Event

Student experience experts group 48th meeting

An opportunity to discuss current Jisc activities

  • Five hours
  • Online
  • Free

This event will be held on

About

This experts group meeting offers opportunities for feedback and consultation on current activities Jisc is undertaking in the area of learning, teaching, and assessment.

Our student experience experts group plays a key role in informing community consultations and influencing the direction of future Jisc work. 

  • Hear about Jisc’s latest research into current assessment practice in higher education and help to shape Jisc’s future work in this area
  • Contribute to new Jisc work on curriculum development
  • Hear about a new tool kit to support blended learning design and how you can use this to support your practice and share examples of effective institutional practice and research in digital learning, teaching, and assessment and enable discussion across the expert's group

Programme - Thursday 4 November

Welcome and introduction to the meeting

Welcome by Sarah Knight, head of learning and teaching transformation, higher education, Jisc.

Redesigning assessment and feedback - landscape review and areas for development

Speakers:

  • Lisa Gray, former senior consultant (HE learning and teaching), Jisc
  • Gill Ferrell, consultant and IMS Europe program director, IMS global learning consortium

An opportunity to discuss findings to date from our research into the assessment and feedback landscape and to input your thoughts on the future direction of this work.

Virtual tea and coffee break

Assessment and feedback: principle-led practice

Speaker: Prof David Nicol, research professor: teaching excellence initiative, Adam Smith business school, University of Glasgow

Our research goes back to first principles about what good assessment and feedback looks like at this point in the 21st century.

Prof David Nicol, who developed the widely used REAP (re-engineering assessment practice) principles, will join us to discuss how his current thinking is evolving.

We will discuss David’s findings in the context of our landscape review and look at how this group may help take the work forward.

Participants may be interested to look at these resources, shared by David, in advance:

Lunch break

Digital learning design framework and toolkit – Teesside’s story

Speakers:

  • John Sumpter, subject specialist: digital practice (leadership), Jisc
  • Ann Thanaraj, assistant academic registrar leading the digital transformation of learning and teaching, Teesside University 

Since its launch in 2019, the Teesside University online learning project, a strategic, change and transformation initiative across the institution yields a 90% retention rate for learners.

The course teams take part in an Academic Transformation Programme which utilises a very similar version of this toolkit, designed for full-fledge online learning course design and delivery model, supporting staff to design courses that offer a rich experience that is based on excellent teaching and learning literature from across the world.

Their collaboration with Jisc brings a wide-scale national and international dimension to digital learning design. The digital learning design framework and toolkit can be a fundamental action you take to ensure not just one department, not just one school, but an entire institution can move towards effective and creative learning design in a structured and supportive way, enabling scaled-up transformative change.

Are institutional models of learning and teaching changing?

A community consultation session led by Paul Bailey, head of co-design, Jisc.

Members showcase, sharing practice in digital learning, teaching and assessment

Four, seven-minute Pecha Kucha sessions.

Apps for teaching and learning: An institutional approach

Manchester Metropolitan University have recently completed the roll out of an apps for teaching and learning project that is centrally licencing and supporting 5 apps (Vevox, Mentimeter, Kahoot, Padelt and Nearpod) that they believe promotes and enhances active learning practices for their students. To do this, they developed a learning activities framework based on some research they undertook into the types of activities teaching staff were employing in their practice. This framework has allowed them to select a relative small, but well mapped set of tools to enable colleagues to design and deliver a broad range of learning activities in their practice.

  • Rod Cullen, senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University

Understanding student needs and potential for standardisation in Module Maps

‘Module Map’ is a generic term used to describe visual illustrations of various features and/or structure of a module to help support students in understanding the requirements of and planning their studies.  Many Open University modules include a Module Map, however there is variation in how they are implemented and presented. Motivated by questions such as ‘Is there an optimal way to map a module for the benefit of students?’ and ‘What factors should be taken into consideration when designing maps of a module?’, a small scale study was run during 2021. This talk will report on evidence gathered from the two phase study in which participating students (n=17) created their own Module Maps (phase 1), and commented on exiting Open University Module Maps (phase 2).

  • Andrew Brasher, learning and teaching development manager (research projects), Institute of educational technology, The Open University

Bended Learning Consortium (BLC) for Higher Education

Following on from the success of the FE BLC and demand from the sector for an HE BLC we have launched this partnership in 2021.

The HE BLC is a democratic partnership open to all universities which co-funds and co-develops high quality interactive online learning resources. This pechkuchas would explain how the HE BLC works, showcase content that has been developed and look at how it is currently being used to support learners.

  • Amy Hollier, director of blended and online learning at Blended Learning Consortium, Heart of Worcestershire College
  • Peter Kilcoyne, consultant for the Blended Learning Consortium, Heart of Worcestershire College

How to deliver meaningful lab practicals remotely

In this session,  Neph will provide examples and share resources of digital alternatives and open-access simulators that facilitate the online delivery of laboratory practicals in biology, medicine and chemistry.

  • Nephtali Marina-Gonzalez, vice dean of equality, diversity and inclusion, faculty of medical sciences and academic lead, integrated medical sciences, University College London

Plenary and close

Who should attend

  • Staff with a role of supporting the student experience within their college or university
  • Open to staff and managers with a role in technology-enhanced learning (TEL) or digital learning, teaching, and assessment

Find out more about the student experience experts group and how to join.

Contact

If you are not currently part of the group and would like to get involved, please contact Sarah Knight with a brief rationale of your interest in the group.

Resources

Introduction and updates from Jisc

Redesigning assessment and feedback - landscape review and areas for development

Assessment and feedback: principle-led practice

Digital learning design framework and toolkit – Teesside’s story

Are institutional models of learning and teaching changing?

Pecha Kucha sessions

Apps for teaching and learning: An institutional approach

How to deliver meaningful lab practicals remotely​

Understanding student needs and potential for standardisation in module maps