023-09-26T09:27:49-07:00Helena Beeson Jennie DettmerLee FallinLaura KeySumeetra Ramakrishnan<p>Established in 2005, the LearnHigher platform provides high quality, peer-evaluated resources which support students’ learning development. It was developed through a collaborative network of 16 institutions and is overseen by a working group who support and encourage the submission of resources.</p> <p>Following a summary of the past year and a demonstration of the submission process, the audience had the opportunity to reflect on LearnHigher and help shape its future. The authors aimed to hear about how LearnHigher had informed teaching and learning. This was a chance for the community to share experiences of using and submitting resources, and to consider ways to increase impact on professional development and practice. The session culminated in an open forum of discussion regarding future directions, enabling the community to shape how LearnHigher moves forward in 23-24 and beyond.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1089Together in electric dreams: Inventing an online asynchronous Community of Practice for Learning Developers working with health students2023-09-26T08:56:35-07:00Anne-Marie LangfordKaren Hudson <p>The creation of a virtual community of practice (vCOP) is a way to bring Learning Developers in different institutions together to create opportunities for collaboration and a sense of community which may help educators to overcome a sense of isolation as well as limited time and resources (Yarris et al., 2019). The development of LDHealthCOP (Learning Developers Health Community of Practice) unintentionally aligned with Wenger’s (2000) social definition of learning and three modes of belonging: engagement, imagination, and alignment. The group formed to explore how to improve Learning Development (LD) practice for Health students at our institutions. Students on health programmes are often from ‘under-represented’ and ‘non-traditional’ groups which pose particular challenges. It has a crowd sourced co-created programme of monthly talks and activities where practitioners pose each other topic questions to enable discussion and share ideas or resources. Using technology to gather together and ‘connect over their craft’ (Yarris et al., 2019) enables members to transcend the boundaries of space and time allowing members to ‘meet’ when and where they are, creating a unique sense of flexibility (Knapp, 1998 cited in Valenti and Sutton, 2020).</p> <p>This session shared how the vCOP has been developed, linking theory with practice to address the specific challenges faced by Health Care students. The following themes were covered at the session:</p> <ul> <li>Areas of exploration or challenge for a Health and Social Care vCOP.</li> <li>Methods of engagement with the vCOP, including demonstration of collaborative Padlet resources.</li> <li>Reflection on the benefits and pitfalls of sharing knowledge and experience asynchronously.</li> <li>Participants gained an insight into the workings of a vCOP which may inspire them to: join us, join another ALDinHE community of practice or create their own.</li> </ul>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1087Assignments are getting more visual: introducing strategies for developing visual literacy in our students2023-09-26T08:28:47-07:00Jacqui Ann Bartram<p>For decades (even centuries), university has been dominated by text-based assessments. However, things are changing. With the massive increase in visual communication in society, and with an acknowledgement that diverse assessments allow a more diverse student body to thrive, there is a gradual, but noticeable, increase in visually-rich assessment types being set. Whilst traditional academic presentations and posters have the potential to develop some basic visual communication skills, assessments such as infographics, blogs, magazine articles, and posters aimed at the general public require higher levels of visual literacy. This means learning developers may need to improve their own strategies for supporting students with such assignments and ensure that our practices allow all students, especially those who struggle with text-based assessments, to shine (see Bartram, 2021).</p> <p> </p> <p>Following on from calls at the last conference for practical ways to develop visual literacy, this workshop has been designed to introduce some tried and tested learning development activities that can support the development of the practices and approaches needed when undertaking visually-rich assignments. The activities consider the Framework for Visual Literacy (ACRL, 2022), specifically helping students to:</p> <p> </p> <ul> <li>be aware that they are participating in a changing visual environment,</li> <li>understand how images can communicate information both effectively and affectively,</li> <li>approach images with criticality,</li> <li>work with images sensitively and ethically.</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p>The workshop provided opportunities for more experienced participants to share ideas and activities that they have already used that develop any of the knowledge practices and dispositions from the Framework. In addition, we brainstormed new ways that these can be incorporated into our general learning development practices. Both participants who are new to developing visual literacy and those who are already involved in this area were able therefore to take away new ideas to try in their own context.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1086Preparing sixth-form students for the transition into higher education: developing key research skills through the EPQ2023-09-26T08:05:03-07:00Emma Thompson<p>The Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) is a Level 3 qualification which allows students to develop an independent research project on a topic outside of their A-Level studies, culminating in either a dissertation or artefact final product (both research-based, with a written component) (AQA, 2023). The University of Southampton Learn with US Transition Programme provides free interactive workshops and guidance to sixth-form students in state schools undertaking the EPQ, particularly targeting schools that meet our widening participation (WP) criteria (The Learn with US Transition Programme, 2023).</p> <p>The persistence of long-standing awarding gaps at university, especially for WP and minoritised students, demonstrates the importance of improving equality, diversity, and inclusion at all stages of the student lifecycle, including the transition into higher education (Harrison and Waller, 2018; Matheson, 2018). Research from the University of Southampton observes that higher proportions of students with an EPQ achieve first class and 2:1 degree awards compared to the proportion of students that don’t have an EPQ. In addition, an exploratory analysis of our most recent research (as yet unpublished) indicates that the EPQ may also contribute to reduced awarding gaps for students from underrepresented backgrounds in HE.</p> <p>Our approach to developing interventions targeted to address specific milestones of the EPQ project can be used to inform practice for other Learning Developer practitioners, including:</p> <ul> <li>Embedding interactive activities into workshops to maintain interest and build confidence.</li> <li>Emphasising the transferability of research skills in a range of contexts.</li> <li>Encouraging students to direct their own learning through developing dialogue and asking questions, instead of providing a ‘right’ answer.</li> <li>Linking up to post-entry academic skills support to enable a smooth transition to university (Stoten, 2014; Cripps et al., 2018; Gill, 2018; Stephenson and Isaacs, 2019).</li> </ul> <p>Feedback from students and teachers consistently demonstrates that this approach develops key research skills, and student confidence in viewing themselves as potential members of a university community (Cripps et al., 2018).</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1085Transforming transitions: learning and researcher developers and a whole-institution approach to successful transition2023-09-26T07:09:25-07:00Andrew StruanScott RamsayJennifer Boyle<p>The impact of Covid-19 on incoming students and researchers is plain: students and researchers were denied access to their usual educational experiences, to their usual networking and social interaction, and to their usual assessment types. This resulted in an incoming cohort of students and researchers with higher levels of anxiety and, often, less awareness of the requirements of higher education/research. Recognising the need to engage with new students and researchers in innovative ways, the Student Learning Development (SLD) team and the Researcher Development (RD) team undertook two institution-wide projects to provide students with a ‘world-changing’ start to their studies. In particular, we sought to engage with the competencies of online study and research skills, academic integrity in an online world, academic community building, and student/researcher confidence.</p> <p>As we move out of the emergency response to the pandemic (Bartolic et al., 2021; Yowler et al., 2021), both teams have adopted these projects as core elements of work and as particular highlights of the value of LD and RD to the institution. The relationship between LD and RD varies greatly within institutions. Some universities do not differentiate between the roles, some work within the same team, and others work entirely separately. While the two teams are situated separately at the University of Glasgow, the teams work closely together to provide an integrated response that provides continuity of experience for our students and our researchers.</p> <p>For our undergraduates, a new course – T2G: Transition to Glasgow – was created by SLD. Designed around developing competencies, instilling academic identity, and easing the transition to formal education, the course provided students with the skills required to succeed. For our postgraduate researchers, a new course – PGR@Home – was created by RD. Designed around integration and developing competencies, the course offered asynchronous and synchronous opportunities for research students to begin the process of joining the university community in their new role. In each case, students were contacted directly with information and promotion material on the available initiatives and participated on a voluntary basis. They were able to select from a range of topics that interested them, and also completed a core academic literacies module. For students who completed T2G by completing the required coursework, we granted an exemption for a first-year compulsory writing course. As the courses were pilots, PGT students were not included in either piece of work, but reflecting on each project has enabled us to develop plans to expand and tailor our provision to meet the demands of our PGT students.</p> <p>This joint case study presented and reflected on the ways in which we adopted a whole-institution response to the transition to new stages of learning and research. The case study highlights the ways in which Learning and Researcher Development teams can offer a transformational transition experience for our students and researchers (Cage et al., 2021; Thompson, Pawson and Evans, 2021), and provides evidence of impact through evaluation and analysis.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1084‘Learning so much…’: exploring the student perspective on the impact of attending optional LD workshops2023-09-26T07:06:44-07:00Arina Cirstea<p>Lack of confidence, in particular with regards to writing, study and information literacy skills (Bailey et al., 2007) has been identified as a key barrier to students’ transition, and subsequent attainment, in higher education. This is particularly relevant for students with ‘marginal learner identities’ (McIntosh and Barden, 2019, p.4), such as those with disabilities, or from minority ethnic and/or socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. Learning Development (LD) professionals are often engaged in supporting learners to negotiate such barriers, with one of the most common interventions being self-selecting, small to medium-size group workshops.</p> <p>This presentation explored the student perspective on the impact of attending a programme of co-curricular workshops at a UK university with a significant intake of students whose learner identities may be categorised as ‘marginal’. Whilst the core topics of the programme fall within the more established domains of LD (Gibbs, 2009), several workshops also cover related disciplinary areas (Samuels, 2013), such as information literacy and Maths and Statistics. The presentation relied on quantitative and qualitative feedback data collected via an online survey, emailed to all participants who registered for a workshop. Key impacts identified include enhanced understanding of skill or topic, improved confidence, and benefiting from a supportive environment. Main barriers to learning refer to challenges in accessing the sessions, timing in relation to student journey and approaches to delivery.</p> <p>Throughout the presentation, participants were invited to compare and contrast these findings to potential insights gathered in their own contexts. They were also encouraged to reflect on how these data can be used to more clearly articulate the role of LD within institutional teaching and learning strategies.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1083Enhancing employability and engagement with the university through the student experience leaders (SEL) scheme2023-09-26T06:30:37-07:00Sibel KayaClio SpanouBarry PoulterRobert PayneSteve BriggsJulie Brunton<p>The University of Bedfordshire launched a new Education and Student Experience Strategy (2022-2026) that includes expanding students as partners opportunities as a key priority. The Student Experience Leaders (SEL) scheme was launched in 2022 and is managed by the Learning Development Team at the University of Bedfordshire in partnership with the Students’ Union. SEL provides opportunities for students to work with course teams and professional service staff to deliver curricular and co-/extra-curricular projects (aligned to key strategic priorities). SELs also act as representatives for Course Reps within faculties to champion the student voice.</p> <p>We believe that the formal representation partnership co-led by the Students’ Union and Learning Development Team differentiates our scheme from more traditional Peer Assisted Learning schemes. Our approach, therefore, contributes to the wider learning development field in terms of redefining how learning development teams could co-lead students as partners initiatives within their institution.</p> <p>Approximately 30 students have been recruited to the SEL scheme, which consists of nine projects from four faculties and two directorates. The SELs received training on various identified key transferable skills from the Learning Development Team and Students’ Union to support them in their roles. The Learning Development Team have also established and facilitated a community of practices for SELs. The first round of the scheme will conclude in June 2023 and will be evaluated through a narrative-focused and empirical evaluation using a mixed-methods approach. Pre- and post-questionnaires that focus on the transferable skills of SELs and focus group interviews will provide data for evaluation. This session considered the role of a Learning Development Team in leading a student as partners institutional scheme. We discussed how the SEL scheme will inform the future delivery of learning development at the University. We also considered how to best support students as partners in their role and how a learning development team can be effectively promoted through such activity.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1082Value of reflective learning for nursing students: case studies of critical reflection within applied Gibbs’ model of reflection2023-09-26T04:49:34-07:00Tanja Tolar<p>This workshop aimed to explore the value and importance of reflective practices in academic writing among nursing students at the University of Bradford.</p> <p>The presentation is based around case studies of students who presented to academic skills for support following their failed attempts in assessed reflective essays. In guiding students through their academic writing development, it becomes apparent students often underestimate the value of critical and analytical approaches towards academic writing process when they reflect on their own practical experience.</p> <p>Analysis of the students’ understanding focuses on key stages of learning as outlined in Honey and Mumford (1992) and the application of a process of reflection that is based on Gibbs’ model of reflection but emphasises the importance of involvement of critical reflection. Students’ comments and evaluations of their reflective writing processes were considered and matched with the expectations course leaders hold for their students. This is in line with the importance of dialogue within this approach that McDrury and Alterio have explored (2002).</p> <p>Responses were gathered through a set of open questions given to students after their assignment submission and further insights through a subsequent discussion with their tutors.</p> <p>Through this process, students were supported to gain insight and thus bring their stages of reflective learning to a close by learning that reflection is integral part of their learning patterns as well as their professional development.</p> <p> </p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1080How learning development and learning design can inform each other: reflections and discussion points2023-09-26T03:34:05-07:00Catherine Turton<p>Learning Development and Learning Design have contributed to the transformation of higher education (HE) over recent decades, in the move towards a learner-centred approach in HE. While Learning Design is still somewhat ill-defined and emergent, practice has quickly gained traction since the Covid-19 pandemic, and it is now generally well embedded into academic training and institutional terminology (JISC, 2022). What does the intersection of these two ‘learning’ fields look like, and how could existing collaboration be strengthened for the benefit of learners? This poster aimed to promote discussion on the topic.</p> <p>The poster briefly summarises the history of Learning Design and explores commonalities in the two fields such as an interest in universal design, a focus on empathy, inclusivity, and active learning approaches.</p> <p>Then it explores the limits of Learning Design and gives examples of ways in which the author’s practice as a Learning Designer is strongly influenced by Learning Development. In particular, it discusses how Learning Development values, as laid out by ALDinHE provide a grounding for the author, and how the substantial body of work in Academic Literacies (Lillis, 2019) provides a critical framing for working with academic teams when exploring issues of belonging, identity and student learning within Learning Design.</p> <p>Finally, it explores how roles intersect, how practitioners from the two fields do (and could) work together, for example, to collectively deepen understanding about the learning experience and improve co-creation with students. It also outlines what adopting a strong ‘design’ approach could offer the Learning Development community.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1081Students as partners: enhancing employability skills through running transition book clubs2023-09-26T03:22:37-07:00Gianna De Salvo<p>One of the challenges that many students face when they start university is finding a sense of belonging in a new and unfamiliar environment. Feeling connected and supported can have a positive impact on students’ academic success and well-being. That is why the Get Ahead Transition project at Queen Mary University of London launched a book club initiative to help students build a sense of belonging before attending university.</p> <p>The book club was based on the book The Psychology of Effective Studying by Paul Penn, which offers practical and evidence-based strategies for students to overcome procrastination, improve academic reading and note-taking skills, and produce high-quality assignments. The book also features short YouTube videos that summarize some of the key concepts. The book club was led by current students who facilitated the discussions and shared their personal experiences of studying at university.</p> <p>The book club was a great success as nearly all the participants had read the chapters and came prepared with questions and insights. The discussions were so engaging that the leaders suggested extending the sessions by an extra 30 minutes to allow time for Q&A. The participants also appreciated the opportunity to learn from their peers and get a glimpse of what university life is like.</p> <p>The book club leaders also benefited beyond expectation from the experience as they enhanced their leadership, communication, and technical skills. They received feedback and guidance from the project team on how to highlight these skills to future employers. The book club leaders also qualified for two university awards for their contribution to the project.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1079Why and how you matter: learning development as everyday leadership2023-09-26T02:47:46-07:00Maria KukharevaCarina Buckley<p>For the learning developers, operating within the third space in higher education (between academic-faculty positions, and professional/learning services and administration) brings its rewards through supporting students and staff to succeed. However, well-documented challenges, such as uncertainty around own professional identity; own place in the institutional culture and infrastructure; entitlement to CPD; and career progression trajectory (Silvey, Pejcinovic and Snowball, 2018; Obexer, 2020; Clark, 2021). Learning Developers who often are employed as both academics and professional services may find themselves grappling with finding ways to capture and evidence impact of their activity on their students’ academic and broader experience and proving their worth to their institution and the sector on the whole (Riggio, 2020). Our institutions may feel like worlds of academic standards and managerial constraints, neither of which helps reinforce the feeling of empowerment and belonging among learning developers.</p> <p>Everyday leadership, as a position and behaviour of choice, can help navigate these challenges, at individual, institutional and LD community levels. Everyday leadership has links with a stronger sense of empowerment, self-fulfilment and belonging – to the collective LD community, and to the institution (Drury, Evripidou, and Van Zomeren, 2015). Everyday leadership implies influence, and therefore, impact. In this session, we applied our thinking from Cashman (2017) and Whitelaw (2020) and define leadership as extending your energy into “things that matter” (Whitelaw, 2020. NP), to create value for others. Everyday leaders are all individuals, notwithstanding of their status, who “influence others to achieve shared objectives for the good of the collective” (Riggio, 2020, NP). Our participants also explored, and reframed their activity from the angle of everyday leadership – such as influencing peers and students, mentoring peers, initiating or leading a project, speaking up, acting as an active bystander. Finally we referred to broad themes from the ALDinHE Leadership Community of Practice. Participants shared practice and came up with a range of everyday leadership ‘expressions’ which are meaningful to them, within the context of their value and purpose; empowerment and belonging; influence and impact. Participants were encouraged to commit to one new everyday leadership action/ behaviour.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1078Learning development in a time of disruption2023-09-26T02:01:55-07:00Lee Fallin<p>The Covid-19 Pandemic had (and continues to have) a significant worldwide impact on Higher Education (Watermeyer et al., 2021; Sharaievska et al., 2022). How Learning Development responded to this challenge varied considerably across the sector.</p> <p>Many of the challenges and solutions for Learning Development are represented in the Compendium of Innovative Practice: Learning Development in a Time of Disruption, a special issue of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education (JLDHE, 2021). The Compendium issue of JLDHE contained 102 peer-reviewed reflections, identifying numerous challenges and responses to teaching in Covid-19.</p> <p>This conference paper will share the findings of a research project that has systematically analysed all 102 contributions to the compendium. Each reflection was analysed using structural, topic and thematic coding to identify common responses and challenges to pandemic teaching.</p> <p>The findings of this study have identified a range of individual and shared challenges for both students and third space professionals. One of the core findings relates to the diversity of responses that have been designed to meet these challenges, with over 100 distinct pedagogic and technical solutions to pandemic teaching. From these, five core themes have emerged: emergency remote teaching; reflective practice and evaluation; pedagogy and technology support; collaboration and shared practice; and, course design for the long-term.</p> <p> </p> <p>This paper will reflect on implications for future practice in times of disruption and provide delegates with the opportunity to consider how it relates to their institutions.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1077Student interaction, academic anxiety and belonging: video project2023-09-26T01:54:14-07:00Louise Frith<p>This resource showcase session will demonstrate the output from a research project which was presented at ALDinHE conference online last year. The research looked at the experience of Chinese postgraduate students in three areas: student participation, academic anxiety and belonging. The session will briefly outline our project and how we worked with the students to produce the videos.</p> <p> </p> <p>The project used a strengths-based approach (Rapp, Saleebey and Sullivan, 2005) whereby students shared their own strengths and resources to create a successful outcome. The only input from staff was to book rooms and source equipment. The students met and worked on the videos themselves, making editorial decisions and doing all the production. At the end of the summer, three videos were produced which focused on the three research themes.</p> <p> </p> <p>During the session I will play the videos and get feedback from participants on how to work collaboratively with students and on the use of the videos with international students to support their transition into UK HE.</p> <p> </p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1076The impact of machine translation software on students’ interaction and participation in class2023-09-26T01:46:43-07:00Louise Frith<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Machine Translation Software (MTS) has been in use by students with English as a second language since 2000. In recent years its use has increased. There are many studies into its use in HE (Groves & Mundt, 2021; Jolley & Maimone, 2015; Clifford et al, 2013). This year, at the University of York, I am undertaking some research into PGT English as a Second Language (ESL) students’ use of machine translation software in the classroom. This will be of interest to all Learning Developers who teach ESL students. It is known that students use the software for reading and completing assignments, but there is less known about how students use the software within class to understand and engage with the class content. Although the software can be a helpful tool to enhance students’ understanding of the class content, it can also be a barrier to full participation in class-based discussion and interaction. The aim of the session is to enable the learning development community to share experiences of supporting students who use MTS to support their studies. This session will explore some of these issues- in relation to academic skills sessions and invite participants to share their ideas on how learning developers respond to this challenge.</span></p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1075Exploring learning development from the perspectives of black students2023-09-26T01:09:13-07:00Kate IkonteSheryl MansfieldBeth Garrett<p>There has been little research into student perceptions of learning development tutorials despite learning development having existed in most institutions for over twenty years. Analysis from annual demographic data from tutorial attendance at the University of Northampton shows that over 25% of tutorials are attended by students identifying as Black. More Black women use the LD provision than Black males and even fewer Black males under the age of 20 use the service. This mirrors the findings of Coulson and Loddick (2020) who acknowledged, in research on learning development and student attainment, that students from a Black ethnic background, particularly females, were more likely to attend tutorials. However, there has been little research into the reasons for this.</p> <p>This presentation concluded the findings of an internally funded collaborative project to explore the perceptions of Black students and learning development.</p> <p>Due to the nature of investigating a sensitive topic, it was deemed essential that a project assistant was employed who has lived experience and identifies as Black. The project assistant predominantly conducts the research with Black students and gains their perspectives during focus groups or interviews. The project has been planned to ensure that the project assistant influences the research by offering autonomy to design the project and recruit participants. It is hoped that this project will offer a unique perspective to inform learning development practice and provision. By the time of the conference the project will have finished and we will be able to offer an insight into the findings.</p>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1074Addressing the awarding gap, fostering belonging: developing enhanced academic skills support for our Birmingham Scholars2023-09-26T01:02:36-07:00Polly HarperLeanne Campbell<p>In academic year 20/21, the University of Birmingham launched the ‘Birmingham Scholar’ programme as part of its Access and Participation Plan (University of Birmingham, 2019). This is a university-wide programme, supporting undergraduate students from under‐represented backgrounds, to achieve their full academic potential.</p> <p>This presentation explored the central role of our Academic Skills Centre team in supporting the Birmingham Scholar programme, since its initiation. Alongside the support we provide to all our taught students, our team also run a centralised, enhanced programme of academic skills and peer support for all Birmingham Scholar students.</p> <p>Currently, this includes tailored workshops and online guidance, enhanced opportunities for personalised one-one support and a dedicated, cross-discipline Peer-Assisted Study Scheme to aid with first-year transition and belonging at university. Through this enhanced programme, we aim to improve student success for our Birmingham Scholars by increasing their academic confidence, fostering a sense of belonging, and developing future skills along the way.</p> <p>Attendees to the session discovered:</p> <ul> <li>The development and delivery of our enhanced academic skills support offer so far, including evaluation of its successes and challenges.</li> </ul> <ul> <li>Preliminary quantitative evidence which suggests the Scholar programme may help to reduce awarding gaps by improving degree outcomes for Scholars who engage with the programme.</li> </ul> <ul> <li>Our future aims for the programme. These include goals to increase engagement with College academic Access and Participation leads to further embed and target our academic skills offer, provide a more holistic range of support by collaborating more widely with colleagues in areas such as our Careers Network, and foster further opportunities for peer-to-peer support.</li> </ul>2023-10-31T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1070Editorial2023-09-20T05:47:29-07:00Alicja Syska2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1065Greater than the sum of its parts: the role of collaboration in building an innovative and compassionate higher education – book review. Abegglen, S., Burns, T. and Sinfield, S. (eds.) (2023) Collaboration in higher education: A new ecology of practice. London: Bloomsbury 2023-08-18T06:46:31-07:00Carina Buckley2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1064Journeys through the self: pathways to leadership in third space. Hosein, A., Rao, N. and Kinchin, I.M. (eds.) (2023) Narratives of becoming leaders in disciplinary and institutional contexts. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 2023-08-16T05:44:08-07:00Carina Buckley2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1059Knitting connections: establishing and exploring research links in the discussion section of master’s dissertations using the SCE model2023-09-10T08:14:55-07:00Simon Brownhill<p>The supervision of master’s students at the dissertation stage of their taught programme is generally considered to be one of the privileges of an academic in higher education (Bacwayo, Nampala and Oteyo, 2017). Of concern to those who are less experienced or new to the supervisory role is knowing the best way to effectively support their supervisees, particularly at the write-up stage. This opinion piece focuses on the ‘discussion’, an important chapter which typically provokes ‘fear, uncertainty and doubt’ (Mewburn, 2016) in the minds of taught master’s students as they wrestle with its construction. I argue that supervisors can alleviate some of their supervisees’ anxieties by introducing them to the SCE model – <strong>S</strong>upport, <strong>C</strong>hallenge and <strong>E</strong>xtend – which I have developed and have shared with taught master’s students in England for a number of years. Designed to purposefully target key chapter content, I aim to show readers how this simple yet useful model effectively encourages taught master’s students to establish and knit connections between their review of literature chapter and findings chapter, ‘comparing and contrasting the study results with those of other relevant studies’ (Bavdekar, 2015, p.40) with reasoning. Extracts from taught master’s dissertations (from the academic discipline of education) are offered by way of illustrating the value of the SCE model for supervisors to help their students avoid making common mistakes in their writing, thus generating a stimulating discussion about what is known (literature) and what is now known (findings) in the supervisee’s chosen area of study.</p>2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1035Editorial2023-04-26T08:25:35-07:00Alicja Syska2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1034Twenty-two recommendations for inclusive teaching and their implementation challenges.2023-08-15T01:05:28-07:00Katie StripeIro Ntonia<h2>Abstract</h2> <p>Higher Education institutions across the world hold a moral and, in many cases, legal responsibility to make their educational offerings accessible and inclusive. Typically, universities may rely solely on checklists of recommendations, which although a key component of developing equitable and inclusive teaching, often fall short of accounting for the multifaceted range of attributes a holistic definition of inclusivity entails. This paper posits that there is a need for better understanding of potential implementation barriers, coupled with guidance and support for both practitioners as well as policy makers. Research reported in this paper presents an analysis of UK equality legislation as it relates to Higher Education and a range of institutional support documentation. This documentary analysis is used to explore, with practitioners, the opportunities for and barriers to implementing recommendations for inclusive learning at a highly selective, science focussed institution. The paper concludes in twenty-two recommendations for inclusive practice and offers them as a tool for others to use in the pursuit of developing more inclusive education, while giving readers the opportunity to learn from the experiences of the those from the research institution. </p>2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1033Pedagogy of presence and democracy book review: Themelis, C. (2022) Pedagogy of tele-proximity for eLearning: bridging the distance with social physics. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge2023-04-21T09:22:06-07:00Samantha Jane Ahern2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1030Should open-book, open-web exams replace traditional closed-book exams in STEM? An evaluation of their effectiveness in different disciplines 2023-07-19T10:10:18-07:00Laura RobertsJoanne Berry<p>The mass shift to Open-Book, Open-Web (OBOW) assessments during the pandemic highlighted new opportunities in Higher Education for developing accessible, authentic assessments that can reduce administrative load. Despite a plethora of research emerging on the effectiveness of OBOW assessments within disciplines, few currently evaluate their effectiveness across disciplines where the assessment instrument can vary significantly. This paper aims to evaluate the experience students across STEM subjects had of OBOW exams to contribute to an evidence-base for emerging post-pandemic assessment policies and strategies. In April 2021, following two cycles of OBOW exams, we surveyed STEM students across a range of subjects to determine their preparation strategy, experiences during the exam, perception of development of higher order cognitive skills, test anxiety, and how they thought these assessments might enhance employability. Overall, students from subjects that use assessment instruments requiring analytical, quantitative-based answers (Maths, Physics, Computer Science and Chemistry) adapted their existing study skills less effectively, felt less prepared and experienced higher levels of stress compared to students of subjects using more qualitative discursive based answers (Biosciences and Geography). We conclude with recommendations on how to enhance the use of OBOW exams: these include supporting and developing more effective study skills, ensuring assessments align with intended learning outcomes, addressing the issue of academic integrity, promoting inclusivity, and encouraging authentic assessment. Based on the outcomes of this study, we strongly advise that assessment policies that foster the whole-scale roll-out of OBOW assessment consider the inter-disciplinary impacts on learner development, staff training and workload resources.</p>2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1029Gender differences in academic buoyancy among first-year undergraduate university students 2023-07-20T10:06:41-07:00Peter Aloka<p>First-year students at universities continue to experience adjustment challenges which are an indication of low academic buoyancy. Academic buoyancy is a student’s ability to succeed amidst academic difficulties and setbacks in academic settings. This study examined the gender differences in academic buoyancy among first-year undergraduate students in one public university in western Kenya. Within the positivist research paradigm, the study adopted a cross-sectional survey research design. The sample size of the study comprised 213 first-year students, selected using a simple random sampling method. The Academic Buoyancy Scale was used to collect data. An independent samples t-test was used to test the hypothesis. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference in the academic buoyancy scores for males and females [t (211) = -5.178, p <.001], but the magnitude of the differences in the mean was moderate (eta squared=.113). Thus, the male first-year students registered comparatively higher academic buoyancy than their female counterparts. This implies that male students have better coping mechanisms for environmental stressors at the university as compared to their female counterparts. The study recommends that counselling staff at universities should develop gendered orientation programmes to enhance the academic buoyancy of female first-year students. Moreover, universities should develop more focused academic orientation and nurturing among all first-year students to uplift academic buoyancy in all the courses for which they are registered.</p>2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1026A nudge for positive behaviours: digital nudging in higher education2023-05-01T11:42:49-07:00Adam Tate<p>In 2018, embarking upon my PhD in Education, I conducted a literature review. My preliminary findings came to a determination of three key points, as presented below. However, during the Covid-19 context, 2020-22, there was a rapid shift in the sector to teaching online and a consequent shift in the literature. I believe it noteworthy to present this piece to the academic community to highlight what I perceive as a move in the literature findings. Now, in 2023, there is clear evidence that Higher Education is moving towards digital nudging (Brown et al., 2023; Plak et al., 2023). It is important for Learning Development professionals to consider the ethical implications of this change and how nudging might be used in virtual learning environments, especially given the rapid rise of Artificial Intelligence, which is likely to be deployed alongside learning analytics to shape students' learning behaviours.</p>2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1023Networked Learning: The centrality of human-to-human networks in online learning environments. A book review of: Themelis, C. (2023) Pedagogy of Tele-Proximity for eLearning: Bridging the Distance with Social Physics (New York: Routledge)2023-02-27T04:14:59-08:00Gary Frazer Fisher2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1022Editorial2023-02-24T00:55:23-08:00Alicja Syska2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1021Introduction to the Special Edition2023-02-10T10:27:19-08:00Karen LipsedgeHilda Mulrooney<p> </p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1020Experiential and authentic learning in a Living Lab: the role of a campus-based Living Lab as a teaching and learning environment2023-04-28T07:41:54-07:00Steven RogersAdam JefferyJamie PringleAntonia LawAlexandre NobajasKatie SzkornikAngela TurnerAdam MoolnaBen DavenwardLuke Hobson<p>Living Labs provide stakeholders with authentic and spontaneous environments in which innovations and technologies can be developed. This paper highlights the use of Living Labs as an educational teaching and learning environment. We give four current examples of practice and present a conceptual framework for pedagogic design and development of experiential learning activities and assessment in a Living Lab environment. Examples are based around current higher education undergraduate and postgraduate taught assessments and activities. We highlight how Living Labs, particularly campus-based examples, are an excellent opportunity for education providers to provide realistic experiences for students that promote empowerment, inclusivity and sustainability where activities and results can be spontaneous. Learning in a Living Lab environment provides the opportunities for students to develop applied skills, work in a transdisciplinary manner and co-create and collaborate on data sets. These activities are associated with potential increases in student attainment and receive positive student feedback. Living Labs introduce opportunities for interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and cross-cultural working and provide an excellent base for education for sustainability.</p>2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1019Dealing confidently with feedback: the impact of a Grow Your Academic Resilience workshop2023-03-06T00:06:54-08:00Helen BriscoeClaire OlsonMaisie Prior<p>A key concern for educators is that students actively receive, engage with, and implement their academic feedback. However, increasing evidence suggests that students in HE do not engage well with feedback. One way to address this concern is to look at how we can develop feedback literacy in students, which requires a level of academic resilience. Resilience in an academic context is known to increase retention and students’ engagement in their learning, as well as supporting workplace readiness. This research looks at students’ readiness and willingness to engage with their academic feedback and assesses whether learning about academic resilience can improve feedback engagement. Two cohorts of students were identified to take part in a Grow Your Academic Resilience (GYAR) Workshop. Using a mixed methods approach, participants were invited to complete a pre- and post-session questionnaire. Participants quantitatively rated their pre- and post-session confidence about dealing constructively with academic feedback, while free-text responses provided qualitative data. Findings suggest that offering students practical tools and strategies increases their willingness and confidence in engaging with and acting upon their feedback.</p>2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1014Inclusive assessment in higher education: what does the literature tells us on how to define and design inclusive assessments?2023-02-19T00:13:51-08:00Katrin Bain<p>In recent decades the diversity of university students has increased, and it has been observed that degree results vary between student groups. This degree awarding gap is particularly high between White students on the one hand and Black, Asian, and other ethnic minority students on the other. Assessments are a key aspect of closing the degree awarding gap. A systematic literature review was conducted to explore ‘What makes higher education assessments inclusive?’ and ‘How to design inclusive assessments in higher education?’. 14 articles were qualitatively analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis. Four dominant themes were found in the literature: defining ‘inclusive’, assessment, wider context, and student perspectives. In the literature a clear response to the first research question was found, defining inclusive assessment as the provision of assessments that allow all students to do well without receiving alternative or adapted assessments. The second question proved more difficult to answer. While some aspects of inclusive assessments could be identified, others are still unanswered. The results showed that assessments cannot be planned in isolation but need to be integrated within the wider course design. Only one of the articles included data on student grades and progression. The existing qualitative findings could be enhanced by parallel quantitative data to understand the impact of inclusive assessments on grades and their potential in closing the degree awarding gap. Ultimately, this paper will argue that the current literature concerning inclusive assessment is limited by the lack of data on student attainment. </p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1013Getting connected: establishing direct communication between learning developers and PhD Students with teaching responsibilities2023-02-28T14:18:41-08:00Ralitsa KantchevaKiu Sum<p>Many PhD researchers have the opportunity to take up teaching responsibilities during their doctoral studies to enhance their employability and interest in academia. Aside from their formal teaching training, little is known about the types of resources and support from professional services that PhD students (PhDs) use to fulfil their teaching responsibilities. On the other hand, learning development is a relatively new profession within higher education. As such, there are varied perceptions on the necessity for PhDs with teaching responsibilities to engage with learning development support. This opinion piece shares the experience of a STEM UK PhD student with teaching responsibilities and a learning development practitioner when establishing support for modules taught by PhDs. Through a dialogue, the authors explore the challenges faced in the interaction between learning developers (LDs) and PhDs, in two different UK universities, and recommend how to further develop the relationship. Through this dialogue possible solutions like increasing the visibility of available LD support for PhDs with teaching responsibilities within higher education institutions (HEIs) and including LD support in PhDs teaching training were identified.</p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1009On ChatGPT: what promise remains for multiple choice assessment?2023-02-17T09:44:11-08:00Chahna Gonsalves<p>Multiple-choice quizzes (MCQs) are a popular form of assessment. A rapid shift to online assessment during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, drove the uptake of MCQs, yet limited invigilation and wide access to material on the internet allow students to solve the questions via internet search. ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) agent trained on a large language model, exacerbates this challenge as it responds to information retrieval questions with speed and a good level of accuracy. In this opinion piece, I contend that while the place of MCQ in summative assessment may be uncertain, current shortcomings of ChatGPT offer opportunities for continued formative use. I outline how ChatGPT’s limitations can inform effective question design. I provide tips for effective multiple-choice question design and outline implications for both academics and learning developers. This piece contributes to emerging debate on the impact of artificial intelligence on assessment in higher education. Its purpose is threefold: to (1) enhance academics’ understanding of effective MCQ design, (2) promote shared understanding and inform dialogue between academics and learning developers about MCQ assessment, and (3) highlight the potential implications on learning support.</p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1007Developing librarians’ teaching practice: a case study of learning advisors sharing their knowledge2023-01-04T09:35:14-08:00Rachael HardingRobyn McWilliamsTricia Bingham<p>Increasingly, tertiary librarians are required to teach as part of their role. There is recognition that ongoing professional development (PD) is required in teaching and learning as this is not generally provided as part of formal library qualifications. Using an education design-based research approach, this collaboration aimed to enhance the teaching practice of liaison librarians to enable more consistent review, planning, and design of information literacy workshops. As part of a wider PD programme for liaison librarians at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), learning advisors developed and taught three workshops. The learning advisors were chosen by the library leadership due to their teaching expertise and adaptability. They provide embedded, academic literacy support for students tailored to specific assessment guidelines and marking criteria. The aim was to share examples of learner advisor practice underpinned by relevant theory and applied directly to an information literacy context. Liaison librarians were exposed to workshop strategies to develop appropriate learning outcomes, content, and pedagogical approaches for planning ongoing teaching. They had opportunities to assess and evaluate their current knowledge and skills and consider new approaches. These sessions enabled the team to go forward with shared knowledge to guide their workshop design to create more consistent, sustainable, and measurable content. Another outcome was the co-development of workshop design principles which have been applied to the redevelopment of workshops. As this process is replicable, the value of sharing knowledge and expertise between teams such as learning advisors and liaison librarians is worth exploring further.</p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1006Sport and exercise sciences students’ and teaching assistants’ perceptions of rubrics in tertiary education2023-07-10T06:19:16-07:00Neil Anderson<p>Little is known about the use that sport and exercise sciences students of different levels of study at university make of grading rubrics. The aims of this study were to develop a greater understanding of the perceptions students and teaching assistants (TAs) have of grading rubrics when writing and grading laboratory reports, respectively. Results showed that students in the earlier stage of their academic careers had more positive perceptions of rubrics and that students in the later part of their academic careers wanted more specific information from rubrics. Despite having positive perceptions of the rubric, nearly a third of teaching assistants chose not to use the rubric to inform their grading. Grading rubrics were generally well received by students at each level of study and benefits of rubrics included planning and enabling students to understand what to include in a report. Grading rubrics should be presented to sport and exercise students to enhance the educational scaffolding within the learning environment.</p>2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1004The development of undergraduate employability skills through authentic assessment in college-based higher education.2023-02-01T02:02:21-08:00Daniel ConnollyLliam DickinsonLuke Hellewell<p>This paper explores how authentic assessment can be implemented to enhance opportunities to develop employability skills through problem-solving tasks. Based on the eight key tenets of authentic assessment (Ashford-Rowe, Herrington and Brown, 2014), this paper presents formative and summative assessment case studies which were created in partnership with external stakeholders on three separate degree programmes at an undergraduate college-based higher education provider. The case studies report on the development of employability skills through authentic learning design on courses ranging from level 4 to level 6 of the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications. The cases add weight to the argument for embedding employability within the curriculum wherein the core skills/intended outcomes are delivered as part of the taught curriculum rather than as paralleled approaches which aim to develop employability as an add-on. Each of the case studies are individually distinct, however they each share commonalities that collectively produce an effective framework for authentic assessment design. These key components include effective collaboration with external stakeholders (employers) from within the respective sectors, the joint formulation of a ‘problem’ that allows students to apply real world skillsets to overcome, and lastly the opportunity for external stakeholders to contribute towards feedback that students receive in respect to the assessment carried out. Learning developers in higher education should look to utilise the conclusions of this paper to inform learning design in their contexts.</p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1003Using a digital escape room to engage first year pre-registration nursing students in evidence-based practice learning: a case study2022-12-02T01:11:30-08:00Pamela DonaghyChris Gillies Niall McCann<p>If health professionals are to deliver care which reflects the best evidence available, they need to develop an understanding of how to find, appraise and use research to inform their clinical practice.</p> <p>A digital escape room activity was designed for a first-year undergraduate module, to develop nursing students’ skills in the first three stages of evidence-based practice: developing a question, searching and appraising the literature. The escape room was hosted on the university’s virtual learning environment.</p> <p>The evaluation of the activity is based on the feedback from a digital survey used with three consecutive first year undergraduate cohorts (n = 83) and the staff involved in the design and delivery of the activity.</p> <p>Over 99% of students found the activity fun, with over 90% declaring that it was more engaging and motivating than other group learning activities. Almost 90% of students were looking forward to completing another DER type activity.</p> <p>The feedback indicates that both staff and students were motivated by the digital learning experience, with a positive impact on group engagement and students’ perception of learning.</p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1002Supporting international PGT students’ interaction and participation, academic confidence and belonging through academic skills classes and a student-led video project2023-03-31T11:35:41-07:00Louise FrithLeah MaitlandJames Lamont<p style="font-weight: 400;">This paper reports on a research project which took place at a university in the North of England during the academic year 2021-22. As a small team of discipline-based Academic Skills Tutors, we provide weekly two-hour classes for PGT Education students. Classes focus on giving students the tools to develop their academic and communication skills. The aim of our research was to find out about students' interaction and participation, levels of academic anxiety, and sense of belonging. To gather students’ views, we conducted an online survey which was sent to all students, and we ran three focus group sessions. We then presented the results to students and asked them if they would like to participate in a video project in which their experiences were captured, with a view to creating a resource for incoming PGT students to support their transition to postgraduate study in the UK. The project produced three short videos, each of which picks up one of the themes of the research (participation, academic anxiety and belonging). This paper first presents our research findings on the three themes: student interaction and participation, academic anxiety and students' sense of belonging. It then reflects on the process of producing the student-led video project.</p>2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1000Dominant discourses in higher education. Book review: Kinchin, I. M. and Gravett, K. (2022) Dominant discourses in higher education: critical perspectives, cartographies and practice. London: Bloomsbury. 2022-11-14T01:26:42-08:00Maggie Scott2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/999The highs and lows of written feedback: student evaluation of writing centre written responses2023-02-13T02:28:38-08:00Eva Shackel<p style="font-weight: 400;">In-person, one-to-one verbal feedback has long been prioritised in learning development. However, there are instances where written feedback proves to be a more convenient option. This study investigated the reasons why students request, and how they perceive, the written feedback they receive from a writing centre at a university in the UK. To gather insights, 249 students who had received written feedback during the academic year 2020-21 were invited to complete a questionnaire. 54 students responded, representing a response rate of 21.6%. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 students. It was found that most students requested written feedback due to convenience, although some, particularly those with dyslexia, preferred written feedback over in-person feedback as it allows them to reflect on, and process, the information in their own time. The detailed nature of the written feedback increases the students’ perception that the university cares about them, which makes them feel valued and important. Although the findings relate to written feedback, they are relevant for in-person feedback by emphasising how important it is to allow students with dyslexia the time they need to write, listen and speak, during writing centre appointments. </p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/997Co-constructing teaching and learning in higher education: a literature review of practices and implications2022-11-21T22:51:20-08:00Brianna Vespone<p>The purpose of this systematic review is to examine the assumptions and practices taking place in co-constructed learning spaces within higher education research literature, specifically for undergraduate students. This paper provides an overview of how co-constructed methods take shape in the university classroom and how those methods benefit student learning. A literature search was conducted via education-focused databases using search terms such as ‘higher education’, ‘co-constructed learning’, and ‘sociocultural’. Only primary, empirical articles published after 2007 were included for review, with one exception from 2002. Implications for student learning are discussed within four core thematic outcomes (skill development, engagement, meaning-making, having purpose) and two activators (learning through relationships, creating a safe space). Implications for teachers include a discussion of teaching methods, classroom activities, and the role of teachers. Rooted in theories of constructivist, sociocultural, and third space learning, this review of the literature provides rationale for exploring alternatives to traditional pedagogical methods, highlights barriers, facilitators, and potential downfalls of co-constructed learning spaces, and discusses implications for student learning and for teachers.</p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/995Innovative approaches to sustainability skills development: a crowd-sourcing workshop2022-10-28T07:08:52-07:00Iain CrossAlina Congreve<p>The aim of this interactive workshop was for the learning developers participating to be empowered to engage with these changes in their own institutions. Much of the facilitated discussion looked at new approaches to learning development that support education for sustainability. It comprised a series of mini-presentations of case-studies derived from original research into teaching climate change including 35 in-depth interviews. The workshop drew on the presenters’ research to crowdsource solutions from the learning developer community to key challenges. How can we foster creativity, innovation and systemic thinking in graduates? How can advanced skills for sustainability be scaffolded in the university curriculum? The workshop is designed to be of interest to learning developers with experience in supporting education for sustainability, and those new to the topic.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/994Editorial2022-10-27T10:46:20-07:00Alicja Syska<p>We are thrilled to present to you the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education’s <em>Collaborative Conference Proceedings and Reflections</em> – a collection of collaboratively written reports from the annual ALDinHE Conference that took place online and in person in June 2022. The conference participants this year had a unique opportunity to interact with the content of the presentations beyond the conference space, by contributing to the presenters’ open documents that gathered audiences’ comments, responses, questions, and suggestions the presenters considered and reflected on after the talk. In this sense, these reports are so much more than conference proceedings – they are an extension of the conference beyond the confines of the physical and temporal spaces demarcated by the event. </p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/993Students’ view of hybrid assessment2022-10-26T07:33:56-07:00Patricia Perlman-Dee<p>This lightning talk aimed to evaluate and explain the outcome of students’ opinions on a hybrid assessment. It shared with the audience take away learnings, ideas, and tips from a postgraduate formative assessment that was delivered as a group presentation. The students had the opportunity to deliver in three separate formats: complete group delivering face-to-face, hybrid group delivery, and all virtual delivery. The talk discussed the students' perception of ‘best form of delivery’, ‘fairness and equal opportunities’, and acting with professionalism, as well as final outcomes of the assessment.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/992Chicken soup for the soul: promoting well-being and belonging through food and cultural competence skills.2022-10-24T13:58:41-07:00Karen LipsedgeHilda Mulrooney<p>This conference paper asked a question - What does well-being and belonging in Teaching and Learning Development look like in practice? The paper presentation focused on two Kingston University initiatives to develop and enhance students’ sense of well-being and belonging: Cultural Food Stories and Cultural Competence skills workshops were explored in the session to create a conversation about how Learning Developers could move into the extra-curricular space to create a sense of belonging through communal dining. Food is universal and has cultural and social meanings (Dunbar, 2017). During the physical separation experienced throughout the pandemic, the Cultural Food Stories initiative explored whether recipe and story sharing could enhance staff and student belonging, while simultaneously honouring cultural diversity. Given the importance of belonging in enhancing student learning, engagement and retention (Tinto, 2017), this is highly pertinent. To enhance student success, it is also essential to equip students with the skills they need to appreciate how cultural differences and similarities help to enhance personal and professional interactions rather than to stereotype or marginalise. The Cultural Competence skills initiative creates tailored workshops to support students’ ability to understand and respect their own and others’ cultural background and values. These strategies help to equip our students with the resilience and skills needed to thrive and be successful professionals in their future careers. In our paper, we argue that wellbeing and belonging are key tools for developing students learning and can be easily incorporated into educational practice. By inviting diverse students to participate within each of these initiatives, their cultural heritage is not only welcomed but also acknowledged explicitly. Attendees will leave with a practical toolkit to embed our Cultural Food Stories and Cultural Competence skills initiatives as part of their teaching and learning practice and devise associated activities that enhance professional development skills and better support all our students, regardless of background.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/991Supporting students with the transition to university in a Covid world: expectations and reality2022-10-24T02:25:36-07:00Sonia HoodEdward Powell<p>In the spring of 2021 concerns were being raised in the Teaching and Learning community at the University of Reading regarding the incoming cohort of students. With such disruption to their education would they be adequately prepared for university level study? What impact would this, in turn, have on support services, like Study Advice, and retention and progression rates? And what of our returning students? Are they adequately prepared for the academic challenges they will face at the next level of study? As a result, a University wide working group was established to research the issue and offer solutions to support students and staff with the 2021 transition of our new and returning students. This paper will report on the findings from focus groups with year 13 students and 6th form tutors, and questionnaire data gathered from our current students during the summer of 2021. It will highlight the perceived academic strengths and development areas from their various perspectives and their beliefs as to what issues they will face with transitioning to the next level. We will share our University response to this; how we supported students with their academic transition this academic year. Finally, we will report whether our predictions as to what students would present to Study Advice this year materialised; how we believe Covid will continue to affect students in the coming years; and how that in turn will affect demand levels and types of support we as a Learning Development service will offer.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/988Empathy and compassion: towards wellbeing in learning development2022-10-21T06:35:02-07:00Daniela de SilvaEmma Dempsey<p>Wellbeing, empathy and compassion are increasingly discussed topics in relation to teaching, with one key question being the extent to which empathy and compassion in teaching can impact on student wellbeing as well as outcomes. Wellbeing is a broad spectrum of aspects, including health – physical, mental and emotional, life balance, happiness and fulfilment, and it is not always easy to pin-point which actions can make a difference to the students and their learning journey. This workshop aims to address some of these questions by giving attendees key information from a study skills professional on how they can integrate a compassionate approach into their teaching, followed by a facilitated discussion on this topic to enable attendees to form their own compassionate teaching plans. Using Mentimeter we will exchange ideas about the definitions of empathy and compassion and how they overlap and bring together a common goal in producing learning development sessions to a diverse range of students. </p> <p> </p> <p>The interactive part of the workshop will continue by attendees being divided into four groups (virtual) and given a jamboard link where the groups will be able to comment on whether compassion and empathy in the hybrid teaching and learning experience in the past academic year, contributed to improved wellbeing in their students’ journey. The groups will comment on wellbeing in the social experience, learning experience, academic performance and overall improved wellbeing in the student experience. The tangible take-aways from the workshop will be a deeper knowledge of empathy and compassion and their role in student wellbeing.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/987Disrupting the 'sage on the stage'2022-10-20T05:55:52-07:00Anne-Marie Langford<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8.0pt 0cm;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; color: black;">This presentation explored the creation and sharing of resources with students via social media as a way of challenging the authoritative nature of traditional academic skills content (Price et. al, 2017; Gordon and Melrose, 2011). The concept of the ‘Sage on the Stage’ has been replaced in recent years with a more active, student-centred learning environment (Roberts, 2016). Audiograms are bitesize audio-visual explorations of student questions about academic skills, created and distributed collaboratively with our Student Peer Mentors. It had been anticipated that the peer mentors would take the lead in the audiogram creation, drawing on a range of student voices and researching, writing, and recording responses to them in the format of an advice columnist, so that the advice was given student to student. </span></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8.0pt 0cm;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; font-family: 'Calibri',sans-serif; color: black;">While the student peer mentors had a sense of teamwork around the audiograms’ creation, they felt varying degrees of ownership. Ultimately, the audiogram creation was led, co-ordinated and produced by a staff member. However, desired student outcomes were addressed through collaboration, problem-solving and reflective production (Al Qasim and Al Fadda, 2013; Fernandez et al., 2015; Forbes, 2015 cited in Hopkins, 2020). The peer mentors also acted as coaches who can assist new students with time management, study skills and goal setting (Parsloe and Wray, 2004 cited in Gordon and Melrose, 2011). Student Peer Mentors needed active support and supervision to achieve this. However, the results of the work bring a less formal and more engaging approach to the subject matter.</span></span></p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/984Integrating academic skills in the curriculum: a partnership approach2022-10-20T05:50:02-07:00Emma SmithAmy Pearson<p>Supporting our new students to make the transition to higher education, so that they stay with us and succeed beyond their first year, has been a priority focus for the University of Salford over the past 18 months. As an academic skills team, based in the Library, we have carved out an integral role for our service in responding to this challenge. Building on the prior success of a standalone eLearning programme, we have developed an extensive set of eLearning pathways and complementary learning activities designed for academics to easily and flexibly integrate into their course delivery so that every student is connected with the right academic support at the right time. This presentation aimed to share how our active blended learning approach is scalable and allows for local ownership and opportunities for contextualisation by academic colleagues. We explored how we established our role in this strategic project and the value of our partnership working with the academic community and the VLE support team. We hoped to provide helpful examples of how it has worked in practice to support students to learn how to learn at university. Finally, we sought to reflect on the journey so far - acknowledging the bumps and bends in the road - and initiate a discussion about where to go next. The community response to the presentation provided a space for practitioners to reflect on the ways in which e-learning design could facilitate an embedded approach to academic skills at their institutions; it also prompted reflection on the potential for collaboration between learning developers and Faculties. Our final author reflections address some of the questions and challenges raised at the conference, and set out some future aspirations for where this work will go next.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/986Collaborative writing communities for Learning Development research and practice2022-10-19T10:30:29-07:00Ian JohnsonKaren WeltonKiu SumVictoria RaffertyRalitsa KantchevaJane NodderPaul ChinUrsula CantonSilvina Bishopp-MartinEd Bickle<p>This workshop discussed how collaborative reflection and writing provides us, as a group of Learning Developers, with insights into our role and sense of identity. The wider potential for using collaborative writing to develop topics of mutual interest was also explored. Our reflections on the collaborative writing process arose from our first-hand experience of collaborative writing (Bickle et al., 2021). Therefore, we aimed to introduce participants to the tools we used for our writing and encourage them to experience the tools themselves to stimulate a discussion on the potential and challenges of collaborative writing for LD research and practice. We hoped to increase participants’ understanding of collaborative writing through practice and reflection and provide ideas on how others can initiate a collaborative writing community. The introduction briefly outlined the insights we gained from our study, focussing particularly on the way collaborative writing served as a tool to examine and broaden our identities as Learning Developers. It also introduced the methodologies for creating (collaborative writing) and analysing (collaborative autoethnography) data. Next, participants were invited to try out collaborative writing activities and reflect on their potential use as part of their own practice. We used a Google document (Figure 1) to collect their spontaneous responses to short writing prompts related to the challenges and potential of collaborative writing. Finally, at the end of the session, participants left with tips and techniques on how to develop a collaborative writing group of their own.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/985Student wellbeing and technostress: critical learning design factors2022-10-19T05:45:09-07:00David BigginsDebbie Holley<p>In higher education, student wellbeing is now the responsibility of all of us. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the pivot by universities to online learning positioned technology as a panacea, and saw students being signposted to digital resources for digital skills and wellbeing support. Our use of the concept, technostress, is derived from the Student Minds report (2021) entitled ’Life in a pandemic’. It refers to the stress experienced by students when using technology within higher education, given the sector's expectations of their technical abilities. Our paper reported on the results of a digital health and wellbeing survey (n=103) with surprising responses from 80 students to the survey question about technostress.</p> <p>The findings indicate students feel let down by teaching staff who struggle with the mediating tools of their online trade – technology – and show little empathy for those they teach. McDougall and Potter (2018) argue that human-centred approaches, prioritising staff and students’ immediate and lifelong wellbeing rather than the mere use of digital tools, are key to success in developing policies for student wellbeing.</p> <p>The findings indicate that the formulaic approaches offered by academic staff to students in response to their digital health and wellbeing challenges will chime with learning developers championing student support as emancipatory practice. Attendees were invited to reflect on their own experience of technostress and share their considerations as to how to widen understanding of this phenomenon. The presentation concluded by recommending an integrated model for framing student wellbeing underpinned with exceptional learning design and considered the optimum on a continuum for the use of technological tools.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/981Finding balance: the positives and negatives of moving peer mentor training online 2022-10-18T07:14:37-07:00Jenny Stowar<p style="font-weight: 400;">The Student Academic Mentor (SAM) programme at the London School of Economics has only been in place for five years, and in that time it has rapidly grown in scope and numbers. With the pandemic, training of the largely international cohort of undergraduates moved online and in-person training was removed. This continued in 2020/21. The result is a trained cohort, but a disconnection between the student volunteer and the programme co-ordinator. In a Learning Development context, with the new landscape of HE emphasising hybridity, where do we find the balance between practical necessity and losing our personal touch with students?</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/980Mix and match: student choice in accessing digital or face-to-face academic skills support2022-10-18T02:10:31-07:00Oli Johnson<p>Given the choice, will students opt for a face-to-face or online learning session? The 301 Academic Skills Centre at the University of Sheffield provides academic skills training (including study skills and maths and statistics support) to students in the form of workshops, 1:1 appointments and online resources. The transition to online learning during spring 2020 acted as a catalyst for us to develop our digital offer, which proved extremely popular with students studying remotely. As teaching has returned to the classroom we have been keen to retain some of the positive impacts of our online support and to continue to offer students a choice in how they access our extracurricular service. Throughout the 2021-22 academic year we have provided the option of attending 1:1 appointments and workshops either online or face-to-face, which has provided us with a dataset of student preferences. We have been surprised by the ongoing scale of demand for online training and support and student feedback on the service has provided us with an insight into the reasons behind this demand. This conference session presented data collected during the 2021-22 academic year to explore how and why some students may prefer an online learning alternative and how we intend to develop this delivery model in the future.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/979Better together: innovative learning and authentic connections in the online space Book review: Abegglen, S., Neuhaus, F. and Wilson, K. (eds.) (2022) Voices from the digital classroom: 25 interviews about teaching and learning in the face of a global pandemic. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. 2022-10-18T01:03:16-07:00Carina Buckley2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/978The impact of departmental academic skills provision on students' wellbeing2022-10-17T23:23:22-07:00Louise FrithLeah MaitlandJames Lamont<p>Student wellbeing in UK higher education is of serious concern, with high rates of stress and anxiety recorded among students (Pereira et al, 2019). This is compounded for international students who speak English as a second or third language. However, international students are an integral part of higher education in the United Kingdom. Strategies that are specifically designed for international students that support wellbeing are somewhat lacking across the sector (Shu et al, 2020).</p> <p><br />The aim of this initiative is to embed academic and communication skills into students’ programmes of study in the form of weekly 2-hour academic skills classes. This small-scale study is based on the experience of teaching MA Education students, 95% of whom are Chinese. Classes focus on developing students’ understanding of critical thinking and writing, supporting their academic reading and ensuring that they understand academic conventions in the UK such as referencing and academic writing structure. Classes also provide another layer of support and social interaction for students which we hope support student wellbeing. We surveyed 40 students about how the classes support their participation and interaction, alleviate anxiety and help to develop their sense of belonging. We followed this up with students interviewing each other on their experiences of academic skills development classes. Members of the teaching team observed the interviews and took notes. This paper will report on our findings and make recommendations for how to further improve support for international PGTs.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/977Magic to conjure up academic skills for dissertation support2022-10-17T15:11:56-07:00Emma KimberleyPaul RiceAmy West<p>This project uses magic to explore dissertation skills with students. Students in a session on preparing for the dissertation learnt a magic trick and then used their experience of learning the trick to reflect and to develop narratives around their dissertation topic focussing on the skills of researching and writing. We compared the results of the intervention group to those of a control group (who were given the same session but excluding the magic trick). The teaching sessions integrated skills essential for completing the dissertation such as critical thinking, linking, metacognitive reflection, and conceptualising the process of a long project. Previous research has suggested that using magic can stimulate curiosity, engage and motivate students, and that they will find the session more memorable (see Moss, Irons and Boland, 2017; Wiseman and Watt, 2020; Wiseman, Wiles and Watt, 2021)</p> <p> </p> <p>The presentation reported the findings from pre- and post-session questionnaires completed by participants to evaluate the use of a magic trick in teaching dissertation skills by:</p> <p> </p> <ul> <li>Evaluating the effectiveness of using a magic trick to teach dissertation skills.</li> <li>Evaluating the use of magic to make skills teaching more memorable.</li> <li>Evaluating the use of magic to support motivation and positive emotions around dissertation tasks.</li> <li>Evaluating the use of magic to counter some of the negative affects students encounter such as lack of motivation or negative self-efficacy beliefs.</li> </ul>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/976The digital writing café - accessibility born from necessity 2022-10-17T12:21:53-07:00Nina KearneyCara BaerMichaela MoclairJack Pendlebury<p>The Writing Café is a creative space for students to talk about academic writing across disciplines, and to support them to become better writers, underpinned by the philosophy of inclusion and inquiry.</p> <p>Originally located in a café on campus, in response to the pandemic, the Writing Café transitioned online considering the additional struggles that students might be experiencing as a result of the pandemic. Within days, it had moved online with no interruption of service.</p> <p>Attendance in the Digital Writing Café increased by 50% during lockdown, and the service was highlighted by the Gravity Assist report as one of the most innovative examples of how universities and colleges have responded to the pandemic by providing online support to their students.</p> <p>Due to the successes, the Digital Café now runs concurrently alongside The Writing Café in the Library providing a flexible service to meet the varying needs of the students.</p> <p>Though the Writing Café has always been a space that helps bridge the gap in supporting social mobility, this new flexible approach has seen a drastic increase in engagement from students who identify as from Access and Participation Plan (APP) categories.</p> <p>The presentation explored the evolution of the Writing Café to the new hybrid dual delivery model, with provision located physically at the heart of the campus in our Library café, alongside an online digital provision using zoom. Our Writing Mentors will share their experience and will discuss the impact on our student engagement.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/975Grow your academic resilience2022-10-17T04:25:16-07:00Claire OlsonHelen BriscoeMaisie Prior<p>Grow Your Academic Resilience is interactive workshop aimed at equipping students with practical tools to nurture their academic resilience, or their ability to deal with academic challenges and setbacks (Martin and Marsh, 2008). The session helps students recognise the qualities of a <strong>growth</strong> as opposed to <strong>fixed</strong> mindset (Dweck, 2006), and supports them to feel confident in dealing constructively with feedback. Students are encouraged to identify strengths they possess and consider the skills they need to achieve their academic goals.</p> <p>Research demonstrates that resilience is an attribute that positively impacts student wellbeing, engagement, and academic achievement (Turner, Scott-Young and Holdsworth, 2017). Consequently, we believe universities play a key role in developing the resilience of students, therefore introducing students to this concept at the earliest opportunity is paramount. Feedback to date has been positive and we aim to grow the number of sessions we deliver.</p> <p>Our objective was to deliver an adapted session and elicit feedback from our peers for future development. Participants took part in a 45-minute workshop as university students. Alongside this, commentary was provided discussing the nature of the activities. Finally, participants were given 15 minutes to share experiences and offer constructive suggestions. Resources were shared, alongside presentation notes.</p> <p> Session Plan:</p> <ol> <li>Fixed vs. Growth Mindset quiz</li> <li>Grow your academic resilience (bespoke worksheet)</li> <li>Your feedback plan</li> </ol> <p>The session addresses the following Learning Outcomes:</p> <ul> <li>Understanding what it means to be academically resilient</li> <li>Recognising a growth Mindset</li> <li>Discovering practical tools to nurture your resilience</li> <li>Dealing confidently with feedback</li> </ul>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/974'Beyond the crisis’: accepting and adapting to the virtual academic skills workshop2022-10-17T01:44:27-07:00Laura Key<p>This lightning talk examined the journey taken to re-create and co-construct the Academic Skills Workshop Programme on offer at Leeds Beckett University, an interactive and inclusive online classroom adapted due to the impact of Covid-19. A 'learning on the go' and 'trial and error' approach involving continuous evaluation was adopted for the creation of the programme, which was informed by staff and student feedback. The approach helped move this new and varied programme beyond the crisis point of Covid-19 towards a more robust online presence for future purpose. Key considerations helping to shape the programme included creating a sense of community and belonging online, co-creating a curriculum that addressed student feedback and needs, and responding to student wellbeing as well as academic skills development. This resulted in the redevelopment of an entire workshop programme, offered to students via BB Collaborate. Sixteen workshops were rewritten as one-hour interactive webinars; asynchronous materials and resources were provided for 24/7 availability; and a central sign-up service was offered via the institute's MyHub interface. Already established principles in online learning were taken into account during the development process (Anderson, 2008; Nguyen, 2015).</p> <p>These adaptations saw a twofold increase of student participation during 2020-2021 (1107 students, 53%) compared to 2018-2019 (410 students, 20%) or 2019-2020 (562 students, 27%). Learnings and successes from this project ranged from being adaptable, available, and offering different formats for learning where webinars were a feature, to seeing online as normal. Challenges that continue to be pondered are the value of F2F classrooms vs online, creating more 'on-demand' learning resources, blog posts, podcasts, and study modules available 24/7 for self-directed learning.</p> <p>The presentation hoped to share our experience as a team, but also to offer an opportunity to hear about broader thoughts and experiences relating to academic skills webinar delivery at HE institutions since the Covid-19 pandemic began.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/973Designing for diverse learners 2022-10-17T01:29:01-07:00Lee FallinThomas Tomlinson<p>Learning and teaching are only sustainable if accessible and inclusive. For this reason, we produced the <a href="https://doi.org/10.25416/NTR.16840531.v1">Designing for Diverse Learners Poster</a>: a set of easy-to-follow guidance on developing learning resources to support learners with a variety of needs. This poster has been adopted by many institutions and has had a significant impact on practice for many teaching in higher education. This conference session launched the next version of the Designing for Diverse Learners poster:- a fully interactive and digital version that includes how and why each of these design decisions is made. An accompanying website was demonstrated for the first time, and delegates were invited to consider ways in which it could support their learning and development practice, give feedback and suggest further improvements. The idea of ‘diverse learners’ is fundamental to the poster resource and to its use by learning developers. The practices outlined in our new website will benefit every learner - including those who may require specific adjustments. We hope the new version of the poster and the accompanying website will help support the development of greater access and inclusion in learning development practice.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/972Learning development 2030 2022-10-17T01:23:13-07:00Ed BickleSteph AllenMarian Mayer<p>Whilst the widening participation agenda and the impact of COVID-19 has arguably increased the importance of learning development (LD) within the UK Higher Education Sector, it is widely acknowledged that the role, and indeed title, of the learning developer varies greatly between institutions. Some staff are employed on academic contracts with research requirements, others not. Similarly, some staff are faculty based whilst others are employed within a central team. This means that as Bickle et al. (2021) explain: LD operates in a ‘third space’. The disparity within the profession has meant that the role of the learning developer is multi-faceted, reflected in Hilsdon’s (2011, p.14) definition of LD:</p> <p> </p> <p>“Learning development is a complex set of multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary academic roles and functions, involving teaching, tutoring, research, and the design and production of learning materials […]”.</p> <p> </p> <p>This workshop provided participants with an opportunity to untangle the complex LD web and map out ideas for the future of the LD profession. Acting as newspaper editors, participants got out their crystal balls and produced a front page of a newspaper in 2030 where the main headline has been dedicated to the field of LD. Perhaps a LD staff member has won a prestigious award, maybe LD has received some form of international recognition. After presenting their front pages, participants engaged in a discussion around how as a profession we can achieve some of these aspirations. Participants took ideas with them that they could apply to their own practice.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/971Working outside the box: breaking down barriers with a Learning Development Peer Mentor scheme2022-10-16T11:49:45-07:00Sam ThomasSheryl Mansfield<p>Peer learning is simply described as involving students from similar social groupings helping each other to learn (Topping, 2007). A recent document by the European Centre for Supplemental Instruction-Peer Assisted Study Sessions (SI PASS) (2019) highlighted that 32 universities in the UK provide a system of peer support, and these vary both in how they operate and their nomenclature: schemes could be framed as peer assisted learning, peer assisted study sessions or peer mentoring. Our aim was to create a supplementary, peer-led service which provides students with engaging, timely guidance and develops effective learning relationships based on parity and equality (Collier, 2015). We decided to use a similar approach to the Student Learning Assistant model of Price et al. (2019), where the Learning Development (LD) Mentors offer support to students from any disciplinary subject.</p> <p>Eight students were recruited and funded to offer peer support to all students within the institution. All are current second and third year students who work four hours per week supplementing the LD provision via a daily drop-in as well as leading ongoing projects and tasks, including resource development and evaluation. A key driver is reaching students who do not currently use the LD provision by developing resources in physical spaces and digital platforms previously unused in our work (e.g. in student halls and using platforms like Discord and TikTok). We will offer a perspective on the benefits and issues encountered when working with LD mentors, evaluate how the role was co-created with the students and assess the impact it has had on wider student engagement.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/970Effects of reading strategies on reading behaviour and comprehension: implications for teaching study skills 2022-10-14T10:53:00-07:00Sarah J. WhiteShi Hui WuFawziah S. QahtaniKayleigh L. WarringtonFaye O. BalcombeKevin B. Paterson<p>We summarised findings of our ESRC funded project “Revealing the Implications of Reading Strategy for Reading Behaviour and Comprehension”. The research employed eye-tracking methods, such that measures of when and where the eyes move reveal what is processed when during reading and skimming. Experiments that include manipulations of text characteristics help reveal how reading strategies affect comprehension of text. Our findings have important implications for teaching of reading strategy study skills. We are excited to engage those working in learning development to explore the implications of our findings for study skills teaching and to inform our programme of research.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/969Re-framing writing (support): centring audience and purpose in a community nursing course2022-10-14T07:57:45-07:00Silvia Luisa RossiLauren Cross<p>This presentation examined the collaboration between our Learning Development team and a community nursing course. It began with the question; “Are our demands of students concerning paraphrasing and referencing reasonable?” The assignment was a formal report on a semester-long group project where students partnered with a community agency. The coordinators worried that students (and lecturers) were over emphasising referencing and the technicalities of paraphrasing, to the detriment of engagement with the community nursing process itself. Our LD team eventually realized that the problem was not one of expectations, but rather a genre-audience mismatch. Although the assignment was called a report, the emphasis on integrating scholarly sources made it more like an academic essay, and the tone and length of the report limited its practical use by most partner agencies. Over time, by emphasizing genre, audience and purpose, we have contributed to a gradual loosening of the hold on the original report format. Last year, we provided feedback on a range of digital deliverables, including infographics, videos, and mind maps, each one designed to meet the specific partner agency’s needs. Our model of providing feedback on the report during one-hour in-person meetings has also evolved into a flexible combination of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration with students. We continue to guide students towards thoughtful, transparent source use, but the conversations around referencing and paraphrasing are now more holistic. In this presentation, we’ll share how our discipline-external perspective has supported meaningful student learning about authentic (and impactful) writing for different contexts.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/968‘Walk me through your dissertation’: using urban walks to develop students’ thinking about research2022-10-14T06:37:03-07:00Chenée Psaros<p>In the Spring of 2020, during Covid-19 restrictions that were prohibitive for in-person teaching, the Learning Development Unit at a research-intensive university sought ways to support postgraduate taught students who had been learning online. Creative Dissertation Walks were in-person, one-to-one tutorials that ran from May to August for students who were undertaking research. These walks enabled students to book an appointment with an experienced researcher to ‘walk and talk’ (Stansfield, 2019) about any aspect of their dissertation. Borrowing methods from dialogic one-to-one tutorials (Boyd & Markarian, 2015; Wingate, 2019) this project focused on the development of students’ articulation about their thinking around their project and enabled experienced researchers to provide feedback about students’ ideas. The walks took place in a park close to campus because green spaces are thought to improve creativity and generate ideas (Oppezzo & Schwartz, 2014; Keinanen, 2015; Leisman et al., 2016;). Walking improves mental health (Roe & Aspinall, 2011) and in conjunction with meeting another member of the university community in-person, students who participated in the walks stated that they thought the walks had improved their wellbeing and the outcome of their dissertation.</p> <p>This practical session provided delegates with the opportunity to experience how walking and talking can develop thinking and how learning developers might adapt the model for their own context. The session also discussed practical considerations when planning walking one-to-ones and reviewing questioning techniques that lend themselves to an environment that moves beyond the bounded notion of the campus (Leander 2010; Healy et al. 2015).</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/967Learning developers as their own cultural critics?2022-10-14T06:20:01-07:00Christie Pritchard<p>The values that guide the work of ALDinHE and those associated with us as an organisation include ‘making HE inclusive through emancipatory practice, partnership working and collaboration’ and ‘critical self-reflection, on-going learning and a commitment to professional development’ (ALDinHE, 2022). However, considering this from a relational, or systems thinking perspective; how achievable are these values? Can we truly be inclusive to all? Exploring this notion in my doctoral research, using Bourdieu’s relational framework (Bourdieu, 1992; Bourdieu, 1993; Bourdieu, 1997; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990) I was confronted with some uncomfortable truths. Education is reproductive in the sense that it selects those with the necessary capital to succeed and nurtures them to develop further. The diversity of student’s prior experience, background and capital to succeed is clear, and Learning Developers know how difficult Higher Education can be to navigate, but how often do we reflexively consider how our work reproduces the cultural system.</p> <p>Conference attendees working in small groups, discussed a brief precis of my Doctoral research, a copy of ALDinHE values and summary of Bourdieu’s notion of autonomy (Bourdieu, 1992). The following questions were posed to prompt discussion.</p> <ol> <li>How autonomous are we as practitioners and are we able to change the system that reproduces the inequality of society?</li> <li>Is being positioned by students as part of their curriculum through embedded practice advantageous all of the time?</li> <li>Do we focus on the knowledge and skills students bring, or are we forced to help them adapt to the game?</li> </ol>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/966To embed, not to embed, how to embed2022-10-14T05:58:12-07:00Ian Johnson<p>The embeddedness of learning development (LD) within the delivery of academic courses is emerging in my doctoral research as a key mediator of how the value of LD work is perceived by its stakeholders. Embedding might be best thought of as ‘epistemological alignment’ between learning developers and academic disciplines: that is, working with the lecturers longitudinally to co-design and co-deliver. Maldoni and Lear (2016) describe this model as ‘embedded, integrated and co-taught’. Learning developers may be embedded in other ways (e.g., physical location, operational or line management) but this does not necessarily equate to embedded provision; it could still operate in practice as a ‘bolt-on’ rather than an integrated element of students’ learning. In my research, embeddedness is discussed highly positively by learning developers across the UK, as well as other stakeholders, yet is grossly undersold in the terms through which universities publicly frame their LD provision on their websites. This mini-keynote, and the discussions that followed, explored practitioners’ experiences of embedding work at their higher education institutions to work towards a richer understanding of good practice.</p> <p>The three discussion prompts were:</p> <ol> <li>To what extent is LD work embedded at your workplace?</li> <li>What benefits and challenges (including surprising ones) have you encountered around embedding?</li> <li>Based on your experiences, what good practice advice would you give about embedding LD work?</li> </ol>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/964Insights from a study on non-submission of assignments: How can students best be supported?2022-10-14T02:01:25-07:00Samantha KingAlison LoddickTim CurtisDeepak Bhachu<p>Non-submission of summative assignments has an impact on a significant minority of students but is not well understood (Prinsloo, 2019). At the University of Northampton, 70% of Integrated Foundation Year (IFY) students have a non-submission on their academic profile as they enter Level 4 and nearly 10% of all student assignments overall are not submitted (Coulson and Loddick, 2021). Students who fail to submit initially are offered a second submission point, but their grade is capped at 40%: data suggests that addressing this could close 50% of the GEM (Global Ethnic Majority) attainment gap.</p> <p> </p> <p>A study was initiated in partnership with IFY academic staff to research into the experience and implications of non-submission of assignments for GEM and non-GEM students in IFY. The project aimed to understand the long-term implications in terms of academic outcomes through understanding why students fail to submit and how they recover from this. Data on student outcomes in recent years was interrogated and interviews were planned with current and former IFY students who had failed to submit at least one assignment. These interviews were conducted by existing IFY students to encourage an open dialogue. Following low levels of participation in the research, the project was widened by inviting all undergraduates who had failed to submit at least one assignment to complete a survey with open-ended questions exploring the non-submission. Insights from this study will be reported, which will inform the practice of both Learning Developers and lecturers. If we can offer timely and appropriate support, we may be able to promote assignment submission, which in turn could improve student retention. This would allow more students to achieve their goals and contribute to a sustainable model of higher education.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/965Leadership in learning development: who & how? 2022-10-14T01:35:36-07:00Carina Buckley<p>Learning Development (LD) as a profession is predicated upon the values of collaboration and partnership, sharing practice and critical self-reflection. Working within this ethos, it can be difficult to recognise ourselves as leaders – particularly when the idea of leadership is often tied to line management, and promotion often results in movement out of learning development altogether. How, then, do we recognise leadership in learning development, much less embrace it for ourselves?</p> <p>This presentation outlined findings, derived from interviews with 20 self-selecting members of the LD community, about conceptions and perceptions of leadership in LD. It examined what leadership looks like and who can be a leader by exploring learning developers’ conceptions of professional identity and networking, and confidence in those areas. The aim was to show delegates that the role of a leader has much in common with the values of LD, making it open to anybody with a purpose, a goal, and values. In so doing I posited that this is connected to the theme of wellbeing, as, if we feel recognised and valued for our work, then we are likely to be happier. I hoped to demonstrate that all learning developers have the capacity to be recognised and valued for their leadership.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/963Visual Thinking: Exploring current practices and perspectives re student notetaking2022-10-13T10:47:00-07:00Dawne Irving-BellPeter Hartley <p>Despite its importance, student note taking is under-researched and under-theorised. Many studies are outdated, analysing pre-digital behaviour. Hence, we question whether earlier findings still apply (as does van der Meer, 2012). Although we find some innovations useful, such as collaborative note taking (Orndorff, 2015), much recent research is also problematic. For example, consider widely reported claims that students taking longhand notes perform better than students using laptops (Mueller and Oppenheimer, 2014). Recent studies suggest more complex relationships (Luo et al., 2018) but typically adopt short-term experimental approaches. As a result, current advice and guidance for university students tends to be limited, often listing different techniques with relatively little commentary/analysis.</p> <p>This session enabled participants to review progress on this ALDinHE supported project, inviting discussion on issues/development regarding our three main aims to:</p> <ul> <li>Investigate current students’ note taking practices/preferences and develop transferable models to inform guidance and further research.</li> <li>Pilot structured interventions, introducing different methods.</li> <li>Produce/disseminate tools/approaches for longer-term investigation and application/adaptation by colleagues elsewhere.</li> </ul>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/962TALON: hybrid education2022-10-13T10:38:43-07:00Sandra AbegglenClément BretFabian NeuhausKrisha ShahKylie Wilson<p>TALON – the Teaching and Learning Online Network – is a University of Calgary project made possible by the Richard Parker Initiative (RPI).</p> <p>TALON is a hub for critical discussion of new and emerging education approaches and tools. Born in the early stages of the pandemic, shortly following the shutdown of in-person classes across the globe, we seek to document the ongoing changes within higher education and share thoughts, ideas, and experiences about online, blended and hybrid education. TALON's initiatives include A-Z resources, monthly newsletters, interviews with academic professionals and students, in-person activations and various publications. Combined, the projects serve as an interactive lexicon for remote teaching and learning. We keep the academic community informed about current developments in the virtual classroom and connected through discussion.</p> <p>Questions such as: What are the opportunities and challenges with hybrid education? What equipment is needed for effective blended learning? How can face-to-face, online, and other 'out of class' activities be integrated to foster student success? What assessment methods work well in a hybrid classroom? Is hybrid learning the future of education? – are addressed and discussed.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/961Supporting student writing and other modes of learning and assessment: a staff guide2022-10-13T10:21:11-07:00Sandra AbegglenTom BurnsSandra Sinfield<p>Academic writing in Higher Education (HE) is contested practice freighted with meaning, never more so than for widening participation students, still placed as ‘outsiders’ and often left feeling unwelcome and ‘un-voiced’. Ironically, as Molinari (2022) argues, universities were originally more diverse in form and content, not heavily ‘literate’ but oral, discursive and creative. As HE has become ostensibly more ‘open’ the system has become more normative, more formally rule-bound, more ‘written’ – and hence more exclusive. A recent example in the UK is the Office for Students’ attack on inclusive assessment, pushing instead for more emphasis on spelling, punctuation and grammar.</p> <p> </p> <p>Alongside this tension, many in the Learning Development (LD) community feel that discipline academics do not see the ‘teaching’ of academic writing as part of their pedagogic and assessment repertoire, preferring to send students to LD ‘to be fixed’. However, academics and LDs engaged in discussion and free writing (Elbow 1998, 1999) on this topic at a LondonMet L&T Conference presented views that were more nuanced and sympathetic. There was a deep appreciation of the ‘real’ work that academic writing does with and for students; but also a sense that they did not know <em>how </em>to build writing into their practice(s). And so was born this staff Guide: a playful, creative and yet intensely practical guide for academic staff who want to empower their students to write – often, playfully, experimentally – on their way to ‘becoming’, and becoming academic. Presenting the Guide in the resource showcase allowed us to highlight the continuing centrality of writing. Lecturers and university staff can use it to engage students in ‘writing to learn’ rather than ‘learning to write’.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/960Peer reviewing as community building2022-10-13T09:48:07-07:00Alicja Syska<p>Peer reviewing is unquestionably the cornerstone of scholarly activity. It is universally seen as one of the very few ways we have to ensure that what gets published has been subjected to rigorous scrutiny by peers. Entering into this dialogue with other experts in the field is of tremendous benefit to authors, even if it hurts sometimes. But it is also so much more than that: peer reviewing helps us develop our own research and thinking capabilities, improve our criticality, and hone the skill of providing constructive feedback.</p> <p>Peer reviewing is an act of service that makes us a better, stronger, and more resilient academic community. Like all acts of service, it relies on the good that is in us: being generous with time and personal resources, being committed to helping others, having a sense of reciprocal responsibility, feeling a constant desire to learn, and being open to dialogic exchange with authors and editors. I believe it is this dialogic exchange that brings us together as a community. As Co-Lead Editor of the <em>Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education</em> (<em>JLDHE</em>), the questions I was interested in exploring included:</p> <ol> <li>How do we ensure that every voice feels valued in peer review?</li> <li>How do we encourage sharing diverse perspectives to achieve better publishing outcomes?</li> <li>How do we attract peers to reviewing and use their goodwill to build a strong, proud, and sustainable scholarly community in learning development?</li> </ol>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/959Students’ perceptions of blended and remote learning and its impact upon sense of belonging2022-10-13T09:45:19-07:00Alicja SyskaChristie Pritchard<p>Blended learning has been widely recognised for its ‘transformative potential’ (Garrison and Kanuka, 2004) in higher education, especially when it comes to its versatility and increased opportunities for distributed learners. Nonetheless, the technological challenges it poses, alongside issues linked with policy, resources and support structures, have led to considerable resistance to the concept of blended practice. Despite this mixed reputation (Antunes, Armellini and Howe, 2021; Lomer and Palmer, 2021), few studies have attempted to explore students’ perceptions of blended delivery, with most research focussing on staff experience (Torrisi-Steele and Drew, 2013).</p> <p>The session reports on a small-scale evaluative study on student perceptions of blended learning that we conducted in the academic year 2020/21. A critical realist framework that considers both agency and structure has been applied to situate these perceptions while our mixed methods approach offers a multi-layered insight into the captured diversity of experience. The aim of the conference session was to discuss with the participants the implications of the findings for future practice and, more specifically, consider the role of Learning Development in enhancing post-pandemic student experience.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/958Engaging students online: an analysis of students’ motivations for seeking individual learning development support2022-10-13T09:38:50-07:00Arina Cirstea<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This presentation outlines the key findings of a small-scale research project aimed to explore the motivations for student engagement in self-selecting learning development (LD) online tutorials. The study used a mixed methods approach, including an online survey (n=43) and online interview (n=5). The recruitment invitation was emailed to all users booking a tutorial (n=390) within the project timeframe (October 2020-April 2021). </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Findings show that the main driver for engagement reported was participants’ limited confidence in their own academic writing abilities, which was consistently linked to attainment. Engagement was further motivated through a range of perceived impacts, including improved confidence and awareness of academic conventions. Participants reported a generally positive attitude towards online delivery, with key benefits including removing access barriers for students with complex commitments, travel and health issues. Conversely, the main downside of online tutorials was seen as diminished interpersonal contact. Qualitative data from both survey and interviews were further investigated using a Discourse analysis framework. One key finding was that the path to LD engagement is often mediated by academic authority figures, who may exert a significant impact on learner self-views. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The presentation was designed to initiate discussion on the implications of these findings for learning developers. One area of reflection I planned to submit for the participants’ consideration is how lessons learned from the enforced pivoting to online delivery can underpin the developmental dimension of LD, with the ultimate goal of promoting learner confidence and growth.</span></p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/957Bridges and barriers to developing visual literacy2022-10-13T09:38:14-07:00Jacqui Ann Bartram<p><strong>Presentation abstract</strong></p> <p>As learning developers, we are generally confident supporting academics and students with developing criticality and academic writing skills. However, communication today is multimodal and increasingly visual so our support is expanding to include developing visual literacy, i.e. approaching visual sources critically and using visuals to communicate effectively.</p> <p> </p> <p>Both the UK Quality Code for Higher Education (QAA, 2014) and many individual subject benchmark statements require students to be able to communicate ‘in a range of formats’ and to ‘non-specialist audiences’ —and yet not all students seem to have the opportunities learn how to do so effectively, despite these national and disciplinary requirements. This presentation reported on the findings from research undertaken as part of an EdD that explored the extent of visual literacy development across an institution and what further enablers and obstacles exist that influence a student’s ability to develop the skills needed to effectively communicate in a visually rich landscape (see Bartram, 2021). </p> <p> </p> <p>The research began with an institution-wide audit of 1,725 module specifications that categorised each module as explicitly, implicitly, potentially or not apparently developing visual literacy. This audit indicated that choice of degree is the first major bridge or barrier to developing visual literacy a student may face. Only three subjects had the opportunity to develop both critical and creative visual literacy skills in a good proportion (>25%) of their modules (Film, Media & Digital Design, Engineering & Geography, Earth & Environmental Science); two more had a similar number of opportunities to develop only critical skills (History and American Studies) and likewise with creative skills (Biology & Environmental Science and English & Creative Writing – but the majority had only modest or low numbers of modules with opportunities to develop any visual literacy skills. Interviews with academic staff teaching on modules representing all the above categories then considered why visual literacy is or is not developed. Barriers were identified such as resistance to change, lack of staff experience/confidence in teaching and assessing visual communication, and student expectations of assessments. The research found many bridges, such as the increase in public communication assignments to improve employability and the need for more inclusive assessments. It concluded that most barriers could be minimised by providing a range of sample assessment rubrics which emphasise assessment of visual elements. The findings have implications for learning developers who may need to support both students and academics who are not confident developing a new set of academic skills that take them out of their logocentric comfort zone. </p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/956Reading in the digital age2022-10-13T08:54:43-07:00Sarah RobinElizabeth CaldwellHelen Hargreaves<p>In 2019, Learning Developers at Lancaster University were awarded funding by ALDinHE to conduct a small project into how students read (Hargreaves et al., 2022a). We explored students’ perspectives and practices around reading academic texts in digital format. We analysed how students manage their digital reading, how they interact and engage with texts on-screen, and what influences their choices related to text format. One output of this project is an <a href="https://xerte.lancaster.ac.uk/play.php?template_id=2214#page1">interactive online resource</a> (see Hargreaves et al., 2022b) based upon insights gained from our students and we would like to present parts of this resource to the ALDinHE community.</p>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/955Performing communi-tea 2022-10-13T05:35:43-07:00Carina Buckley<p>The morning tea break performs several useful and evidence-based functions, in providing a space for networking and exchanging information, for building relationships, and for reducing stress. However, in a higher education context predicated on outputs and performance, the time spent in talking to colleagues over a cuppa is often considered a wasteful indulgence, and even harder to organise meaningfully with our post-Covid hybrid patterns of working. In an audit culture, how can the qualitative value of social relations be recognised, cultivated and strengthened, so that we might all benefit from the productivity that inevitably follows?</p> <p><strong>Questions:</strong></p> <ol> <li>How do we make space in our week to get to know each other as people?</li> <li>What are the best methods for developing and maintaining a collaborative <br />workplace community for hybrid workers?</li> <li>Is coffee ever an acceptable substitute for tea?</li> </ol>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/954Wellbeing in the workplace: exploring the VUCA approach 2022-10-13T02:55:56-07:00Debbie HolleyKate CoulsonCarina BuckleyErika Corradini<p>This workshop was aimed at aspiring leaders/leaders/those interested in models of wellbeing and resilience. VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity, a leadership model based on the theories of Bennis and Nanus from the late 1980s (<a href="https://www.vuca-world.org/">https://www.vuca-world.org/</a>). Leaders are often required to navigate uncertainties, paradoxes, conflicts, pressures and ambiguities. The VUCA model calls for new approaches to management centred on a personal approach and is extensively used in intercultural business masterclasses (University of Cambridge; MIT; Jagannath International Management School Kalkaji, India).</p> <p> </p> <p>The model inspires and encourages leaders to move from the idea of the leader who ‘knows all’ towards a vision of developmental leadership. This approach clarifies the leader’s ability to develop others’ capacity to handle problems and make difficult decisions, based on the idea that every individual can contribute their skills. In strategic terms, leading in a VUCA world requires Vision, Understanding, Clarity and Adaptability/Agility. Learning development is starting to embrace this model of leadership, with a new ALDinHE Leadership CoP offering a platform for sharing both theory and practice. The overarching aim of this approach is that of conveying positive energy into the development of meaningful approaches.</p> <p> </p> <p>The VUCA model relies on six key skills, all of which connect to the values of learning development:</p> <p> </p> <ol> <li>Developing a shared purpose.</li> <li>Learning agility.</li> <li>Self-awareness.</li> <li>Leading through collaboration and influence.</li> <li>Confidence in leading through uncertainty.</li> <li>Growth mind-set.</li> </ol> <p> </p> <p>This was a creative discussion-based workshop and we aim to co-create a JLDHE article with interested participants. We have interested participants from the ‘International Women’s’ day workshop we ran, and we wanted to further broaden out this scholarship opportunity to the learning development community. The ALDinHE Leadership CoP are considering how best to feed into notions of a leadership toolkit to support the community. </p> <p>Attendees of the VUCA workshop were asked to read the following two articles prior to the session:</p> <p> </p> <ul> <li>‘<a href="https://www.hultef.com/en/insights/research-thought-leadership/learning-to-lead-in-the-21st-century/">Lessons leaders can learn from those living through change</a>’ (HULT Education).</li> <li>‘<a href="https://www.hult.edu/blog/leading-in-a-vuca-world/">Leading in a VUCA World: five essential skills to learn in a VUCA world</a>’ (Culpin, 2018).</li> </ul>2022-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/952Using an online escape room as a formative assessment tool during a lecture on HIV: a case study. 2022-11-03T12:11:23-07:00Stefano LicchelliLaura Barnett<p>Escape rooms are becoming prevalent in their use as a form of playful learning and gamification in higher education, often used for a multitude of purposes to enhance students’ higher education learning experiences. Whilst studies have reported their valuable uses in a range of contexts, they have often focussed on undergraduates and fewer have explored their use in formative assessment practices. This case study seeks to address this gap by exploring the perceptions of postgraduate students in completing an online escape room activity as a form of formative assessment during an MSc lecture. Postgraduate students from the School of Psychology at the University of Surrey were invited to complete an online escape room as a form of formative assessment and took part in a follow-up qualitative survey to explore their perceptions of the activity not traditionally used in their course. The results from the case study showed that (1) the escape room was viewed positively by students as a novel and creative formative assessment practice, (2) the role of peers was important in the design of the assessment approach, and (3) students welcomed challenge and mastery of the learning outcomes and activity. This case study demonstrates initial positive findings about the use of escape rooms for formative assessment and advocates for further research to be conducted in this area. We also encourage HE teachers to think about how such practices could enhance students’ learning experiences in their own teaching contexts. </p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/948'Not as a temporary fluke but as standard’: realising the affordances of hybrid and online teaching for inclusive and sustainable education2022-10-06T08:53:43-07:00Martin ComptonAlex StandenBen Watson<p>84.5% of disabled students (Disabled Students UK, 2022) reported that the continuation of online or distance learning and teaching options post-pandemic would be beneficial. While concerns about quality of experience, isolation, wellbeing, access to technology and poor pedagogy in online and hybrid interactions are legitimate and must form part of decision-making, so too must considerations about the affordances of these ways of working and teaching. Framed around inclusive practice, and flexibility and sustainability drivers to enhance belonging, community and collaboration, we argue there are imperatives for us to learn the hard lessons of the pandemic and to listen to the voices of those who benefitted from changes in how and where teaching and assessment happened, especially in terms of so called ‘hybrid’ teaching. Our argument is framed by reflections on our own institution’s approach to hybrid teaching and working, the literature on experiences of remote learning during the pandemic, and – most centrally – the experiences and perspectives of students with disabilities.</p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/947An in-depth and fascinating insight to decolonising the HE curriculum. Book review: Tran, D. (2021) Decolonizing university teaching and learning: an entry model for grappling with complexities (London: Bloomsbury Academic).2022-09-27T08:26:37-07:00Donna Gundry2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/945Supporting the decolonization of university learning and teaching: practicalities, practices, and possibilities. Book review: Tran, D. (2021) Decolonizing university teaching and learning: an entry model for grappling with its complexities. London: Bloomsbury Academic.2022-09-22T11:35:13-07:00Jo Collins2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/944Encouraging critique: a stimulating and provocative examination of dominant discourses in the higher education sector. Book review: Kinchin, I. M., and Gravett, K. (2022) Dominant discourses in higher education: critical perspectives, cartographies and practice. London: Bloomsbury Academic.2022-09-19T12:02:25-07:00Stacey Mottershaw2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/941Critical reflections on the racialised hierarchies of an ethnically diverse staff-student scholarship project team2022-10-30T01:09:46-07:00Shannon MartinJim Lusted<p>This case study article reports on the reflections of the authors who were part of a staff-student collaborative scholarship project investigating the learning experiences of Black distance-learning students. Although there is a growing body of research on the nature, experiences, power dynamics and benefits of staff-student collaborations in higher education contexts, there is much less discussion about how wider racialised hierarchies can influence such collaborations. The project discussed in this article consisted of an ethnically diverse team – including the authors of this piece who are a white male academic staff member and a female PhD student from a Black ethnic background. This case study offers a critically reflective account of the racialised hierarchy inherently present within our relationship. We briefly consider the ways in which the collaborative project was framed by potentially exploitative racialised hierarchies including the privileging of white staff members, before considering how we tried to mitigate these hierarchies by finding ways to involve and empower the ethnic minority student members of the team. These reflections might help those who are embarking upon ethnically diverse staff-student collaborations in higher education to ensure that ethnic minority students feel empowered and to help facilitate their role in promoting institutional change and disrupting exclusionary practice.</p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/938Designing for student wellbeing: challenging assumptions about where our students learn 2022-09-17T02:03:06-07:00Debbie HolleyDavid Biggins<p>Student wellbeing has been foregrounded during the recent Covid-19 pandemic but this is broad brush and contested with different models being followed across the sector. One aspect of concern is the extent to which access to the technology institutions require students to use contributes to additional stress. A student survey (n=30) in one UK HEI revealed the ‘hidden spaces’ where students learn, and the findings indicate that the formal institutional Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), with its sophisticated learning analytics, did not fully capture the student experience. This work was followed up with a digital wellbeing survey (n=172) and, by drawing together the two datasets, we report on a more nuanced student experience. Initial findings indicate a schism between formal and informal spaces where students learn, especially within our institutional reporting of students working online. Examples include students using their own preferred tools such as WhatsApp, Trello, and Slack to communicate outside the formal channels; these behaviours thereby devalue the validity of the VLE datasets that student-facing staff are encouraged to use for decision-making. This paper offers insights into accessing and interpreting data in ways that are more useful for academics, learning developers, and learning designers, and suggests ways in which we can effectively frame student support by putting the ‘real’ student experience at the centre of our practice.</p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/934Effects of language gap interference for English as a second language students in solving physics problems2023-02-08T10:26:09-08:00Mohammad ZeidanJessica AllredRuikun Zhao<p>Physics is an essential subject in most fields of Science and Engineering which cannot be mastered simply by watching lectures or solving problems at the end of each chapter: students must fully engage in solving these problems. This often requires problem visualisation, which presents quite a challenge for some, especially for students who are studying Physics in a second language because their understanding of the question can be influenced by the gaps in their understanding of the language used. The focus of this study is to investigate the role the language used in the wording of Physics problems plays in students’ ability to understand the question and accurately visualise the scenario that would be needed to extract the required information. 220 undergraduate students and 80 preparatory students volunteered to participate in this study. Students were asked to read two sets of Physics problems and to draw the scenario or image described in the text. The first set used the more advanced English that is commonly found in Physics textbooks and which includes passive voice and homonyms, while the other uses active voice and more simplified English. The results of the study highlight the fact that ESL students’ struggle with certain types of advanced English used in Physics such as the passive voice, showing that they are more capable of translating text into images when active voice is used.</p>2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/936Editorial2022-09-07T02:41:10-07:00Alicja Syska2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/935Ready player one: using Vevox to elicit student participation in lectures2023-02-24T06:18:18-08:00Joe Greenwood<p>With the pivot back to on-campus teaching, many students find themselves in an unfamiliar learning environment: the lecture theatre. This can result in low rates of participation in lectures, especially with a diverse student demographic, including English as an Additional Language students. This can result in exclusion from learning for these students, as well as many students feeling nervous about participating in a lecture format. This case study looked at using the education technology Vevox to elicit student participation in a lecture format. Vevox was used to embed multiple tasks into a series of lectures with a cohort of third-year Engineering students. Vevox was found to be effective at eliciting high levels of participation, although some tasks had higher participation rates than others. An evaluation survey was also conducted with students where they responded positively to the implementation of Vevox in the lectures. Finally, the case study discusses potential applications and limitations of Vevox, with a recommendation that similar research could be carried out across multiple courses and cohorts to improve efficacy.</p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/931Readiness assessments, portfolio and peer support – a panacea for achieving the EDI agenda and student engagement? A reflection and preview2022-11-25T08:05:59-08:00Ogechi Ohadomere<p>Having taught and supported international students in higher education (HE) for several years, I continually observe the uniqueness and dynamism of every new cohort. My role spans being an Induction tutor to offering pastoral support as an Academic and Personal Tutor (APT) Lead, a Module leader, an Academic Conduct Officer, and a Course director. I know you will say – isn’t that so much to do? Well, it is. However, these roles have offered me the opportunity to appreciate the diversity that exists within higher education in the UK and reiterates the need for equality and inclusion within my teaching practice. The Advance HE’s (2020) Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda advocates support for all students irrespective of who they are and where they come from, a call to minimise the widening attainment gap which was actually negatively impacted during the Covid-19 pandemic (Goudeau et al., 2021).</p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/933Dyslexia in higher education: enhancing student belonging and overcoming barriers to achievement through communities of practice2022-09-22T15:11:45-07:00Karen Welton<p>Feeling that they belong is a crucial part of a student's learning journey which impacts enjoyment, attainment and retention. Dyslexic students can feel isolated within their diagnosis and do not openly discuss their inherent challenges and strengths, often due to previous educational and/or social misconceptions. In the United Kingdom, with a professional diagnosis, tailored support for this Specific Learning Difference (SpLD) may be sought through government funding known as Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA). However, many dyslexic students remain undiagnosed, or do not wish to disclose, and this, combined with a reduction in DSA funding in 2015, has negatively impacted the achievement and affinity of this cohort. Although as a result of this funding cut higher education institutions became legally responsible for making reasonable adjustments to their teaching practices, this broad-brush approach does not support dyslexic students in understanding the many intricacies associated with this SpLD, or how to navigate their learning in a higher education context. To bridge this gap, and help like-minded students share ideas to help others whilst also developing their own skills and confidence, I initiated a community of practice (CoP). After a year of fortnightly meetings, a group of empowered individuals, who had a much deeper understanding of what being dyslexic meant, emerged with newfound confidence, having connected and collaborated with neurologically similar people. </p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/932Developing an equity lens: the experience of creating a professional framework for coaches and mentors 2022-08-31T09:36:27-07:00Enya-Marie ClayHelen WilliamsJo BlissettJanet LindleyLynne O'Neil<p>The following is a collective practitioner reflection on creating a coaching and mentoring professional framework for a pilot student support service that focuses on delivering targets in the institutional Access and Participation Strategy. Both coaching and mentoring are increasingly recognised as support mechanisms which can bring about change for social justice (Shoukry and Cox, 2018). As Learning Development practitioners, we are working within a specialist coaching and mentoring service which seeks to remove student inequalities. Therefore, working to create a professional framework which addresses this directly has been valuable. We share our journey in the hope that other Learning Development practitioners will consider an equity lens to critically reflect on their work and join a conversation to develop anti-oppressive practice in student support further.</p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/930Exploring the factors influencing young adult carer students’ engagement with targeted support in Higher Education.2023-01-17T01:43:15-08:00Emma Richards<p>Young adult carers (YACs) face significant barriers to both access and retention in higher education. Accurate data on the number of YACs is unavailable, due in part, to students staying ‘hidden’ because of perceived stigma and/or lack of recognition of the label ‘YAC’. This paper focusses on the premise that universities fail to reach many YACs and explores what factors impact engagement or lack thereof with targeted support. It seeks to understand what factors influence students’ interaction with targeted support and whether this aligns with universities’ approach to promoting services and their reliance on students having awareness and self-agency to seek them. Research was conducted at a metropolitan, medium-sized UK university using a mixed-methods, explanatory, sequential design. Interpretative, phenomenological analysis produced four dominant themes: identity, mental health, processes, and student experience and support. The findings indicate that self-identity plays a pivotal role in how the YAC student and the university interact with each other in relation to support. The salient identity is likely to be ‘student’ unless specific support is required, therefore for universities to identify YAC students, processes will need to be adapted to find the student rather than the student being expected to seek out support. To achieve this, a holistic, horizontal support model across the student lifecycle is recommended. Universities should aim to champion YACs to promote acceptance and understanding, use student-friendly language when promoting services to avoid alienation, and offer flexible administrative processes to ensure an improved experience for YACs at university.</p>2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/929Fostering a growth mindset in higher education for inclusive learning for all2022-09-20T01:30:50-07:00Frantzeska Kolyda<p>This article aims to encourage educators and universities to explore interventions and practices that cultivate a growth mindset to reduce inequality in the academic success of students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnic or other minorities, especially in STEM. Universities invest significantly in closing the achievement gap, particularly for such students. Disadvantaged students who have excelled academically are often labelled ‘gifted’. However, this label may emphasise the importance of students’ innate abilities over cognitive ones. Furthermore, it may foster fear of failure and lead to avoidance of challenges and lack of efforts, concealing the lack of understanding to retain the ‘gifted’ image, and create significant barriers to learning. As student diversity increases, pedagogical approaches must evolve accordingly. This article investigates ways to inspire students to remain motivated about their STEM subject and discusses ways to cultivate a growth mindset, factors influencing students’ mindsets, recent criticisms of the growth mindset approach, and the role of learning development in fostering a growth mindset. When faculty and students embrace the idea that intellectual abilities can grow through diligence, determination, and correct strategies, they can transform how educators approach learning and help shift the focus away from content delivery to active and transformative learning.</p> <p><strong> </strong></p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/928‘Conscious' learning development: towards a pedagogy of race-consciousness 2022-12-12T08:32:22-08:00Ryan Arthur<p>This article advocates a pedagogy of race-consciousnesses (PRC) to enhance the critical thinking abilities of all undergraduate students in higher education institutes (HEIs). It is envisioned that the cultivation of race-consciousness will be a means to not only value students’ home culture but also to draw from this culture to develop their innate critical thinking abilities. Such an approach encourages students to critically engage with ‘perspectives that are different from their own, whether those perspectives are expressed by a teacher or by a peer’ (Arday and Mirza, 2018; Wallace and Rothschild-Ewald, 2000, p.19). PRC is situated in the ‘middle space between students’ own experiences and the expectations of the discourse communities in which they will have to achieve voice’ (Wallace and Rothschild-Ewald, 2000, p.3). It is proposed that PRC will be first developed in the field of learning development (LD) because of the unique position and mandate of learning developers (Hartley, Hisldon and Keenan, 2010). This article hopes to spark conversations about race that have been largely absent from LD theory and practice.</p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/927On Academia, Critical Pedagogy and ‘Coming Out’ as a Third Space Practitioner2022-10-13T04:59:49-07:00Eileen Pollard<p>This opinion piece situates the practice of an experimental module I taught as an academic – Chester Retold: Unspoken Stories, Put into Words – within some theories of ‘community learning’.<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> Community learning is understood here to articulate and enact a combination of concepts taken from critical pedagogy (Freire, 2018; hooks, 1994), experiential learning (Kolb, 2015; Gibbs, 1988) and learning development (Webster, 2017). It is also informed, like all teaching, by the author’s own personal life and learning experiences within and without ‘communities’. The practice of Chester Retold made a contribution to all these theoretical fields, but in particular perhaps a <em>conscious</em> intervention into critical pedagogy and an <em>unconscious</em> one into the third space (Whitchurch, 2013; Lisewski, 2021), beginning with learning development.</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> As its creator and module leader, I ran Chester Retold twice at the University of Chester (2018-2019).</p> <p> </p> <p> </p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/926‘To teach in varied communities not only our paradigms must shift but also the way we think, write, speak’ (hooks, 1994): creating resources to address the BAME awarding gap2022-10-09T11:32:16-07:00Eileen PollardOrlagh McCabe<p>In this brief communication, the authors reflect on the development of a suite of online resources to address the Black, Asian and Minority Ethic (BAME) awarding gap in Higher Education. They consider the sector, allyship and relational pedagogy to explain the approach of these publicly accessible staff-facing resources.</p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/925Embedding employability into the curriculum: five recommendations to improve widening participation students’ graduate employability2022-10-17T09:29:02-07:00Tom Lowe<p>Ensuring students succeed during and beyond their degree, no matter their background, ethnicity, disability or demographic has been outlined in the mission of the English higher education regulator, the Office for Students (Office for Students, 2018). Additionally, there are endless strategies, agendas, research projects and discussions around improving Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) within universities, yet there is less literature relating to EDI activity relating to graduate employability. This paper argues that the areas where greater attention is required within EDI is the work of academics and careers support services, to enhance graduate outcomes, through the development of core employment and recruitment skills (Underwood, 2022), through embedding professional literacies into the curriculum. From making parallels with strategies to support academic literacies, this paper argues that certain employability development elements should be embedded into the core assessed curriculum of degrees, to support all students in developing their professional literacies.</p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/924Supporting inclusive learning resource design with Designing for Diverse Learners 2022-08-23T01:20:27-07:00Lee FallinEllie DavisonGemma SpencerThomas Tomlinson<p>This brief communication introduces the regulatory and ethical requirements of accessible learning design, and the Designing for Diverse Learners project. This communication is a call to action, asking for educators to share, support and help develop the Designing for Diverse Learners guidance.</p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/923Choice matters: an investigation of students’ experiences selecting dissertation projects2022-09-02T12:02:12-07:00Isabelle Winder<p>The final year dissertation is an important part of an undergraduate degree which delivers a wide range of subject-specific and transferable skills. It plays a significant part in students’ learning development and overall experience of university. Finding the right project is emotionally important to students and may underpin their subsequent motivation and engagement. Little is known, however, about how students make this important choice. This study aimed to learn more about students’ experiences of choosing a dissertation, how their choice processes varied and whether their choices worked out well for them. It surveyed 150 undergraduates in natural sciences at a UK university, asking a mix of qualitative and quantitative questions. Findings indicate that students value a range of factors when choosing their dissertation, most prominently interest in the subject and approach but also their existing familiarity with the area, the perceived benefits and demands of the work and staff support. Multivariate analysis suggests a variety of choice processes are in operation, with some students valuing content factors and others trading these off against relational ones. With hindsight, 91 respondents (60.7%) felt their choice process had worked well and 87 (58%) would choose the same way again. A subset, however, had felt unprepared to choose, and some of these were particularly unhappy with the outcome. The implication for learning development is that helping students learn to make conscious and informed choices and making dissertation modules student-centric is likely to significantly improve engagement and learning, especially for the less confident.</p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/922University students’ digital world of work readiness in relation to their employability competency2022-10-30T02:15:01-07:00Ingrid PotgieterMelinde CoetzeeNadia Ferreira<p>This research empirically examined the extent to which university students’ perceptions about their readiness for the digital-era work world predict their sense of employability competency. Data were collected from 486 undergraduate students of a comprehensive South African distance learning higher education institution. Regression analysis and structural equation modelling revealed that students’ perceptions of their world of work readiness (i.e. job/occupation certitude and job/occupation fitness) significantly predict their sense of employability competency. The study highlights the importance of building confidence or certainty within students during their academic career about the knowledge, skills and occupations they want to pursue in the digital-era work sphere to positively influence their sense of employability competency. Should they feel positive about their work world readiness, they are more likely to exhibit the employability competency of business ingenuity and social digital agility which are deemed essential for the new normal work context.</p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/886Inclusive learning development practices: the consequences of flexibility and choice in the hybrid era2022-11-19T08:53:20-08:00Ralitsa B KantchevaEd Bickle<p>The Covid-19 pandemic, and the move to online teaching and learning, has provided opportunities for the learning development (LD) community to find new and innovative pedagogical approaches to providing a more inclusive learning environment. Many of these opportunities are now being incorporated into a new hybrid era of teaching, which seeks to build the ‘best of both worlds’. To embrace this new era of flexibility, hybrid learning and teaching strategies need to be developed rather than merely being a reaction to a global health emergency. Based on the experiences of two learning developers at different UK institutions, this paper reflects on the benefits and disadvantages of a hybrid mode of delivery of one-to-one tutorials, one of the cornerstones of LD provision. Within this paper we define hybrid teaching as a combination of online and physical environments (Gamage et al., 2022).</p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/920Let's get visible: evidence-based interventions aimed at supporting, empowering and celebrating student-parents in higher education.2023-01-04T09:35:04-08:00Andrea Todd<p>This paper analyses the findings of a two-stage small-scale research project investigating the needs of undergraduate students with dependent children (‘student-parents’) studying in a post-1992 university. The findings of Stage 1 of the study, using data from semi-structured interviews with student-parents, show that student-parents need two things from their institution: a sense of belonging and flexibility. In Stage 2, a questionnaire survey was used to explore the impact of two interventions piloted during the 2021-22 academic year to address the Stage 1 findings. The paper then presents the next steps in this project: co-creation, with students, of systems designed not only to make visible our student-parent community but also to support, empower and celebrate their identities as student-parents.</p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/919A book review of Khan, K., Gurbutt, D. and Cragg, R. (2022) Changes in the higher education sector: contemporary drivers and the pursuit of excellence. London: Anthem Press.2022-08-01T01:37:12-07:00Retha Schwanke2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/916A space for partnership and empowerment: how the Writing Café negotiates inclusion in Higher Education 2022-10-04T03:54:14-07:00Cara BaerNina Kearney<p>Higher education (HE) has traditionally been shaped for a specific type of student, but as widening participation initiatives are increasing opportunities for under-represented groups to attend (e.g., mature, disabled, those from a low socio-economic background, and care leavers), it is imperative to illuminate examples of best practice that are accessible and equitable once students are at university. This paper discusses the Writing Café, an interdisciplinary, peer facilitated space for students to explore writing techniques and strategies with trained student writing mentors. This will illustrate how the Writing Café is promoting inclusion for students who have been traditionally excluded from HE. The Writing Café encourages student partnership through its interdisciplinary nature, which empowers students to be experts in their work. This is challenging deficit and hierarchical approaches in academia, repositioning who has the power and knowledge in HE. The Writing Café provides a space out of formal teaching that has more support than independent learning, thus being considered a third space for learning (Hilsdon, 2014). The offer of hybrid Writing Café spaces has boosted inclusivity and accessibility through improving comfort and ease of access. Under-represented students are likely to face more barriers in HE, so supportive and accessible provision can combat many such barriers. The Writing Café’s success is highlighted by engagement, with the development of hybrid delivery increasing participation by 45%, with engagement for under-represented students being 10% more than the university demographic of such students. The Writing Café is illustrating how inclusion in academic practices is possible. </p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/915Equality, diversity and inclusion: learning from laying our cards on the table2022-10-27T12:41:20-07:00Matthew SillenceAmanda ClarkClaire DickersonHanh DoanJoy Jarvis<p>This article presents preliminary findings from a study designed to evaluate, develop and disseminate a cards resource developed to support dialogue and learning about EDI. Experience of creating cards to explore disciplinary thinking at the Universities of Hertfordshire (UH) and East Anglia (UEA) (Jarvis and Clark, 2020) was instrumental in the design. The resource is based on the concept of using ‘<em>serious play’</em>, a ‘special kind of intense learning experience’ (Rieber et al., 1998, p.30, 29, original emphasis) to support reflective, inclusive and transformational learning (Peabody and Noyes, 2017).</p> <p>Staff and students at UH and UEA who facilitate and attend sessions at which the cards are used are contributing to the research. Before sessions, facilitators are briefed about the guidance, the cards, and possible exercises for using them. At the end of sessions, facilitators and participants are invited to take part in a reflection activity. Facilitators are asked about the context, the activity, observations of participant response to the cards, their learning, the facilitator’s learning, and plans for future EDI activities. Participants are questioned about the role of the cards in their learning and thinking, what was learnt, and how this will impact their interaction with others.</p> <p>Preliminary findings indicate how participants are thinking about their working contexts, in particular how they initiate conversations around their personal lives, and share stories relating to equality, diversity and inclusivity, in order to make abstract terms more vivid. </p> <p>This study responds to a need to develop research-informed resources to use to encourage respectful, inclusive dialogue to address EDI topics with staff and students in higher education. Drawing on the preliminary findings shared here, new terms are being added to the current card set together with a blank card to allow users to generate their own cards; and a new resource comprising EDI stories is being considered.</p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/914Listening works: using the Listening Rooms methodology to explore diversity2022-10-08T11:40:28-07:00Helen ParkinEmma Heron<p>This case study presents how two innovative methods have been used at a UK university to explore the lived experiences of minoritised groups. The Listening Rooms Project collects data through friendship conversations between friends, and places key stakeholders with the audience and influence to affect change at the heart of the data analysis process. Using these methods creates safe spaces for minoritised groups to share their lived experiences in a meaningful and empowering way. Here, we describe how the project has learned from the experiences of students of colour, LQBTQ+ staff and students, disadvantaged males, and female employees to create a better place to study and to work. The study found distinct differences in the themes covered between cohorts despite fairly consistent conversation ‘prompts’, but also some common themes such as the need for better role models for minoritised groups and better training and guidance in challenging negative behaviours. The study concludes that listening, using these methods, provides a depth of understanding of the lived experiences of minoritised groups, resulting in real and impactful change. </p>2023-02-28T00:00:00-08:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/913Decolonising learning development through reflective and relational practice2022-07-28T03:36:18-07:00Julia Bohlmann<p>The Decolonising the Curriculum (DtC) movement questions the very values we take for granted as learning developers. If our role is to develop academic literacies and support students to succeed in the curriculum as it is, can we as learning developers be decolonisers? This opinion piece argues that we can and should. It outlines where we can integrate the DtC agenda into our work through reflective and relational practice. The piece stresses the importance of reflection about our role as practitioners within a colonial Higher Education system and of relating to our students as individuals by learning their names and breaking barriers to participation with rapport and community building activities.</p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/906A new bloom – adding ‘collaborate’ to Bloom’s taxonomy2022-06-01T02:49:43-07:00Richard Heller<p>There are a number of opportunities for collaboration, within and between universities, locally, internationally, with industry and with other education providers. University graduates are likely to be placed in a work environment where collaboration is required. Collaboration within higher education institutions has been shown to enhance student learning, and collaborative learning to improve student outcomes. A proposal has been made to add ‘collaborate’ to Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives, to emphasise the importance of collaboration and to encourage its inclusion in the educational process and assessment. Collaborate is sited between ‘apply’ and ‘analyse’ in the revised Bloom’s taxonomy hierarchy, and the new version named the New Bloom. This opinion piece expands on the concept and adds the specific objective of ‘work or share with others’ with keywords ‘share, cooperate, reciprocate, achieve consensus’. It also offers a non-hierarchical representation of the taxonomy, with collaborate as an important feature of each of the other components. Adding collaborate to Bloom’s taxonomy is recommended to emphasise the importance of collaboration and its contribution to each of the other components of the taxonomy.</p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/904A book review of Khan, K., Gurbutt, G. and Cragg, R. (2022) Changes in the higher education sector: contemporary drivers and the pursuit of excellence. London: Anthem Press. 2022-05-18T09:38:19-07:00Maggie Scott2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/903A book review of Davies, M. (2022) Study skills for international postgraduates. 2nd edn. London: Bloomsbury Academics.2022-05-17T01:43:28-07:00Ivan Newman 2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/901A book review of Davies, M. (2022), Study skills for international postgraduates, London: Bloomsbury Academics.2022-05-13T05:58:11-07:00Silvia Colaiacomo2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/900The Centre for Learning and Teaching Associates Scheme: building a learning community for collaboration and impact2023-01-16T13:04:01-08:00Susan Virginia SmithRuth PickfordGeorgi SinclairLaura Ettenfield<p>This paper presents the outcomes of a small research project that sought to explore the value of a Staff Associate scheme linked to the Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT) in a post-92 university. The Associates are a group of academic and professional service staff seconded from their Schools and services for one day a week, usually for a year, to work collaboratively with the core full time Centre for Learning and Teaching team on projects of interest which relate to learning development and align with the strategic aims of the university’s Education Plan. This paper reflects on the findings from narratives provided from autoethnographic Associate reflective diaries and survey responses that sought to explore the participants’ practice experiences, learning journeys, and perceptions of the value of their membership of the Associate scheme. The discussion is widened by the consideration of findings from the participants, which contributed to the iterative development and enhancement of the scheme. Findings showed a positive impact of the scheme on the Associate participants and their practice. They viewed the scheme as beneficial to their collaborative skills, the building of unusual synergies, and in the supporting of innovation and impact as cross-university learning developers. The paper concludes by drawing together themes from the research, lessons learnt, transferability of findings to other universities, and consideration of the requirements for a successful future scheme.</p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/888Improving student engagement using a video-enabled activity-based learning: an exploratory study to STEM preparatory education in UAE2022-07-25T13:59:21-07:00Mohammad ZeidanXinhua HuangLing XiaoRuikun Zhao<p>Student engagement is often labelled the “holy grail of learning” (Sinatra, Heddy and Lombardi, 2015: 1). Higher education educators have been implementing different pedagogical approaches to promote active learning with the aim of improving student engagement. This paper proposes an activity -based learning approach with the use of educational video to promote student engagement. We evaluate if such an approach could improve student learning and engagement with STEM subject from three perspectives: students’ motivation, engagement, and academic performance. The main findings are in supportive of the video-enabled activity-based learning approach to promote students’ engagement within class and for future study. ANOVA tests demonstrate the significant differences in the students’ performance with the use of scientific educational videos. In addition, this UAE based exploratory case study has been conducted in the context of middle eastern students’ learning behavior which adds an interesting cultural dimension. This study contributes to knowledge and STEM educator by providing them with insightful and practical guidance on how to effectively use scientific educational video to enhance STEM education in UAE. </p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/885Editorial2022-03-16T11:22:29-07:00Alicja Syska2022-03-16T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/883Assessing the benefits of online formative assessments on student performance 2022-10-18T02:52:49-07:00Daniel King<p>This paper investigates the impact of online formative assessments on students’ performance in an introductory accounting module. The online formative assessments were objective tests and a regression model was developed to test the relationship between formative assessment usage and exam performance. The statistical analysis shows a statistically significant correlation between formative assessment usage and examination performance while controlling for different variables. These findings lead to the conclusion that formative assessments are useful tools that can support students’ learning. Implications and recommendations for further research are covered.</p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/875From pixels to pedagogy: using video games for higher education in the humanities2022-05-13T05:27:05-07:00Jessica van HorssenZoe MoretonGaspard Pelurson<p>This paper explores how video games can enhance learning in the higher education Humanities classroom through play and critical discussions. Through the observation of two case studies, it aims to highlight important concepts and considerations and serve as a platform for future research and debate. The first case study utilised Sid Meier’s <em>Civilization IV: Colonization</em> (Firaxis Games, 2008) and involved first-year History students. They were encouraged to take part in critical assessment and discussion by pairing gameplay with lecture content featuring the same moments in history they experienced in the game. This led to the students being able to better challenge historical narratives through holistic reflexive engagement. The second case study used <em>GreedFall</em> (Spiders, 2019) to encourage students to question historical inaccuracies and utopian diversity. Through connecting gameplay to module outcomes, students unconsciously adopted a critical eye which indicates how the game can be used to debate race, Western imagination, and imperialism. We conclude that gaming in the classroom is an engaging way to deliver content and it enables students to develop critical and reflexive thinking within playful spaces. As such, this article focuses on the students studying the humanities and discusses the video game as a medium to identify and analyse ideologies, and gaming as a way of developing reflexive critical thinking and analytic skills.</p>2023-09-24T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/874Towards ‘employability 3.0’: from practice to praxis 2022-04-14T01:50:39-07:00Constantine ManolchevAllen AlexanderRuth Cherrington<p>In addition to higher learning, universities are expected to also ‘do’ employability and help students transition from education to employment. Accordingly, a wide range of approaches have emerged and we, as academics, dedicate substantial efforts to designing and implementing attractive employability offerings for our degree programmes. </p> <p>We spend considerably less time (and have considerably less time to spend) on reflecting whether these provisions are truly transformational. Brazilian philosopher and educator, Paulo Freire, argued that this transformation can only be achieved through praxis. As the combination of action and reflection into an act of radical agency, praxis is authentic being at both the individual and social level. Praxis is the self-determined creation of one’s own future, while accepting accountability to fellow human beings. </p> <p>In this opinion piece we contend that praxis should be placed at the heart of employability of the future – employability 3.0. We propose that employability 3.0 should incorporate but go beyond current best practices such as cross-curriculum ‘connectedness’ and the ‘embeddedness’ of community of practice learning. It should be a programme of active learning and reflection, which enables students to rewrite their futures by improving their wellbeing, employment prospects and place in society.</p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/872Writing Circles: developing learner self-efficacy and agency through peer review activities 2023-02-03T01:46:18-08:00David BusbyCathy Malone<p>This paper outlines evaluation of practitioner research into a writing development intervention used with a group of international students studying at Masters level in a UK university. The research was motivated by our understanding that academic writing provokes significant anxiety for students. Our methodology was informed by evidence in the literature pointing to the utility of group learning and giving and receiving peer feedback. We aimed to explore the extent to which structured writing analysis and facilitated group feedback activities (conducted through writing circles) influenced student perceptions of confidence in academic writing. Our thesis was that instruction in identifying and noticing elements of effective disciplinary writing combined with writing circles cycles of review and redrafting would lead to an improvement in measures of confidence in academic writing. We examined the impact on students through interviews in addition to pre- and post-intervention questionnaires which assessed self-confidence, anxiety and self-efficacy. This paper presents a clear, practical solution to the difficult problem of increasing students’ confidence in undertaking academic writing. Our results indicate a positive impact on overall confidence in academic writing, increased perception of agency and a decrease in anxiety. The findings align with a large body of research which indicate the positive impact on students on being given opportunity to give and receive feedback on their work. This case study demonstrates the value of writing circles as a practical activity that acts as a generative frame for student activity. It affirms value of interdisciplinary practice sharing.</p>2023-04-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/871Understanding student preferences for one to one writing appointments post-pandemic2022-05-03T07:53:39-07:00Bryony ParsonsHeather Johnston<p>The academic writing scheme at the university is a near-peer service, which provides students with the opportunity to book one to one appointments with an academic writing tutor. All academic writing tutors are currently studying for their PhD and offer support to students with planning assignments, being critical, structuring their writing, understanding tutor feedback and referencing. When launched in 2019, all appointments took place in-person in the university library. When Covid-19 hit in March 2020, the service moved online, with appointments taking place over Microsoft Teams. However, with this, we noticed a drop in appointment bookings. <br>Within this study, an online survey was conducted, and the 701 responses analysed to investigate students’ preferences in relation to the delivery of one to one writing appointments post-pandemic. The results indicated a preference for in-person appointments to be available, with 55.8% of the respondents choosing this. The main factor was the preference for communicating in-person as it allows for more questions and a natural conversation. <br>However, there is clearly still an appetite for appointments to be delivered online, with postgraduate students in particular expressing an interest in this format. Students indicated that the accessibility of appointments for students who are not on campus regularly as the biggest factor for choosing online as their preference. <br>It can be concluded that a hybrid model, where students can choose between the two appointment types is most appropriate, which along with increased targeted promotion to specific faculties and year groups, should increase the usage of the service. </p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/867Interrogating a collaborative instructional approach to academic literacy: the missing link in supporting students’ language learning2022-03-17T02:14:54-07:00Kum Khuan TangDerek WongGek Ling Lee<p>In Covid-19’s ‘new normal’ academics have been urged to tear down subject silos and approach teaching collaboratively with renewed interest and increased urgency. An example of this can be found in curriculum-integrated academic literacy instruction which is based on the collaboration between language and content instructors. Case studies frequently report barriers to engaging content instructors in supporting students’ language learning. However, the internal conflicts of language instructors are under-represented: little is known about their subjective experiences and emotions as they go about negotiating and accommodating a collaborative instructional approach. This paper undertakes a narrative inquiry into three language instructors’ stories of teaching discipline-specific academic literacy. In bringing to the fore their reflexive voices on authority, agency and feelings of student resistance, it explores themes around identity and collaboration and underlines a critical missing link that mediates faculty collaboration and student learning. Humanising faculty development and venturing into scholarly enquiry are then proposed as potential ways to empower language instructors to manage the emotional complexities in their collaborative engagements.</p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/863Spaces and places in online learning: perspectives from students and staff2022-07-06T15:15:49-07:00Richard Henry ReynoldsTimothy Sokolow<p>This paper is based on work carried out by the two authors during the first six months of 2021 – a period by which the practices of online learning and teaching had become familiarized and - to some extent - even standardized in our institution, as in most others.</p> <p>We are interested first and foremost in the online teaching space as a <em>social</em> space: as an environment designed to facilitate the interactions that adhibit learning and teaching. How suitable are the environments that we have created to achieving such outcomes? Is it reasonable - for example - to describe the environments in which we learn and teach online as ‘spaces’, using the same word (and in virtually the same sense) that we use to describe the familiar physical teaching spaces of bricks-and-mortar locations?</p> <p> </p> <p>Our primary research involved bringing learners, teachers and digital specialists together into online learning spaces, and then inviting all those present to represent their experiences of the virtual space, using simple analogue tools: coloured pens and paper. The results of these workshops form the basis for this paper.</p> <p>In our conclusion, we attempt to formulate some explanations for the emotionally-inflected nature of these representations of digital learning spaces. Using concepts and approaches from psycho-geography (Augé), social-actor theory (Emirbeyer and Mische) and pedagogic theory (Gourlay, Wenger-Trayner), we begin to outline what might need to happen to the online learning environment as a social space for its full potential and promise to be realised.</p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/856‘It can facilitate so much!’ Student writers’ practice of self-efficacy to develop their use of formulaic phrases 2022-05-03T07:55:22-07:00Mary DavisJohn Morley<p>This study is about student writers’ development of their own approaches to using formulaic phrases from a compendium (<em>Academic Phrasebank</em>). While the essential role of formulaic phrases in academic texts has been well-established in research, teaching about the effective use of these phrases is not widely available, and little attention has been paid to how students learn to employ formulaic phrases in their own writing. Therefore, this research aims to explore this gap in understanding how student writers develop individual approaches to using formulaic phrases through the lens of self-efficacy.</p> <p>Twelve self-selected student writer participants at undergraduate, Master’s and PhD levels were interviewed and asked about how they used formulaic phrases from the resource. Three key findings emerged from the data: firstly, that the resource may support inclusion as an empowering tool to enable student writers to participate confidently in academia; secondly, that students could employ the resource flexibly at different stages of the writing process depending on their individual approach to text construction; thirdly, that it could offer particular support with writing to students who have a specific learning difficulty (SpLD).</p> <p>This paper contributes to understanding these individual student learning processes in the use of formulaic phrases for writing through self-efficacy. The implication for learning development is that making more guidance about formulaic phrases widely available and accessible would be beneficial to students’ writing processes.</p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/855The escape room: using a simple text-based game to promote business undergraduates’ digital self-reliance2022-01-19T23:33:36-08:00Matt OffordSarah HoneychurchNick QuinnMatt BarrHelen Mullen<p>This case study aims to highlight the ease of use and effectiveness of an escape room game by describing how it was implemented in an undergraduate business course. The case study demonstrates the simplicity of a straightforward text-based game and how this was used in a large course of online students. Our case study aims to present our experience of implementing the escape room game from a practical perspective. We add to our narrative some descriptive statistics from a student survey conducted after the game. The case study builds on existing work in this field by extending its use beyond small face-to-face sessions to a technique suitable for far larger classes in an online format.</p>2022-03-16T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/853 A home away from home: building an organic online support community for Chinese students using WeChat2022-06-12T11:30:18-07:00Xue ZhouPeter Wolstencroft<p>Traditional university support structures have generally been predicated on a ‘one size fits all’ approach that stresses a mechanistic, bureaucratic approach. Support is transactional in nature with students accessing it only when needed. Support focuses on both individual tutorial and centralised mechanisms which have proved effective for only some students. This paper proposes an organic student support system that is based around five features: agility in the environment, a tutor-student partnership, informal two-way communication, a student-led community, the inclusion of a knowledge-hub. The student support system in this article is based around Chinese students at a large UK university who felt disenfranchised by the current support mechanisms, so an alternative model was set up using the group-based instant-messaging social media platform, WeChat. The findings of surveys and interviews with Chinese students demonstrated that the featured organic student support system proved extremely successful and is something that could be replicated with other groups of students in the future in UK higher education.</p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/852Advancing the understanding of the flipped classroom approach with students' perceptions of the learning environment: variation between academic disciplines2022-06-17T07:18:56-07:00Hilary NgPaul Lam<p>Abundant research supports the benefits of the flipped classroom approach on learning outcomes. Yet how students evaluate the flipped learning environment remains largely unknown. The present study aims to investigate 1) the students’ perceptions of their flipped learning and 2) whether disciplinary differences can be observed in students’ perceptions. Drawing upon the theoretical framework outlined in Brame (2013), our findings illustrated that students (<em>N </em>= 407) from different disciplines do vary their evaluation of the flipped learning environment. Those whose academic disciplines related to the application of knowledge evaluated the four components – exposure, incentive, assessment, and activities – more positively than those whose academic disciplines focus more on theoretical exploration. It is noteworthy that how subject knowledge is developed does not influence perception of the flipped learning environment. Such findings can supplement the traditional outcome-based approach of flipped classroom research by understanding the learning environment. All in all, the findings can point to practical and theoretical implications for designing a flipped classroom environment, highlighting the needs in designing the learning environment.</p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/851Section Editorial: Responding to the needs of doctoral researchers2021-10-31T15:56:35-07:00Nicola Grayson2021-10-29T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/850Compendium of Innovative Practice: Learning Development in a Time of Disruption2021-10-31T15:56:25-07:00Alicja Syska2021-10-29T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/849Section Editorial: Innovations in teaching and course delivery2021-10-31T15:58:16-07:00Alicja Syska2021-10-29T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/848Section Editorial: Embodied learning in an online world2021-10-31T15:58:05-07:00Alicja Syska2021-10-29T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/847Section Editorial: Prioritising wellbeing through community and connection2021-10-31T15:57:53-07:00Alicja Syska2021-10-29T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/846Section Editorial: Adapting core features of learning development: skills and writing support2021-10-31T15:58:50-07:00Gita Sedghi2021-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/845Section Editorial: Using technology to enhance online learning2021-10-31T15:57:19-07:00Cathy Malone2021-10-29T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/844Section Editorial: Supporting staff through change2021-10-31T15:57:08-07:00Cathy Malone2021-10-29T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/843Section Editorial: Adapting assessment and feedback strategies2021-10-31T15:58:38-07:00Gita Sedghi2021-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/842Section Editorial: Students as partners in course delivery2021-10-31T15:58:26-07:00Gita Sedghi2021-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/841Section Editorial: Supporting institutional change2021-10-31T15:56:58-07:00Cathy Malone2021-10-29T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/840Section Editorial: Fostering student engagement2021-10-31T15:56:46-07:00Gita Sedghi2021-10-29T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/839Supporting university staff to develop student writing: collaborative writing as a method of inquiry2021-11-25T09:40:08-08:00Sandra AbegglenTom BurnsSandra Sinfield<p>There is a feeling in the Learning Development community – and in academia more generally – that discipline staff see the academic writing of students as a problem better ‘fixed’ by others. However, staff at a writing workshop held within a learning and teaching conference revealed positions that were more nuanced, inflected, compassionate and ‘responsible’ than this. Writing collaboratively around the words produced by staff at our workshop, led to new insights into ways that staff could support student writing as an emergent practice. We decided to collect and share the many ways that discipline staff might be encouraged to harness writing in their own curriculum spaces: a staff guide on supporting writing and other forms of learning and assessment emerged. In this paper we discuss collaborative writing as a method of inquiry as we explore the contested terrain of academic writing, challenge the notion of ‘writing skills’, and model a more emergent form of exploratory writing.</p>2022-03-16T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/838Student engagement and voice in higher education: students’ perceptions2021-12-09T09:50:35-08:00Xiaomei SunDeborah Holt<p>There has been intense debate about student engagement and student voice in institutions of higher education in the past decade or so. Most of the discussion has been theoretical or based on a cause-and-effect research design. With the aim of gathering student perspectives on student voice and its related mechanisms, this study collected the voice of 13 students, the majority of whom were international students, from one UK university. Participants include undergraduate (n=1), postgraduate taught (n=7), and PhD (n=5) students who voluntarily agreed to have an online interview with the researcher, a PhD intern of the Student Voice team. Findings indicate that participants have an overall positive and supportive view of student voice mechanisms at this institution, although some understandings are not adequate or accurate. Participants’ attitudes towards some commonly used communication channels indicate that they prioritise an interactive and dynamic tool to initiate dialogue with the university. Suggestions are put forward for managerial strategies for a sustainable and inclusive student voice mechanism. </p>2022-03-16T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/836The CHAMELEON approach to change: adapting to new educational conditions2021-11-03T09:09:20-07:00Laura DaviesJoseph Davies2021-10-27T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/832Constructing an academic skills toolkit for embedding academic practices2022-02-02T10:39:52-08:00Pamela ThomasNazmin KhanomSimon LambeBisi AdelajaMohamed Mehbali<p>This case study explores the successes and challenges experienced while creating the Learning Development Toolkit (LDT) for use by academic staff at London South Bank University (LSBU). Based on similar initiatives at Queen Mary University of London (2016) and the University of Derby (2021). LSBU’s LDT is a database of formative academic skills activities which are available for academic staff to adapt and deliver during lectures and seminars. The case study opens by explaining LSBU’s institutional context, including our Educational Framework, and the Centre for Research Informed Teaching’s (CRIT) role in supporting various features: employability, embedded learning development, pedagogy, inclusivity and assessment. The case study also discusses LSBU’s student profile, namely that we have a large proportion of students from non-traditional academic backgrounds. As such, the LDT’s activities have been designed to enhance students’ criticality, analysis and confidence in their academic writing in a more general sense. The LDT is freely available to academic staff on LSBU’s intranet, but our team can advise on its implementation by discussing ways to tailor activities to a given session with individual academics. The LDT has five key areas: critical thinking development, quantitative analysis development, reading development, reflective development and writing development. The case study describes the elements within the LDT and explains how it was developed, tested and revised. It discusses the difficulties faced with building the LDT within LSBU’s existing IT framework but outlines how it ultimately succeeded in generating a comprehensive database of tasks to support student .</p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/831Editorial2021-09-30T15:27:07-07:00Alicja Syska2021-09-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/829The process of adapting an online induction course to support distinct student cohorts 2022-03-22T12:28:03-07:00Kirsty McIntyreJennifer O'Neill<p>Successful student transition into higher education is fundamental for student retention and future success. We have previously adapted a freely available online induction course to meet the needs of incoming Medicine (MBChB) students. This case study outlines the process of further developing this course in response to student feedback and adapting a new version to support a distinct cohort of students studying Life Sciences (BSc) degrees.</p> <p>Both courses were united in the aim to equip incoming students with an awareness of digital skills and key contacts for support and further training. However, each course was tailored to the specific requirements of the students it was designed to support. We evaluated student engagement with each course using course completion data and analytics. We observed that Medicine students were highly engaged with the course initially, with most students (92%) completing the course. Conversely, Life Sciences students engaged poorly with the course initially (17% completion) but returned to it throughout the academic year to access materials relevant to academic skills development, in part due to prompting from academic staff.</p> <p>We recommend that adopters of this course, or those like it, ensure that courses are designed to meet the specific needs of students. Good time management is essential in ensuring that course implementation deadlines are met and that student input is incorporated into course design. We suggest that course coordinators consider how they might promote engagement with induction materials, both initially and throughout the academic year.</p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/830Challenges of running online exams and preventing academic dishonesty during the Covid-19 pandemic2021-11-03T09:04:45-07:00Luke Lu Chang PehSabina CerimagicSheila Conejos2021-10-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/828Between the office and the coffee shop: an examination of spaces used for research degree supervision2022-01-06T05:34:48-08:00Doug Specht<p>The last two decades have seen increased attention given to the role of space within the university campus, with numerous new learning spaces forming part of both the physical and the digital campus. Much of the focus of how these spaces work to create supportive learning environments has been on undergraduate teaching. However, these spaces offer a great opportunity to also enhance the doctoral researcher’s supervision process through the creation of new learning spaces that break away from the traditional office setting. In taking the coffee shop as the antithesis of the office, this paper examines theories around space-making in relation to doctoral research, adding in the experiences of UK doctoral researchers to provoke further thought and discussion about how new spaces within a university and outside the campus might be considered part of the pedagogical approach to supervision. Results suggest that although there is much to be considered, doctoral researchers spend the majority of their time in traditional spaces—where they feel the most comfortable—and become progressively less comfortable the further supervision moves towards public spaces.</p>2022-03-16T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/824Exploring Course Components as Predictors of Academic Success in an Online Psychology Course2022-01-14T06:24:51-08:00John MingoiaBrianna Le Busque<p>Online higher education is experiencing growth in enrolment and development which creates a need to continually evaluate the efficacy of online course delivery. Prior research reported that performance in online education is equivalent to traditional face-to-face delivery; however, minimal research exists to identify which elements of course design predict academic success. We aimed to identify which specific course components are predictors of (a) final course grade, (b) continuous assessment grade, and (c) major assessment grade in an online, undergraduate psychology course using data collated by the Learning Management System. We also addressed gaps in existing knowledge by exploring group differences within scores on significant predictors of course outcomes to determine whether these varied according to student characteristics. We found the number of times students visited the course site, viewed activities, and posted in activities significantly predicted students’ final course grade, continuous assessment grades, and major assessment grades. The total variance explained by the regression models, was however, relatively low and therefore there may be additional factors not considered in the present study that may predict grades. We also found non-traditional, female, domestic students, enrolled part-time and in an online degree accessed the course site, viewed activities, and posted in activities significantly more frequently than their counterparts. Universities offering online courses should provide students with regular activities and opportunities to participate in course content to promote online learning and academic success.</p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/822The implications of active blended learning for English teaching in a Chinese university2021-12-01T02:32:49-08:00Huan ZhangBob Fisher<p>Blended Learning (BL), which is usually defined as a combination of face to face (F2F) and online instruction, has attracted considerable interest in recent years and has been increasingly adopted within the higher education sector. In this research, a thematic inductive analysis was conducted to explore how the practice of Active Blended Learning (ABL) at a British university, University of Northampton (UON) might inform the BL College English teaching curriculum design at a Chinese university, Henan Normal University (HNU), so that students may enjoy a more enhanced learning experience in both online and F2F contexts. In the study, 10 teachers from different disciplines at UON and 10 College English teachers from HNU were interviewed for between 45 and 60 minutes. The findings of this study suggest that the implementation of BL in College English courses at HNU should be supported by the institution in terms of pedagogical design, policy, staff development, technical infrastructure and small class size.</p>2022-03-16T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/820A systematic approach to designing English for very specific academic purposes materials tailored to a specific course in the main subject of a higher degree.2021-10-12T01:25:59-07:00Joe Greenwood<p>This research looks at an area of materials design where little research has previously been conducted: English for very specific academic purposes (EVSAP). The research looks at related literature in EAP, ESP and ESAP, conducts a multi-stakeholder needs analysis, and incorporates the students into the materials design process itself. An analysis of the assignment brief and an interview with the unit lead of the chosen course in Digital Marketing were conducted, to identify aspects of academic writing and individual teaching activities that were beneficial to the course. The data gained from the interview were then used to create a questionnaire, which was distributed to students for completion. The data from the questionnaire were then processed into units of time; these units were then used to create the material’s structure. Discussion of how to construct a framework for EVSAP materials design is included, as well as the completed framework itself and a rationale for its format. Finally, the conclusion discusses the scope and limitation of the model, such as its application in other contexts or with different cohort sizes.</p>2022-03-16T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/817Student perceptions of reading digital texts for university study2022-01-05T09:09:12-08:00Helen HargreavesSarah RobinElizabeth Caldwell<p>An increasingly important aspect of undergraduate study is the ability to deal with reading academic texts digitally. Whilst the literature suggests that students prefer reading print texts (Foasberg, 2014; Mizrachi, 2015) and often have a deeper level of engagement with texts in this medium (Mangen et al., 2013; Delgado et al., 2018), the reality is that, for most students, digital texts are the norm. Study guides often focus on reading strategies that are considered broadly applicable to both digital and print formats. However, the differences between the two mediums are likely to impact on the strategies used, with students developing their own approaches as they gain more experience. In this paper, we present findings from a study exploring students’ perspectives and practices in relation to digital reading. We carried out focus group interviews with 20 students in their second or final year of undergraduate degree programmes. Our analysis reveals that reading texts digitally does indeed form the bulk of students’ reading activity, with ease and speed of accessibility, cost, and environmental considerations influencing this choice, and in some cases, precluding reading in print. However, despite the prominence of digital reading, some aspects of print reading – in particular the scope for more sustained focus, detailed reading and enjoyment of the experience – were highly valued by the students. Students’ approaches to reading digital texts varied depending on reading purpose, but, in general, students had developed a range of techniques to help them navigate digital reading.</p>2022-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/810‘We had a good laugh together’: using Teams for collaborative learning 2021-09-30T15:27:33-07:00Katy Jones<p>This case study describes the journey of an undergraduate module in its transition from an in-person lectures-plus-seminar configuration to an interactive, online format using Teams. I show how I created a sense of community and the opportunity for online group interaction by establishing small study groups that carried out weekly online group tasks in their own Team ‘channel’. Weekly roles were assigned to group members to spread the workload and ensure equal participation. Student feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and students particularly appreciated the opportunity to interact with their peers, during a potentially lonely time, for summative marks. Limitations to the model are discussed and potential solutions are offered.</p>2021-09-28T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Educationhttps://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/809Engaging students online: an analysis of students’ motivations for seeking individual learning development support2021-07-19T03:35:22-07:00Arina Cirstea<p>In the context of increased concerns with student engagement across the Higher Education sector, which have intensified subsequent to the rapid transition to online delivery in March 2020, this small-scale research project aimed to explore the motivations for student engagement in self-selecting learning development (LD) online tutorials.</p> <p>The study used a mixed methods approach, including an online survey (n=43) and online interviews (n=5). The sample comprised undergraduate and postgraduate volunteers recruited from from a pool of LD tutorial users (n=390) within the project timeframe (October 2020-April 2021). The generalisability of findings is limited by the low response rate as well as age bias.</p> <p>The main driver for engagement reported was participants’ limited confidence in their own academic writing abilities, which was consistently linked to attainment. Engagement was further motivated through a range of perceived impacts, including improved confidence, awareness of academic conventions, and higher grades. In this context, the main challenge was limited availability of support. <span style="font-size: 0.875rem;">Participants reported a generally positive attitude towards online delivery. Qualitative data from both the survey and interviews were further investigated using a discourse analysis framework</span><span style="font-size: 0.875rem;">. One key finding was that the path to LD engagement is often mediated by academic authority figures, who may exert a significant impact on learner self-views. </span>Key recommendations for learning developers include maximising the potential of lessons learned from the enforced pivoting to online delivery to underpin the developmental dimension of LD, with the ultimate goal of promoting learner confidence and growth.</p>2022-03-16T00:00:00-07:00Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education