Student Experience Experts Group Meeting

• Sarah Knight, Head of learning and teaching transformation, Jisc.

Our recent QAA collaborative development research collected feedback from students regarding their experiences and thoughts on options in assessments. Whilst the study analysed data from all assessment stakeholders, the perceptions and feedback from students were interesting to note. Conducted across the University of Manchester, University of York, UCL and Imperial, this presentation offers insights from students across four major UK Universities, and across levels and disciplines of study. Their data is situated against the feedback from academic and professional services to highlight the tension in delivering options in assessment for university students. For more details please visit our QAA page here.

• Miriam Firth, Senior lecturer, Academic lead for assessments within the flexible learning programme.

This workshop will offer delegates the opportunities of exploring new guidance and principles for beyond blended and hearing how universities are making use of these resources to support learning and curriculum design.

• Helen Beetham and Sheila MacNeill, Consultants.
• Cath Fenn, Senior academic technologist, Warwick Medical School, Univeristy of Warwick.

Delegates will have the opportunity of selecting one of these two sessions.

Implementing a Curriculum for Social Justice

Leeds Trinity University has social justice as a core tenet of its Strategic Plan. Motivated by a recognition that our curricula and pedagogy need to align to principles of equity, to work towards eliminating awarding gaps, promote global citizenship, and reflect the civic and social responsibilities of higher education we have embarked on a cross institutional project create a curriculum for social justice (CfSJ). The chances of student success rely heavily on the principle of equity being applied across curriculum design. At Leeds Trinity we aim to reflect diversity and justice through inclusive language and a common set of principles which underpin the curriculum. We are co-creating a socially just curriculum which is concerned with representation, which recognises difference and rejects deficit constructions of students and promotes diverse approaches to curricula, pedagogy and assessment to ensure common threads of social justice underpin disciplinary content and concepts.

In creating this CFSJ, we draw together key societal challenges to engage and educate students in understanding the disparities that exist, those that are environmental, economic, cultural, political, gender related. Higher education can bring expertise to help build capacity and act as a catalyst to engage our staff and students in the active building and participation of economic and social value.

Inclusion alone does not go far enough in challenging injustice; our curriculum for social justice is built on anti-discriminatory practices and pedagogies which are research informed and research led. Examining our structures and co-creating our decision making and curriculum design with students can give us insight into how students experience disadvantage and discrimination and can help us to build just learning communities, and provide students with the educational experiences, skills and confidence to question and challenge accepted norms.

The curriculum for social justice has three aims:

1. To allow all our students, regardless of background, to achieve to the very best of their ability and to exceed their expectations about what they can accomplish academically and in their future careers.
2. To eradicate gaps across all student characteristics, whether these be awarding gaps, employability gaps, or any other unfair gap in student achievement.
3. To provide a transformational education to our students and develop graduates who are capable of positively contributing to society in a way that creates a fairer and more equitable world.

Underpinned by co-creation practices, research, evaluation, and principles of inclusive pedagogy and assessment, the CfSJ has a series of cross cutting strands:

• Race Equity
• Student Mental Health and Wellbeing
• Digital Pedagogy
• Education for Sustainable Development
• Internationalisation
• Employability and Enterprise

In our presentation we will share the ongoing work to implement the CfSJ and will place a key focus on the digital pedagogy strand.

• Professor Fiona Shelton, Dean of learning and teaching and Dr Alison Torn, Associate professor in learning and teaching, Leeds Trinity University.

The Manchester metropolitan digitally enhanced learning teaching and assessment (DELTA) strategy

The DELTA strategy at Manchester Metropolitan was developed primarily though ongoing engagement with and feedback from our students, teaching staff and colleagues in professional services. It has also benefitted from close working relationships with Jisc and insights from key sector reports and guidance provided by AdvanceHE, the Student Futures Commission, Disabled Students UK and the Office for Students.

In this interactive presentation, Rod will share:

• The rationale for the main themes in the DELTA strategy including Flexible Active Learning, The Learning Spaces Framework, Six Principles of Digital Flexibility.
• Key activities that are underway to operationalise the DELTAT strategy across the university.
• An update on use of the Jisc digital transformation toolkit and maturity model to evaluate the progress of the DELTA strategy.
• Dr Rod Cullen, Senior lecturer in learning and teaching technologies, Manchester Metropolitan University.

In this session we begin by sharing key findings from Jisc’s new and forthcoming briefing papers relating to international students’ digital experiences of UK higher education. We’ll provide examples of how learners from different home global areas might differ in their prior digital experience, and how these personal experiences can be shaped by the civil digital infrastructure of a country. We then flip the context to transnational education (TNE) and share initial thoughts on what may be important when using digital to create and facilitate UK-based learning that is then sent overseas to be experienced in other countries. This session will involve a presentation of key findings to date, sharing ideas in small groups, and an opportunity to shape - and sign up to - our forthcoming TNE research phase three.

• Dr Tabetha Newman and Dr Mike Gulliver, Consultants, Timmus.
• Elizabeth Newall, Senior sector specialist (digital transformation) Jisc.
• John Brindle, Learning design manager, Edge Hill Univeristy.

We will hear from staff across further and higher education sharing their practice.

Session 1: Enabling business students’ use of Generative AI in their coursework while maintaining academic integrity

In this session we will explore how students can be provided with a means of integrating their use of Gen AI within a wider framework of information gathering (on the internet and university library). The presentation's focus will be on using an ‘audit trail’, which allows students to show how Gen Ai was used to brainstorm and explore subject areas (amongst other uses) and some of whose outputs were then validated by other information sources.

• Haider Ali, Senior lecturer in marketing at the Open University.

Session 2:

Jisc’s licensing and negotiation team are planning new ways to work with members to improve the student experience and maximise the value from the software agreements made available through the Jisc catalogue.

Our aim is to convene user communities for software agreements to gather insights from a wide spectrum of roles, capturing a comprehensive perspective on the efficacy and impact of specific software in education. Central to this approach are the principles of voluntary participation and institution-led implementation, with Jisc seeking to support institutional experiences within the context of digital transformation.

Jonathan Hofgartner, Head of learning and teaching for Jisc’s licensing and negotiation, will outline the proposed approach for the new Adobe Express and Firefly agreement before inviting feedback and questions from the group.