Paven Basuita (Assistant Professor in Law) leads the University of Sussex’s Family Law Clinic. In a former life, she worked as a family law solicitor. These days, Paven’s passions lie in teaching and supporting students to achieve their goals. Her scholarship interests include clinical legal education, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, employability, mental health, community and belonging and equality/inequality in law schools and the legal profession.
In 2023 I did something completely new to me – I graded my students on their participation, rather than just their written assignments. This was a new assessment, introduced on the Clinical Legal Education module at Sussex Law School. I found the experience challenging, both in terms of grading and in terms of whether assessing participation is a good idea.
This led me to delve deeper into the topic and this blog is the result of lots of reading, reflecting and speaking to colleagues and students. In this blog I summarise some of the benefits and challenges of assessing participation, together with some recommendations for introducing this type of assessment.
What is meant by assessing participation?
There is no agreed definition for this type of assessment. However, from looking at the literature it seems that participation assessments strive to assess:
Involvement in learning activities e.g. seminar discussions, online forums, group projects.
Demonstration of certain skills or behaviours e.g. communication skills.
Effort and process, as opposed to product. For example, submitting a formative assignment, not the grade obtained for it.
There are many ways of assessing participation. For example:
Students may be graded on their attendance and/or engagement in taught sessions over the module. See Holly et al. (2024) for a review of this approach.
Students may be required to produce evidence of their participation as part of a portfolio assessment – this is already used at Sussex, for example in Education and in Linguistics (Murphy, 2024).
Holistic, continuous assessment of students’ participation throughout the module – this is especially relevant for practical/vocational contexts. Van der Vlueten (2005) has written extensively about this in the context of medical education.
What we do in Clinical Legal Education (CLE)
In CLE, final year undergraduate law students undertake real legal work at the Sussex Law Clinics while also engaging in academic literature and critical reflection.
The participation assessment was introduced to recognise and reward student engagement and commitment to their clinical work. Previously, students had been assessed purely on their written reflections on their work in the clinic, not on their practical work. It was felt that this was unfair to students and did not fully capture their learning. Student feedback also indicated that they felt the written assessments alone did not adequately capture their experience. We were told that they felt frustrated when people who had done very little in the clinics scored highly because they had written good reflective portfolios.
The approach taken to assessing participation in CLE is a holistic one. Students are assessed over the course of two terms and graded out of ten across eight different categories. These categories include engagement and preparation (in seminars and casework), organisation and time management, professionalism, communication, responsiveness to feedback etc. The participation grade makes up 20% of their grade for the module.
Why might you want to introduce a participation assessment?
In my view, a participation assessment has the following potential benefits:
Holistic – it allows for a more rounded assessment of student learning.
Continuous – participation assessments typically allow for assessment over time.
Inclusive – assessing participation reduces the reliance on high-stakes, traditional assessment modes, such as end-point written work, which may disadvantage some learners.
Assessment for learning – this type of assessment encourages students to engage in behaviours which are likely to have a positive impact on their learning (and that of others) e.g. attending classes, completing formative assessments etc.
Authentic – it is realistic, cognitively challenging and incorporates evaluative judgment (Villaroel et al, 2017).
Motivational – it encourages and rewards engagement and commitment to the work. In CLE, students and staff have reported that it helps to create a more positive and accountable learning environment.
Human – it is less vulnerable to generative AI than other types of assessment.
What are the challenges?
Assessing participation does raise some concerns. Some of these will arise with any assessment, but some are particularly relevant to participation assessments. For example:
Fairness (including bias) and inclusivity. This is a particular concern if the grade is determined by one tutor based on their overall impression of a student over time. How do you avoid your personal feelings about the student affecting the grade? How do you remember everything the student did?
Burden on markers. If the participation assessment is very broad it can put a high burden on markers to make judgments about students and to keep track of everything students have done/not done. This could make it hard to scale up with larger cohorts.
Transparency and accountability. As with any assessment, students may not understand how their mark was arrived at, what is required to achieve top marks or how they are doing during the year. A participation assessment can be difficult to second mark or to defend in the event of an appeal, especially if there is no record of how the mark was arrived at.
Impact on learning. It could be argued that constant assessment undermines learning because students may be less willing to experiment and make mistakes. Another downside of a continuous assessment is that students don’t have a chance to acquire skills before being graded on them (Schrag, 1996).
Recommendations
I think that the above challenges can be overcome with careful assessment design and implementation. Here are a few suggestions:
Think carefully about what you choose to assess and ensure you can assess it fairly. For example, teamwork may be difficult to assess fairly if the work takes place largely outside the tutor’s view. One way round this could be requiring students to critically reflect on their contribution to the group and assessing their reflection as a proxy for their participation. Self-diagnostic tools such as the Wheel of Trust might assist with this. This reflection can be done part way through the module to allow feedforward.
Give students agency in evidencing their participation. This promotes inclusive assessment, transparency and accountability. An excellent example of this is the approach taken by Professor Lynne Murphy where she provides students with a choice of participation activities and they evidence their engagement using a participation record. This creates a clear paper trail of what evidence is being considered and is inclusive because it allows students to engage in different ways.
Draw on a range of sources/viewpoints. Avoid relying on the judgment of one person but seek a range of evidence. For example, in CLE we use feedback from other supervisors and ‘objective’ data like attendance records and data from our case management system (you could use data from your Virtual Learning Environment).
Ensure you have a paper trail/record, in case the grade is challenged.
Keep the marking simple and avoid grading at granular levels. MacArthur (2018) argues convincingly against finely grained marking systems, as such accuracy and differentiation is neither achievable nor desirable. Instead, you could consider pass/fail or a marking rubric with a few broad categories e.g. fail, satisfactory, good, excellent. This should ease the burden on markers too. If you wish to assess classroom participation consider transparent and co-created marking rubrics.
Don’t try and assess everything the student does. This can be overwhelming for students and markers. You might consider only assessing students on one project or over a defined time period.
Provide regular and dialogic feedback. Tell students if their participation is not up to scratch so they have a chance to address it! In CLE we do this by requiring students to complete a formative self-assessment where they review their own participation and then receive tutor feedback. We also share feedback with them that they have received from external sources, like supervisors, and discuss any problems as they arise.
Be transparent with students about how marks are arrived at and what will/won’t be taken into account. In conclusion, there are lots of different ways to assess participation and it is likely that there is a way of doing it which will work for your context. If you have a go, please share your experience on the Learning Matters Forum!
Acknowledgements
Thank you to colleagues across the University who peer reviewed this assessment and generously shared their time, suggestions and resources with me. These include Sarah Watson, Lynne Murphy, James Williams, Lucy Welsh and Lisa Peck.
References and further reading
Armstrong, M. and Boud, D. (1983) ‘Assessing participation in discussion: An exploration of the issues’, Studies in higher education (Dorchester-on-Thames), 8(1), pp. 33–44. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03075078312331379101.
Boud, D. (2000) ‘Sustainable Assessment: Rethinking assessment for the learning society’, Studies in continuing education, 22(2), pp. 151–167. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/713695728.
Holly, C. et al. (2024) ‘Grading participation in the classroom: The assumptions, challenges, and alternatives’, Teaching and learning in nursing, 19(1), pp. 27–33. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.teln.2023.06.020.
Lai, K. (2012) ‘Assessing participation skills: online discussions with peers’, Assessment and evaluation in higher education, 37(8), pp. 933–947. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2011.590878.
McArthur, J. (2016) ‘Assessment for social justice: the role of assessment in achieving social justice’, Assessment and evaluation in higher education, 41(7), pp. 967–981. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2015.1053429.
Nicolson, D. (2016) ‘Problematizing Competence in Clinical Legal Education: What do we mean by competence and how do we assess non-skill competencies?’, International journal of clinical legal education, 23(1), pp. 66-. Available at: https://doi.org/10.19164/ijcle.v23i1.491.
Pham, T. (2022) ‘Assessing Employability Skills How are current assessment practices “fair” for international students?, in Ajjawi, R. et al. (eds)Assessment for Inclusion in Higher Education Routledge, London, UK: Routledge.
Tai, J. et al. (2023) ‘Assessment for inclusion: rethinking contemporary strategies in assessment design’, Higher education research and development, 42(2), pp. 483–497. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2022.2057451.
Van Der Vleuten, C.P.M. and Schuwirth, L.W.T. (2005) ‘Assessing professional competence: from methods to programmes’, Medical education, 39(3), pp. 309–317. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2929.2005.02094.x.
Villarroel, V. et al. (2018) ‘Authentic assessment: creating a blueprint for course design’, Assessment and evaluation in higher education, 43(5), pp. 840–854. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2017.1412396 .
The Learning Matters Podcast captures insights into, experiences of, and conversations around education at the University of Sussex. The podcast is hosted by Prof Wendy Garnham and Dr Heather Taylor. It is recorded monthly, and each month is centred around a particular theme. The theme of our seventh episode is ‘gamification’ and we hear from Dr. Jennifer Mankin from Psychology and Prof Paul Newbury from Informatics.
Welcome to the Learning Matters podcast from the University of Sussex, where we capture insights, experiences, and conversations around education at our institution and beyond. Our theme for this episode is Gamification and our guests are Doctor Jennifer Mankin from Psychology and Professor Paul Newbury from Informatics. Our names are Wendy Garnham and Heather Taylor and we are your presenters today. Welcome everyone. So, can you tell us a little bit about the context of your scholarship, Jennifer, in the area of gamification?
Jennifer Mankin:
Yeah. Certainly. So I teach statistics and research methods, and I particularly teach first years now. So I’m working with a large group of students in psychology who are being asked to learn something that they might not have expected to learn as part of their learning journey, that is a bit more complex and technical than they might have been expecting. And so my scholarship kind of revolves around trying to make that thing that is unexpected and difficult and stressful also fun and engaging and worthwhile so that they can really kind of get a handle on what is it that I want to get out of this, why is it important, and maybe have a little bit of fun along the way. So we’re trying to support them to engage with their studies in a positive light, even if it’s something that they might not be it might not be their favourite subject. Let’s put it that way.
Wendy Garnham:
And, Paul, could you tell us a little bit about your scholarship?
Paul Newbury:
Yeah. So I’m from the Department of Informatics, which is essentially a computer science department. And we have a range of degrees, including one on digital media and games. So my day-to-day job is teaching students how to produce games, mainly sort of 3D games, but thinking about what makes enjoyable games. But also, I have several PhD students who work in the area of e-learning and where we’re looking at both gamification and sort of game-based learning as key concepts which enable people to learn difficult subjects.
Heather Taylor: (02:09)
What issues do you see as being particularly pressing in this area?
Jennifer Mankin:
It sounds like for both of us, sort of the overarching theme is that we want students to not only learn, but also enjoy learning and also include fun things as a way to learn how to enjoy learning something that they might not have expected to enjoy learning. But for me, I’m also very involved in areas of accessibility, and there’s kind of a lot of friction sometimes between things that are fun or gamified elements and that also put pressure on students who have accessibility needs so that they are able to enjoy those fun things at the same time. So my scholarship often sits in that sort of place between what makes things more fun and engaging, but also what is accessible and meaningful for all of our students, not only the ones who have, for example, a fast reaction time or who are already on board with the topics, but who might be reluctant or who might have dyslexia, who aren’t able to kind of engage with those things in exactly the same way as other students.
Paul Newbury:(03:22)
I mean, I think the key thing that sort of game-based learning and gamification can provide to students is the thing that Jennifer was saying then about engagement, is trying to get the students to be engaged with the material that you’re teaching them. And, obviously, we hope that by introducing some points of gamification, we’re making it fun. We’re making it more exciting, more engaging. And I guess what we’re trying to really trying to do is to try and sort of remove some of this sort of the ordeal of having to learn stuff and trying to get them into a situation where this sort of key term of flow, where they’re sort of engaging with it and they’re learning and they really realize they’re learning. Now that can be quite tricky to do with gamification with just sort of simple things, and there are issues that Jennifer’s talking about in terms of if you have a point-based system attached to some of your learning, well, how does that affect some of your students? But I think there are things in terms of sort of giving goals and making sort of the progress enjoyable that you can get in terms of easy wins in terms of your providing the material and making really engaging and particularly when you’re dealing with students where that what you’re teaching them isn’t necessarily their core thing that they’re interested in learning, but something they have to learn as part of their degree.
Wendy Garnham:(04:33)
So I’m going to delve a little bit deeper now because I’m going to ask each of you in a moment just to give us an idea of what scholarship projects you are, or have been, working on. So I’m going to address that to you, Paul, first.
Paul Newbury:
Okay. So, I mean, in terms of sort of general scholarship, my day-to-day job is teaching game design and development to our second-year students. So that is very much thinking about what makes games enjoyable, getting the students to think about what makes enjoyable games and goals within a sort of a game context. But that is about producing games rather than gamifying learning. But in terms of research, I have students who generally work in the area of sort of e-learning and that’s quite a range of things. But several of my students have worked in gamification and game-based learning. And they are two nice sort of adjacent subjects, which, I mean, often used interchangeably, but they are slightly different. So the idea of gamification is sort of adding game components to existing learning, whereas game-based learning is sort of doing it from the other way, of designing a game that has components of learning in it. But one of my students had a lot of success in terms of actually looking at very young children learning the alphabet and actually rather than just as we normally would with small children learning the alphabet by rote and giving them basic things to do, actually changing that into a game. So you’re getting achievements for accessing the material, but also always being cognizant of the comments that Jennifer made about it has to be engaging for everybody. So it’s not that we want to remove some of that competitive edge, which often is very key in games, but and learning content can often affect the way the students interact with it. And then but try and keep the enjoyment part the, ‘oh, I’ve achieved this’. ‘Oh, look. I’ve got this badge’. All those components of gamification, which really help, particularly with young children. But even when we get to a higher education where we’re looking at different components. I think rewards and these type of gamification components work really well. And that’s even before we look at maybe more intense things by looking at from a game-based learning perspective.
Wendy Garnham: (07:04)
That does raise another question for me, which is just I wonder what either of you think about the idea that gamification is popular or successful because it personalizes learning?
Jennifer Mankin:
I’ve seen a good tool – I’ll talk in a moment about what the context is for this as well. But the challenge that I’m particularly facing is that my students aren’t expecting to be confronted with what we are asking them to learn. And I think it often feels to them like they are kind of being forced to do something that they don’t really want to be doing. And I think you’re right that that gamified element allows them to, like, decide that this is something that they want to do and take that on for themselves. We also make use of some badges and points and that sort of thing so that they can see their own progress. And it’s another way for them to quantify ‘I have actually achieved something. I’ve learned something, even something that I thought was difficult or I didn’t want to do. I’ve been able to kind of conquer that or make progress in that’. And I really do feel like that underlying core, though, is that they are making the decision to engage with that, and it’s not just being foisted upon them. And that might not be exactly the same thing in terms of, like, personalization, in terms of individual learning goals, but I think that first step and I’m teaching on a very large module. So that first step of just getting people to show up and getting people to engage and give it a try is the main battleground that we are working on to try and make sure that our students are getting what they need.
Paul Newbury:(08:47)
Yes. So I think that there is a whole area of adaptive game-based learning and e-learning around adapting it to individuals. But I think even at its most basic level, the way that gamification components enable people to achieve the learning goals in their own way and then get recognition for that, and moving away from the standard way that we teach, which is, look, here’s a load of teaching material, and we’ll give you a test. Maybe we’ll give you a test in the middle, and maybe we’ll just give you an exam at the end. But you’re actually having that structured feedback as an individual as you go through. And, I mean, you could consider that that is giving each individual learner that sort of rather a bespoke learning environment; they are getting individualistic feedback on how well they’re achieving the goals and how they’re engaging, as well as that extra motivation that we hope that sort of gamification components can give.
Wendy Garnham:
Going back to scholarship projects, Jennifer, do you want to give us an idea of any that you are or have been working on?
Jennifer Mankin:
Yes. So as I mentioned, I teach a relatively large cohort. I believe this year, we’re at about 480ish. But in the past few years, it’s been over 500. And the struggle with that not to standardize experiences, but to make them fair and equitable and interesting and fun without compromising kind of the integrity of the fun bit. So I spent a lot quite a lot of time thinking about, you know, do we want to individually generate a dataset for every student so that they all had different answers? And it would be wonderful if we had the resources to do that, but it’s just not, not something that’s really achievable or practicable. So, what I’ve been doing is focusing a lot more on, things that we can do in large sessions that are easily available to large groups of students. They really don’t have to do much except show up to the sessions. So for example, we make use of Kahoot to do in session sort of fun quizzes at the end of our coding sessions to revise, but also we have stickers that we give out to people who kind of score highly. And we also just give people these little sticker badges, which are also part of the coding community that we’re part of. We teach R, which is a coding language primarily for statistics, but also for quite a lot of things as well. And the R community has developed these, like, hexagonal stickers that you can often see at conferences or online for packages. And so we give out these stickers to students to make them feel like they’re a part of the community, but also as prizes. And one of the things I’m currently working on right now, actually, is that we are evaluating how well that is working. Because my colleagues and I who teach our modules, we love stickers. Like, part of it is that we just want stickers for ourselves. So, like and we might as well give them to other people as well because who doesn’t love a shiny sticker? But also, we really want to be aware of the things that we might not see in our student population. So people who are feeling maybe left out by that or who don’t quite understand things enough to be able to earn a sticker, but they’d really like to have one. So we’re trying to investigate the different influences that might kind of help us understand why people might choose to participate in Kahoot or not, might participate in the leaderboard or not, and to make sure that if there are any kind of influences that are preventing our students from engaging as a result of even that kind of gamification element, that we address that or we make sure that it’s equitable and enjoyable for everybody. So we’ve been doing that for a couple of years now, and we’re currently kind of having a look at what we are doing so far and trying to get some feedback from our students about what they like and don’t like about it so that we can make sure it’s fun because that’s the whole point of doing all of this work to gamify things is to make it fun.
Heather Taylor: (12:56)
I was just going to say, I really like the idea. I know it seems like a simple thing, the stickers, but, you know, you’re saying it being from like, that the R community has these stickers. And I think with things like statistics and R because it’s a new language, it can be really alienating. And I think that so the idea of gaining stickers and so on to be part of a community, I think, is lovely because it addresses that to begin with. But I actually really appreciate the fact that you’ve considered what if we don’t meet that aim. You know? What if even us trying to form this community is making people feel alienated? So I just think it’s I just wanted to say it’s really good all around thinking, basically, that you’ve considered the pros of it, but also the possible negative consequences for some students. And, yeah, that’s brilliant.
Jennifer Mankin:
I have to say that a lot of this reflection has come out of, like I did a workshop for the Active Learning Network a few months ago and talked about some of the gamification stuff that we did. And some of the feedback from that was about the impact on neurodivergent students and students with various reasonable adjustments, that even though I already spent a lot of time thinking about this, I hadn’t necessarily thought through all of the implications for everyone. And I definitely don’t want those things that we design to be fun and engaging to put people off. So part of the idea for this, which I’m working on with some students, is to really understand all of those impacts. But it’s come out of some of the discussions that I’ve had with other people about what they are doing and the concerns that they have, the pros and cons of these things. Because I think gamification generally is seen as a good thing. I think we’re all probably for it, but I don’t want to lose sight of the potential drawbacks as well, and I’m sure none of us would want to as well like to put any of our students off. I think on the whole, it’s a good thing. But I am aware that the people for whom it’s not a good thing might not be able or feel willing to speak up. So want to make sure that we give them a voice.
Heather Taylor:
What impact do you hope your scholarship will have?
Paul Newbury: (15:05)
I think the key thing is to make the learning more engaging. So to get the students to properly engage with the subject and see it as fun really more than anything else. And that can be very tricky, particularly if you’re teaching a very dry subject. So if I’m teaching game design, it’s quite a fun subject. It’s quite easy to get people to engage with some of those components. But then when you start talking about computer coding that we do, then that is harder. So trying to get them to engage with that and make it more fun. I don’t have some sort of nice, core scholarship to talk about in terms of getting coding better, but one of my PhD students, Caran Anagnostopoulou, she got her doctorate recently, and she looked at game-based learning and gamification in terms of teaching maths and particularly in teaching high level maths like differentiation and the power rule and things which are really quite dry and quite tricky to incorporate, and looking at how you could put them into a game environment. So she chose to use role playing adventure games. And so you can actually have characters who are going through completing different tasks within this game. And as they’re doing it, learning sort of by osmosis, differentiation. Now it’s not a really straightforward thing. It involves sort of starting off with some basic symbols and then working through until you’re actually changing slightly until ‘oh, no. And now I’ve got numbers and algorithms in there’. But it’s a way of getting people to engage with the process and do the learning without thinking they’re learning and ideally with this idea of flow. So they suddenly they’re lost in it and they spent an hour doing it and they didn’t realize they were doing it now. And that’s the whole holy grail of sort of gamification. But I think even with adding sort of fairly straightforward things, you can get that level of gamification. But we have moved on a long way. So 20 years ago, ‘oh, yeah, let’s put a quiz in and let’s have some awards’, but now it’s very much, well, yeah, ‘what other components can we add?’ As Jennifer says, how can we get people to engage even though some people might not be able to? ‘Oh, I can’t get that badge because I just don’t understand this part.’ But how can we still keep engaging for them? How can we make sure they’re rewarded? How can we make sure it’s fun and the progression works for them? And that that is not trivial. That’s a fairly tricky thing to do. It needs a lot of feedback, and we don’t always get it right. And we’ll always come across students where they’ll struggle with that, and we might give them extra support. But it’s a lot better than just saying, ‘oh, here’s some learning material. You’ve got an exam in 11 weeks time’.
Jennifer Mankin:(17:56)
Yeah. I absolutely couldn’t agree more, like that balance of trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t and to, you know, connect with the students who are maybe not finding it as fun and engaging and trying to figure out how to support them as well. It’s such a challenge, but it’s something I really enjoy, and I’m sure you do too as well, Paul, because that’s like, as you said, the holy grail of gamification is to really get people enjoying learning so much that they forget that they are actually learning. I honestly don’t have too much hope for that in terms of teaching R. I know that I can get into a flow state and lose hours at a time, but I understand that that’s not necessarily, like, the level that I expect all of my students to achieve. And I don’t think that’s necessary for them to be successful either. They’re not all going to become coders or whatever, and that’s completely fine. For me, I hope that I understand better what works and what doesn’t about what I do so that I can improve on that. But I also I see my scholarship as sort of an over between the two categories of, like, both as a Education and Scholarship lecturer and also in my role supporting accessibility and supporting students with reasonable adjustments, that it kind of touches on both of those areas by informing both sides of my roles so that I can support my students best and really understand both the benefits and the barriers to introducing things like this. And as I said, I really enjoy sharing those experiences with other people who I mean, it’s hardly unique for us to be trying to make something complex and difficult to be fun and interesting. I know that people who teach maths and statistics and computer science and all kinds of difficult topics often encounter situations where they’re trying to help students get excited about something that, you know, might not be inherently exciting. And it’s really fun to see how all of those different ideas can be integrated together. So for me, I’m hoping to evaluate how well what we are doing now is working and see where there are opportunities that we can evolve or continue what we’re doing in a way that supports all our students equally.
Heather Taylor:
I was just going to ask a question to both of you. So you’ve both mentioned flow, like being in a state of flow, and I’ve never really thought of it in this context before. I don’t know a lot about it. From my understanding, it’s like a almost like a positive psychology sort of term, and it’s about, you know, the good life, enjoying yourself, well-being. And I just wondered I mean, I’m assuming you’re talking about it in the same sense, though. You’re talking about fully immersing yourself in something, it’s like you’re saying, so it almost feels like you’re not learning because you’re so focused on what you’re doing. I just wondered if you’ve obviously, there can definitely be educational pros of that, well-being even in education, I guess. But have you considered, I don’t know, measuring well-being in terms of if they’re doing a flow activity. I mean, maybe they’re not getting to flow. I don’t know. But, you know, have you have you considered that, like measuring these sort of psychological outcomes?
Paul Newbury: (21:23)
Not specifically like that. I mean, I we do sort of get that because, obviously, we get feedback on our modules, and we can see whether the students are enjoying it, and you will get feedback, ‘oh, I particularly enjoyed this this thing when we did that’. So we are getting sort of some positive feedback. But, no, I mean, I think it’d be a really interesting idea to have a more sort of objective measure of that in terms of the teaching with gamification. It’s a tricky thing to measure, though. I mean, I think in a laboratory situation, you could say, oh, yeah, I can see that they’re now really engaged and let’s time this. But that obviously varies for different students. Somebody might only engage for a little while, but actually might find it really, really very useful. Absorbing might get a lot done, and some students might be engaged for a long time, but not at that level. So it’s a really tricky thing to measure. But I think in general from the feedback that we get, it’s the oh, well, yeah, we like the gamification code components. And you’d imagine that should have to mean, obviously, games are very exciting, but you only have to look at a number of mobile apps that are these sort of idle type games where you’re doing sort of progression and you’re adding things every time you use the app and how engaging they are and how many people download them that these things must help with engagement and flow.
Jennifer Mankin:
I actually have just been struggling with this question as well because the study that I’m actually running right now is about how well students enjoyed the session, you know, and enjoyed participating in the Kahoot and that sort of thing. And I had quite a few conversations with the students who have been working with me on this project about how we measure this, and they’ve looked at some of the, like, questionnaire measures for flow and motivation and a few other elements that we expect to sort of feed into how well people engage. This kind of engagement giant, air quotes, measure of that we’re this magical thing that we’re trying to create and measure, but it’s very complex and has a lot of moving pieces. And as you said, looks different for different people. So we have developed a measure that we are using in our study that’s – novel makes it sound a little bit more exciting than it is – but we’re going to hopefully collect some data on that and find out whether it sort of stands up in terms of whether it’s internally consistent and measures more or less what we expect it to measure. And I have a student who’s going to be doing some analysis about that down the road. So at the moment, like, flow state or kind of some attempt to capture flow state is part of that measure. I think it is, as Paul said, quite difficult, especially because if you are in a flow state, you’re often not aware of it by the fact that you are so deep in it that you’re not paying attention. So that makes it quite difficult – the moment you start reflecting on it, then you’re out of it. So and we found it quite difficult to write questions about that. Things like, you know, I was so engaged that I lost track of time. You know? And then we thought, well, what if you didn’t lose track of time, but you were so engaged that it felt like time went more quickly or more slow you know? And so we had quite a lot of really useful conversations about what do we think this looks like, and what’s a reasonable thing for people to respond to so that we can measure this in a way that makes sense? So I don’t have an answer for that yet, but hopefully, we’ll be able to say something about at least how people responded to that measure and the patterns that we can find in those responses to see if we can come up with a nice way to measure engagement in the future.
Wendy Garnham: (25:06)
I feel another podcast episode coming on further down the line. It did actually make me think. I mean, at the moment, I’m just trying to learn Japanese using one of these sort of gamified language apps. And everything that you’re saying just really makes sense in terms of that, so you get little badges. You can see where you are on the leaderboard. You can get promoted to the next league or demoted. But it is really sort of based on short chunks of learning. So, you know, even if you’ve only got five minutes, you can go and you can do like one so called lesson. And it just is amazing, like, how much you pick up from doing that. But it is all presented as a game. You know, it’s like you’re doing like a little short chunk. And if you do that chunk, you get this much XP and that much XP will contribute to your place on the leaderboard. And so it is quite rewarding, but it is I think if it was like longer chunks that you had to complete, it would lose some of that novelty. And I think that sort of sense of, you know, what we’re calling the flow state would just disappear a little bit because you become much more aware that you’re spending a long time doing it. But I think it’s like that short burst of, you know, game-based learning and doing that sort of, you know, to achieve a certain goal, badge, position on the board, something like that is quite addictive, I think, and just really effective.
But that brings me to the last question. And this is a big one, which is what advice would you give to anyone regarding scholarship in the area of gamification?
Jennifer Mankin:
I mean, for any type of scholarship, for any type of research, you have to define ahead of time really clearly what is it that I want to know, but I think scholarship involving gamification is complex, not necessarily uniquely complex, but you are looking at several areas, which is not only what have my students learned, are they enjoying it, you know, what are their academic outcomes, but then what are the gamification outcomes, and how do those interact with the learning outcomes? And then there’s kind of quite a lot of moving pieces, and I think it can be quite easy to lose track of those things. And so having, like, some really kind of well defined, what is it that I want my students to get out of this? And I think the other half of that is that designing scholarship around gamification is intrinsically caught up in designing gamification, which I would say I have some experience doing myself, but I’m by no means an expert, like Paul is, for instance, in designing games. But it’s just like anything else. The longer you think about it and the more you look at it, the more complex it is and the deeper down the rabbit hole you’re going to fall. And I think it’s quite tempting sometimes to want to do a lot, especially to start out with, like, oh, we could introduce badges, and then we could have XP, and then we could have progression, then we can have leaderboards, and then we have blah blah blah blah. And it’s all very exciting, but I hope that other people who have more time than I do can do that kind of thing. But it’s so exciting to get started on, but then it quickly becomes very overwhelming. So, if you were thinking about introducing gamification into some of your teaching, I would say start really small. Start simple with something that’s straightforward, easy to explain to your students, easy to measure, like, easy to implement, and don’t get too carried away right at the beginning because any like, anything that’s fun, I think, will usually be beneficial and will have a positive impact. But don’t get too, like, stuck in straight away because that can really become overwhelming quite quickly for you and for your students.
Wendy Garnham:(28:54)
I think one of the big sort of misconceptions often with scholarship is that, if you are engaging in scholarship, it does have to be some major big project where I think quite often some of the more simple, small changes that we make can actually have quite a big impact. So I think that is a really important point to take from that.
Paul Newbury:
Yes. I think Jennifer’s right. Start small is a good place to start. I think quite a fun thing to do at the beginning, just because gamification, it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Get an idea of what is meant by gamification and what those things are. A fun thing you can do is download a couple of games on your phone, and particularly these sort of free-to-download in-ad type games, they all have these a significant number of these gamification components that we’re talking about. And they are trying to sell that. They’re trying to make the game as engaging as possible. So if you download a little word search game, you could play it for a few minutes and think about how it is trying to engage you. So it’s not just a word search like you used to get those the magazines for the word searches. There’ll be a set number of levels you can go through and you’re getting rewards and you have leaderboards, but there’s lots of different sort of engaging components in each of these. And, yeah, you may play it for 5 minutes and go, oh, yeah. now I want to delete it because it’s making me watch ads every minute. That’s fine. But if you download a few of those, you’d get an idea about across the board how these gamification components work in a game and then think, well, how can that be applied to the learning components within my module and things I can do? So are there any other things there that were really engaging? And maybe even some of the sort of the gameplay functionality you might think, well, actually, I could incorporate that in terms of, oh, maybe I’ll actually put a word search in there. But looking at these games and the things that make them engaging, I think, is a really nice and easy way to start thinking about gamification in terms of your scholarship and in terms of your module development.
Heather Taylor:(31:05)
I would like to thank our guests, Jennifer Mankin and Paul Newbury.
Jennifer Mankin and Paul Newbury:
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Heather Taylor:
And thank you for listening. Goodbye.
This has been the Learning Matters podcast from the University of Sussex, created by Sarah Watson, Wendy Garnham, and Heather Taylor, and produced by Simon Overton. For more episodes, as well as articles, blogs, case studies, and infographics, please visit blogs.sussex.ac.uk/learning-matters.
The Learning Matters Podcast captures insights into, experiences of, and conversations around education at the University of Sussex. The podcast is hosted by Prof Wendy Garnham and Dr Heather Taylor. It is recorded monthly, and each month is centred around a particular theme. The theme of our sixth episode is ‘embedding employability into the curriculum’, and we will hear from Emily Huns (Head of Careers, Employability & Entrepreneurship).
Welcome to the Learning Matters Podcast from the University of Sussex, where we capture insights, experiences, and conversations around education at our institution and beyond. Our theme for this episode is employability and our guest today is Emily Huns, Head of Careers, Employability, and Entrepreneurship. Our names are Wendy Garnham and Heather Taylor and we are your presenters today. Welcome everyone.
Heather Taylor:
Hello.
Emily Huns:
Hello.
Wendy Garnham:
Emily, could you tell us a bit about your role as Head of Careers, Employability, and Entrepreneurship at the University?
Emily Huns:
I can. So really nice to be here to start off with. My role is to drive activity that empowers and enables our students to be ready for next steps after graduation. So that’s whether those next steps are a job or postgraduate study or something else. And the scope of that activity is really very wide. I manage the university’s careers and entrepreneurship team. There are around 30 of us. And to give you some examples of what we do, we work really closely with faculty colleagues to consider with them how they might adapt their curriculum to enhance employability learning. But we run a big programme of extracurricular support as well. So for example, we run a high scale programme of employer led activity, things like 600 work experience opportunities, a vacancy site, recruitment fairs, alumni networking events. We run a programme of support for students who are seeking a placement year. And we support around 800 students every year to create their own work experience by starting maybe a creative project or a social enterprise or business. So really wide scope working with students from their arrival through to 3 years after graduation and very closely with staff as well.
Simon Overton:
Here’s a producer question. Can you expand a little bit? You said creating their own work experience opportunities. What does that mean?
Emily Huns:
Yeah. Well, actually one of the things that graduate recruiters prize most highly is initiative and a proactive approach. So one of the things we do, I think really well at Sussex is to give students the opportunity to be entrepreneurial. They may indeed rather than wish to do an internship, prefer to start their own project. There may be something they want to do in the community. They may already be running, you know, a new sports team. They may already be looking at solving a problem out there in the world which they could potentially turn into a profit-making business. So actually giving them the tools to generate, to design, to explore, to test, and to get something new out there in the world is one of the best ways actually to impress employers. And of course, they may go on to found themselves a business and become an employer themselves, or they may take those entrepreneurial skills into somebody else’s business. So either way they win.
Simon Overton:
Do you have some examples of students that have done that that you can share?
Emily Huns:
I do. I do. So at the very least, 30 plus students every year register new businesses having been part of the programme. So examples off the top of my head, one of our students identified a growing problem of drink spiking in clubs and pubs and has designed a new product for people to put over their glass to kind of protect it. We had somebody, an engineering student who’s designed an app to boost mobile connectivity. So just two examples. But really everything and anything in this country and other countries as well. Social enterprises, a lot of that. With a lot with environmental themes too. So solution provision really.
Heather Taylor:
Why is embedding employability within the higher education curriculum so important?
Emily Huns (04:19):
One word answer to that is inclusiveness. Because we all know that today’s student is really time poor. It’s expensive being a student and cost of living is high. So most students in the country are working. A lot of our students have other responsibilities in their lives as well. We cannot expect all of our students to have the time to, outside of the curriculum, seek the work experience that they all now need in order to get a graduate job, full stop. That work experience can come in all shapes and sizes, as I’ve mentioned, you know, they could be creating their own work experience, could be doing internship, they could do part-time work that’s very challenging, they could be doing volunteering, which showcases their skills. But they do all need to do something, probably several things. If we’re not putting some of that learning into the curriculum, some of that applied learning, some of that perhaps connectivity to employers, or at the very least instructing students what they need to do to become employable, then we are letting our students down. So in the curriculum is the only place it’s safe to ensure then that all students have the basic level of skills development and experience alongside their subject knowledge. By the way, while we’re talking about inclusiveness, all of our 600 CareerLab work experiences are paid at the living wage or above.
Wendy Garnham:
That leads us really nicely onto the next question, which is what does employability look like when it is effectively embedded into a curriculum?
Emily Huns (06:08):
Well, this is a great question and something that my team and I’ve been working on supporting the university with for a number of years. Because of course, there’s some elements of choice in that, but we also need to be really data led and make sure that what we’re advising really does work. So I think I would probably want to start with a really important principle about embedding in the curriculum, is that anything that we embed needs to enhance subject learning and the sorts of skills that they would be developing anyway, perhaps, within the subject. So enhance, not dilute subject. That’s really important. But in terms of what it looks like, I think there are five or more things I’d probably want to say here, and I’ll probably sort of kick myself and realize I’ve dropped a couple out afterwards. We have a new academic framework coming in imminently at the university, will outline things really clearly for our faculty colleagues. But I think that we need to embed recognition of value. So what I mean by that is that learning outcomes should be explicit, where there are employability skills that are being learned through a module or a course, learning outcomes should state that explicitly. And that is because it is one of the ways that students can recognise the value of what they’re learning on a course. And it’s only through recognising it that they can sell it on to future employers. And when we talk to lots of our students, they don’t realise what great stuff they’re getting. And that’s actually quite a, you know, a common barrier. It’s there, but it’s hidden to their eyes. So that’s really important. And then of course, it’s not enough just to put them in learning outcomes, but our teaching staff need to be able to talk about those things and help students to reflect on those aspects. That’s one thing.
I think the second thing is the opportunity throughout the curriculum to apply subject knowledge and skills to real world scenarios. Preferably, those real world scenarios are provided live by employers and external organisations because that really brings it to life for students. So they might, for example, be collaborating in a group on a live challenge faced by a local employer. Or an employer on this side of the world. It’s something real where they can work collaboratively, find solutions, pitch back their solutions and recognise then the change that they’ve created for that external organisation. Essentially that sort of thing is a de facto work experience in the curriculum which they can then use in order to apply for extracurricular opportunities too, which is nice for them. So that’s the second thing.
I think where feasible, building in even more sort of obvious work experience is obviously great. At Sussex, we give almost all of our undergraduates the opportunity to do a 40-week placement year between year 2 and year 3 or year 4. So in the year 3. But there are also courses with shorter periods of work experience built in. So if feasible, that’s good. Actually, at Sussex, we consider entrepreneurial skills to be part of employability, the employability skill set, because we hope that we are making our students ready for a global job market. And increasingly we see that managed risk taking and creative thinking and complex problem solving and the sorts of things that were traditionally sort of sitting in the entrepreneurial skill set now are important for everybody to develop. So that’s an aspect.
And then there is something around career management. So students graduate hopefully with a skill set, subject knowledge and a set of experiences. Put all those things into their suitcase and they have employability assets. But that’s no good if they don’t know how to deploy them to get a job or next step opportunity. So this is what we call career management skills. And that’s things like understanding their options, exploring those options and broadening them out if necessary and then navigating. So finding the vacancies that will interest them and being successful in their applications.
Wendy Garnham (11:17):
Sounds as if there’s quite a big role to play for assessment and designing assessments to really emphasise some of those skills and abilities and really giving opportunities, I guess.
Emily Huns:
You’re absolutely right, yes. And authenticity and assessment is as a lovely vehicle for embedding employability indeed
Wendy Garnham:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think that’s one of the things that I think is increasingly coming through in terms of the story of employability, is just being able to give students the opportunity to demonstrate skills and really then sort of making it clear that that’s the sort of thing that, you know, they can showcase.
Emily Huns:
Absolutely. Yeah. Where it’s appropriate to the discipline, actually giving them an opportunity to be assessed on something that is very authentic that they in a format that maybe they will use as a graduate in the job market is a really important aspect of it.
Wendy Garnham:
Very valuable.
Heather Taylor (12:15):
How can lecturers collaborate with your team to embed employability into their curriculum?
Emily Huns:
Well, we welcome that. Clearly, it is our faculty colleagues who lead on curriculum review and development. So all they really need to do is to ask. And we have a team of careers consultants. Each consultant is linked to each of our academic schools. If they approach their careers consultant, the consultant will meet with them and can talk through what might be possible, what perhaps their vision is, share practice from across the university and the sector, and support them in getting something off the ground. It may be a series of small tweaks, it may be quite a revolutionary addition to a module, it may even be a new module, but there’s always enhancements that we can make together.
Wendy Garnham:
And so I know earlier you mentioned the university’s got a new academic framework imminent. How does the work of you and your team support the university’s new academic framework?
Emily Huns:
Well, we fed into it in the first instance to work with colleagues in faculty on what the blueprint for employability at Sussex should and could be. And I’m really excited about its launch, because it’s a milestone in terms of having that blueprint in writing and official, and we will obviously be using it really when we’re talking with faculty colleagues who are asking, right, you know, what does employability in the curriculum look like? What could it look like? What could we do?
Heather Taylor:
So I actually think you probably answered this final question a little bit earlier when producer Simon gave you those extra questions on the spot. But in case we missed anything, in addition to embedding employability, what other career support does the university provide for students?
Emily Huns (14:23):
Right. Well, we did talk about our extracurricular program and I would say in summary, we provide a really quite a wide range of activity, almost a menu for students to pick from. So we appreciate that every student has a different set of starting points and a different set of constraints, opportunities, interests. So our menu is broad and hopefully reflects that set of interests. We run something called CareerLab. CareerLab is around a thousand opportunities for students to develop skills and experience and connect to employers. I talked briefly about the 600 work experience opportunities that sit within that, but maybe to focus in a bit more on that – so we run conventional internships with local employers. We also run a strand of our internship activity with employers outside the UK. And for these opportunities, students work remotely, which is nice and flexible and works really well for students whatever their circumstances and backgrounds. It’s also a way of developing this world readiness that we talk about a lot at Sussex, knowing that a lot of our students will work globally. Indeed, everyone to some extent now works in that way.
Another strand of work experience under CareerLab is our student consultancy, which has been expanding a lot in recent years. This is where students gather in multidisciplinary groups around a live brief put by a real organisation, either in our region or elsewhere. Very commonly, it has an environmental focus. We’re asking students in a supported way to tackle that problem and put their solutions back to the business. And very commonly, actually, business does then adopt the recommendations. So for example, we have had a team of students providing some recommendations to the Ridgeview wine estate on how to make the byproducts of their processes recyclable and reusable. Those solutions have been taken up, we understand, by the organization. But students are working for a real range of businesses and charities.
I think the final thing to mention is that we give access to digital accelerators. Digital skills are such a big thing, students often need a bit of learning around that. Recruiters talk about it a lot. So we do give students access to digital accelerators under CareerLab as well. And then we’ve talked about the entrepreneurship programme and that opportunity to create their own work experience.
Wendy Garnham (17:28):
It sounds as though whatever the time available is that students have, there’s something that you can find for them to really boost their employability. I think just one of the things that I’m really aware of, certainly with the students I teach, is that time management is one of the biggest hurdles. Trying to organise their independent study time and, you know, attending all their sort of taught sessions and then finding the time outside of that for employability is something that’s very difficult. But I guess if we’re embedding it more, it sort of, you know, one, becomes more integrated, but it does sound as though, you know, whatever the time restriction is, there’s something they could do to add to their value as a future employee.
Emily Huns:
Absolutely. I would agree with that. That’s what we’re aiming for. And I think that what you say there, Wendy, also flags how important it is early on in the curriculum to grab students’ attention and explain how important it is to do what they can with the time they do have. We have modules, for example, that bring panels of employers in early on to talk really authentically about options with that degree subject, and how those alumni have built experiences just little by little over the course of their degree that’s helped them then to get a great job. So working early in the curriculum, developing the experience and applied learning in the curriculum, making sure students reflect on the skills that they are absolutely developing through the curriculum, and encouraging them to pick the bits of the menu of support that work for them. Yeah, that’s what we’re aiming for.
Wendy Garnham:
Yeah, and I think it’s more as well, there’s some more emphasis on us as tutors to really emphasise why we’re doing certain things in the way that we’re doing them in terms of the employability agenda, you know, how it will sort of feed into their future employment experiences, I guess.
Emily Huns (19:44):
One thing I forgot to mention actually is that one of the strands of the CareerLab Work Experience scheme is our Junior Research Associate opportunity where our undergraduates join research teams in the university and work on live research. It’s obviously a fantastic way of developing skills, but also of getting an insight into the life of an academic.
Heather Taylor:
How do you work with employers?
Emily Huns:
Lots of different ways, and in more and more creative ways actually to support the embedding agenda at Sussex. So it is a very important part of our role that, where appropriate, we are inviting the employer voice onto campus to share with us the skills that they are struggling to find in graduates. And that is our cohort of local employers here in Sussex, but further afield of course as well, and particularly where sectors speak to Sussex disciplines. So for example, we’ve had a group of employers on campus recently to feed into curriculum evolution in a particular subject area. That was a really nice dialogue. We asked the employers questions, they responded. They challenged us, they agreed with some of the ideas that we were mooting. And we’ve come away clearer about some of the ways that we evolved the curriculum, and with some other things to think about. So that’s one of the ways we work with employers.
More obviously, I guess, we work with employers in terms of bringing them into the curriculum, directly to speak to students. We’ve talked about our student consultancy model, for example, where maybe even as early as the first year, employers push a very live challenge to student groups and they work through that, and maybe even are assessed on their pitches of solutions back to the employer. Outside of the curriculum, they are joining us for recruitment fairs, they’re coming to networking events to connect up with students, and they’re actually very generous in terms of their time hosting interns and hosting student consultant teams, you know, to help us to scale and scale and scale the number of work experience opportunities that we’re able to provide.
Heather Taylor:
I would like to thank Emily and thank you everyone for listening. Goodbye.
This has been the Learning Matters podcast from the University of Sussex, created by Sarah Watson, Wendy Garnham, and Heather Taylor, and produced by Simon Overton. For more episodes, as well as articles, blogs, case studies, and infographics, please visit the Learning Matters Forum.
Workshops: Neurodiversity Affirming Pedagogies (Em Harrison) and Student Co-Creation in the Curriculum (Dr Carli Rowell)
The final day of Inclusivity Week brought together two rich sessions focused on the importance of student partnership in shaping inclusive pedagogies. Both initiatives were funded by the University’s Education and Innovation Fund, and it was excellent to see the respective outputs that the Fund supported—each demonstrating brilliant work.
Neurodiversity Affirming Pedagogies
Led by Em Harrison (Assistant Professor in Digital Practice)
This session brought together ten participants to explore the principles of neurodiversity affirming pedagogies. Em began with a gentle icebreaker—name, pronouns, and what had drawn people to the session—before grounding the group in the foundations of the neurodiversity movement: a challenge to the idea of a single “normal” mind and a call to celebrate cognitive diversity as a natural and valuable form of human variation.
Em shared findings from an Education and Innovation Funded project, involving both staff and students at Sussex who identified as neurodivergent. The first stage was an anonymous survey exploring the barriers faced in teaching, learning and working environments. This was followed by a participatory research workshop aimed at consulting the neurodivergent community and piloting neurodiversity-informed teaching approaches.
The findings, viewed through an intersectional lens, highlighted a range of challenges for neurodivergent students in higher education:
A lack of clarity around expectations for participation, attendance, and Canvas navigation
Sensory overwhelm in learning spaces—from lighting to noise to the smell of hot drinks
Barriers created by inconsistent or overwhelming communication (e.g. unclear deadlines, email overload)
Barriers in disclosing neurodivergence at university, particularly for students who described their ethnicity as ‘black’ or ‘ethnic minority living in the UK’
Generic or ineffective reasonable adjustments, including inaccessible software or blanket extensions.
Em encouraged the group to reflect on how these insights might inform our practice. Some changes, like checking lighting in teaching spaces or discussing norms around movement and participation, are simple but can have a big impact. Others require broader shifts, like universal design approaches to curriculum and assessment.
Key takeaways included:
Clear communication: Use plain English, avoid unnecessary jargon and abbreviations
Inclusive materials: Use off-white backgrounds, sans serif fonts, and visual icons
Assessment support: Provide assessment exemplars and consolidate assessment information in one place
Flexibility and variety: Use multiple media formats where possible with regards to communicating course content and inviting student engagement with the content.
Shared ownership: Involve students in shaping the sensory and structural environment of the classroom
This session was a call not only for awareness, but for meaningful change—one rooted in listening, learning, and action.
Please see Em’s slides, which contain brilliant resources and guidance on inclusive teaching practices. Note, the Neurodiversity Affirming Pedagogies toolkit will be available soon and linked to from this blog post.
Student Co-Creation in the Curriculum
Led by Dr Carli Rowell (Associate Professor in Sociology)
The final session of the week, facilitated by Dr Carli Rowell, offered a case study in co-creation with students as a mode of inclusive pedagogy. Carli shared how she designed and delivered a second-year Sociology module—Class, Culture and Conflict: A View from Within—in collaboration with four working-class students, funded initially through the Student Connector programme and then evaluated via the Education and Innovation Fund.
What emerged was a student-centred module shaped by lived experience of class. Students were not merely consulted on curriculum content, they designed it. They reviewed topics, crafted reading lists, designed assessments, and gathered peer feedback.
Co-creation, Carli argued, is about more than diversifying content. It means rethinking power in the classroom: Who decides what is taught? Whose knowledge is valued? How are students positioned—as consumers, or as contributors?
The benefits were clear:
Students developed leadership and communication skills
They felt greater belonging and ownership of the curriculum
The process surfaced previously marginalised perspectives and fostered critical engagement
It encouraged flexible and inclusive teaching methods rooted in mutual respect
Even without significant funding, Carli offered practical ways to embed co-creation:
Invite students to suggest readings or seminar topics
Provide space for lived experience in assessment
Reflect on the emotional and social dynamics of the classroom, not just content delivery
From neurodiversity-affirming teaching to working-class student partnership, the two final sessions of the week shared a common thread: that inclusivity isn’t achieved through surface-level interventions, but through deep, ongoing relationships with students.
Inclusivity Week ended not with neat solutions, but with questions that invite us to reimagine our classrooms:
What if students helped shape not just what we teach, but how we teach it?
What if difference wasn’t something we “accommodate”, but something we celebrate, expect, and design for?
As the week drew to a close, participants left with the sense that inclusive teaching is a shared responsibility—and that every small shift in practice can help transform a student’s experience of belonging. The workshops, along with this series of blog posts, provide resources and guidance to support both small and significant changes.
I encourage you to read the five short blog posts that complement the week’s events:
Use these resources to identify some short- and longer-term changes you can make to your pedagogic practice to foster greater inclusivity.
Universities are institutions embedded in a history of hierarchy and exclusion. In many ways, this legacy—and its enduring impact on the student experience—remains invisible. It exists in the language we use, the content we teach, our assessment practices. It shapes our curriculum in ways we often overlook.
Inclusivity Week offered practical guidance on how we can begin to unpick these embedded prejudices and create spaces that are truly for everyone—spaces that bring people in, rather than keep them out. And, most importantly, it reminded us to celebrate diversity as an opportunity for learning and growth.
Workshops: Embedding Inclusive and Decolonial Practices in Biosciences Curricula (Professor Zahid Pranjol) and The Co-Creation Approach to Academic Advising (Dr Hadir Elshafie)
As Inclusivity Week progressed, Day 4 brought a sharp focus to two essential elements of educational equity: curriculum reform and academic advising. Both sessions invited us to look beneath the surface—at the roots of our knowledge systems and the mindsets that shape student success.
Embedding inclusive and decolonial practices in biosciences curricula
Led by Professor Zahid Pranjol
Professor Zahid Pranjol opened the session by confronting a common misconception: that decolonising the curriculum means erasing or dismissing the past. On the contrary, it’s about enriching education by questioning dominant knowledge systems, uncovering marginalised voices, and situating what we teach within broader histories of colonialism and power.
Decolonising the curriculum, he argued, isn’t simply about ‘adding diversity’ or tweaking reading lists—it’s an interrogation of our ways of knowing. Who is included in the narrative, and who is left out? What have we validated through repeated citation, and what have we neglected through omission?
In the science disciplines, 95% of reading lists are authored by white scholars, and 85% by men. Zahid encouraged participants to:
Highlight historical biases and their present-day implications
Embed content from non-Western contexts and voices
Create inclusive teaching and assessment modes
Link curricula to employability and student representation
Acknowledge systemic racism in academia through policy (such as the Race Equity Action Plan)
Examples included recognising the scientific contributions of Black and Indigenous scholars, drawing from the Islamic Golden Age, and exploring co-curricular materials that situate contemporary issues like vaccine inequality and COVID-19 health disparities within a historical framework.
Project-Based Learning (PBL) emerged as a key strategy—one that helps students from diverse backgrounds work collaboratively and critically. And beyond curriculum content, visibility matters: diverse role models in teaching, representation in classroom materials, and celebration of identities across religion, gender, and sexuality all help to foster inclusive learning spaces.
The session challenged attendees not just to ‘diversify’ science but to reconsider how science is taught, understood, and contextualised.
Dr Hadir Elshafie ask participants: how can we support students to develop their authentic voice, rather than a borrowed one?
Drawing on over 300 one-to-one sessions with students in her role as advisor and wellbeing lead in the Law School, Hadir introduced a co-creation model of academic advising rooted in curiosity, action, and personal reflection. Instead of focusing solely on ‘problems’—like improving grammar or mastering structure—this approach asks deeper questions: Why did this reading frustrate you? What does this topic mean to you personally?
Using a tree metaphor, she described the difference between:
Problem-focused advising: addressing surface-level issues (the branches and leaves), which may bring short-term results but lead to pedagogical dependency
Person-focused advising: nurturing the roots—student mindset, confidence, and identity—which supports long-term growth and self-sustainability
Academic advising, she reminded us, is not a one-way transaction but a relationship. It’s about listening, asking thoughtful questions, and building trust. Through micro-encounters and structured conversations, advisors can help students build agency, develop critical thinking, and align with the university’s broader sustainability goals.
During the session, Hadir asked participants to look at the photograph of a dense forest canopy, mostly made up of rich green foliage. Among the sea of green trees, one tree stands out prominently in bright yellow, creating a striking contrast. What do you notice? Would you say the yellow tree is the original—the first of its kind—or is it authentic in another sense? This leads us to consider: while each new tree may not be the original, can it be understood as authentic in its own right?
In one-to-one academic support, Hadir recommends prioritising curiosity and authenticity over competition and originality. Authenticity fosters reflective, person-centred conversations that empower students to connect with their values, rather than focusing on external benchmarks of originality and comparison.
Hadir expands upon this approach to academic advising in an article for Wonkhe.
Shared insight: authentic voice as the thread of inclusivity
Across both sessions, the notion of authentic voice emerged as a central thread running through. Whether interrogating whose voices are missing in the biosciences curriculum or guiding students away from generic essay-writing skills and toward genuine personal insight, the message was clear: inclusive teaching begins when we allow students to be themselves.
By questioning the norms of what is taught and how we teach it, and by meeting students with curiosity rather than correction, we can transform the curriculum and student experience.
Workshops: Creating Accessible Digital Documents and Resources: led by Faye Brockwell (Learning Technologist) and Maintaining Attention in Lectures
Led by Dr. Sophie Forster (Reader in Cognitive Neuroscience)
Creating Accessible Digital Documents and Resources
Led by Faye Brockwell
With most attendees joining for a refresher, this workshop underscored that accessibility is not a one-time task, but an ongoing practice. As Faye pointed out, we all pick up bad habits—this session helped us refocus on why accessibility matters, how to check our materials, and where to go for support.
At Sussex, 30% of students have a declared disability. That means accessibility isn’t optional—it’s essential. In addition, many of the accessibility techniques benefit all learners, not just those with declared needs.
Faye introduced key tools for digital accessibility:
Accessibility checkers in both Canvas and Microsoft Office are a great place to start—just spotting issues is a win
Text-based alternatives should always accompany visual content like graphs, videos or diagrams
Alt text should be used with all images (even in emails) to describe the image’s purpose, not just its content
Use minimal colours—three per page is a good rule—and avoid using colour alone to convey meaning
Create meaningful links using descriptive text instead of pasting the full URL or using vague terms like “click here.”
Headings and styles in Word, Canvas, and PowerPoint help screen readers navigate documents and slides properly
A key message? You don’t need to retroactively fix every old file—but you can commit to doing better from now on.
The session closed with a reminder of the ‘why’: without accessible formatting, partially sighted students may be forced to read through entire document rather than jumping to what’s relevant. It’s not about box-ticking—it’s about making our content usable and inclusive for everyone.
The afternoon session tackled a key question: how do we hold students’ attention in a world full of distraction? Drawing on cognitive science, Sophie explored how attention works and why it matters so much for learning outcomes.
Inattentive traits, like difficulty focusing, mind-wandering, or distraction, can significantly affect academic performance, even among undiagnosed students. Attention is a deeply heritable trait, but also one educators can help shape.
Key takeaways:
Attention fluctuates, but it can be influenced by teaching design.
Students mind-wander during around 30% of lectures.
Attention is not just about willpower, but about how engaging and digestible our content is.
Sophie offered recommendations of simple, inclusive techniques:
Consider incorporating real-world examples, anecdotes, or humour to build engagement.
Break content into smaller segments using interactive elements such as interpolated testing, polling tools, or micro-interactions (e.g. “talk to your neighbour for a minute”).
Assume that most students will ‘zone out’ at some point during the lecture—what would be the worst parts for them to miss, and how can you prevent or mitigate this? For example, you could say, “This next bit is really important,” or “If you’re going to focus for 10 minutes in this lecture, focus now!”
Let students know the structure of the session and when there will be breaks.
Participants reviewed their own teaching content, asking:
What is the key information I need to deliver?
Are there long periods without interaction?
The message was clear: cut content where necessary, and add flavour, interaction, and salience. This isn’t about making learning “entertaining” for its own sake, it’s about helping students absorb, retain, and stay present.
Sophie also provided two book recommendations that can support maintaining students’ attention during lectures and seminars:
Storyworthyby Matthew Dicks. The author is a multiple winner of ‘The Moth’ storytelling competition (it’s also a podcast). I found this helpful not just for lecturing but also for grant writing.
The serious guide to joke writing: How to say something funny about anythingby Sally Holloway. This book has practical techniques that can be used to create a joke about any topic (i.e. including very dry and unfunny topics – the author’s background was in writing jokes about the news) in a way that I think lends itself well to lectures (and bear in mind, these ‘jokes’ could be delivered in lectures either verbally or as visual jokes on the slides, depending on the lecturer’s style and preferences).
Shared message: Inclusive teaching starts with thoughtful design
Both sessions reminded us that inclusive teaching is not about grand gestures—it’s about intentional design. Whether that’s making sure screen readers can read your Word document or ensuring students aren’t left behind by overly dense lectures, we have the tools (and support) to teach in more inclusive ways.
Inclusivity Week Day 3 offered two powerful, practical lenses for building better teaching: accessibility and attention. When both are thoughtfully considered, the result is a more engaging and equitable learning experience for everyone.
Workshops: Decolonising the Curriculum (Tobey Ahamed-Barke), Reasonable Adjustments at Sussex: Policy and Practice led by Graeme Pedlingham and From Bystander to Upstander led by Dr. Özden Melis Uluğ.
Across three sessions—on decolonising the curriculum, the evolving Reasonable Adjustments policy, and bystander intervention—attendees were encouraged to reflect on how teaching practices can be reimagined to better support student voice, belonging, and empowerment.
Workshop 1: Decolonising the Curriculum
Led by Tobey Ahamed-Barke
The day began with a question written across a whiteboard: Why do we need to decolonise the curriculum? Post-it notes from participants quickly filled the space—referencing awarding gaps, Eurocentric canons, and the need to reflect diverse perspectives and lived experiences in the curriculum.
Tobey encouraged attendees to think beyond reading lists, framing decolonisation as both content and pedagogy. What emerged was a shared understanding that decolonising means rethinking knowledge production itself—centering global perspectives, challenging historical hierarchies, and designing modules that speak to a diverse student body.
Drawing on his work as Race Equity Advocate in Media, Arts and Humanities, Tobey introduced four guiding principles (with associated prompts) to support inclusive module design:
Is this module global?
Whose voices are centred?
Are all topics taught equally?
Might my choices adversely impact students?
The conversation moved from theory to practice with discussions not only of the content we teach, but how we teach it. This means we could flip the traditional lecture-seminar order, encourage personal reflection in assessments, and design safer classroom cultures where all students—especially those from underrepresented backgrounds—feel confident to participate.
This workshop highlighted the importance that discussions such as these are had with students, between departments, and at every level of the University. This way, Sussex can holistically engage its curriculum with decolonial praxis, with a mission of positive student experience at its core.
Workshop 2: Reasonable Adjustments at Sussex: Review and Practice
Led by Professor Graeme Pedlingham
The session offered attendees early insight into changes coming out of the University’s Reasonable Adjustments Review—developed in response to the findings of the Natasha Abrahart case.
These changes, while grounded in existing legal obligations, signal a culture shift at Sussex. The review explicitly adopts a social model of disability, that shifts the focus from the individual to attempting to address societal barriers. Graeme also stressed that reasonable adjustments should not be confused with convenient adjustments. As Graeme noted, real inclusion requires consideration of how we develop our systems, cultural attitudes, and everyday teaching delivery.
Participants discussed challenges surrounding in-class assessments, communication between teams across the University, and trying to avoid a burden being placed on students (e.g. if they find themselves repeatedly disclosing and explaining their disabilities). Students in the session discussed the impact of being called on to speak in lectures, expressing that it made them feel uncomfortable and unconfident. They suggested that this approach be reconsidered in teaching practice.
Over 30% of new Home undergraduate students joining Sussex last year declared a disability. This is above the national average. It is therefore vital to make our education inclusive by design.
There was strong consensus that inclusive teaching must be integrated into curriculum and module design, not added on later. A recurring recommendation? Make inclusive pedagogy and Reasonable Adjustments training a standing item at Faculty meetings—and embed them into core curriculum development.
Workshop 3: From Bystander to Upstander
Led by Dr. Özden Melis Uluğ
In the final workshop of the day, led by social psychologist Dr. Özden Melis Uluğ, participants explored how to move from a passive witness to an active ally when encountering discrimination in academic settings.
Melis introduced the Five D’s of bystander intervention—Distract, Delegate, Direct, Document, and Delay—and invited participants to think about how each might be used in classroom settings.
The session also addressed the emotional and structural barriers that often prevent intervention, such as fear of escalation, uncertainty about what to say, and lack of institutional support when you do intervene.
Applying the Five Ds in the teaching space, the workshop also offered practical examples of how these approaches can be used in teaching spaces:
Distract: Redirect conversation after a harmful comment (e.g., “Let’s reflect on how cultural backgrounds shape interpretation.”)
Delegate: Consult with colleagues or students in the room (e.g., “Would anyone like to share how language like that might impact others in our community?”)
Direct: Acknowledge problematic language calmly but firmly (e.g., “That comment reinforces a stereotype, can you reflect on why that might be problematic?”)
Document: Keep notes of repeated incidents and share with an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Lead or the Director of Student Experience, as appropriate
Delay: Follow up with the affected students or colleagues to offer support and resources.
Moving from theory to practice
One of the key takeaways was that inclusive practice means acting with intention—not just designing inclusive curricula or issuing policies, but developing the interpersonal courage and cultural awareness to respond meaningfully to discrimination. Melis made the case for bystander training as part of mandatory staff development, possibly in a bite-sized, online format so that everyone at the university can access these essential tools.
A shared thread: Inclusion as practice
All three sessions underscored the importance of centring student voice—not as an outcome of inclusion, but as its foundation. Whether it’s redesigning content, shifting the structure of a session, or responding meaningfully to student needs, inclusion begins with listening and responding—with intention.
Workshops: Reading and Note-Making with AI (Martin Brown) and Designing Inclusive Learning Activities (Brena Collyer de Aguiar & Alice Taylor)
The sun was shining on the first day of Inclusivity Week—a fitting backdrop to a day that centred student voice, inclusive learning, and creative approaches to teaching.
Workshop 1: Reading and Note-Making with Generative AI
Led by Martin Brown
Facilitated by Dr Martin Brown, this session offered a deep dive into how academic writing confidence can be built through strategic note-making—particularly for students for whom English is an additional language.
Martin’s session was split into two halves: the first half was directed at educators; the second encouraged participants to put themselves in the students’ shoes and try out Martin’s note making framework.
Martin’s aim was to support students with heavy reading loads and low confidence in academic writing—challenges often heightened by linguistic and cultural barriers.
At the heart of the session was a note-making framework, designed to help students demystify academic expectations and develop their own academic voice – what do I need to capture in my notes, how long do my notes need to be, what information is relevant? Importantly, this framework incorporates the use of AI (such as Microsoft Copilot) in a purposeful and ethical way.
AI is used within Martin’s note-making framework as a support tool to help students structure and refine their understanding of academic texts. Students begin by reading the text themselves and making their own notes (using the headings from the framework), before using AI—such as Microsoft Copilot—to complement their thinking. Martin recommends using Microsoft Copilot because it is licenced by the University and all students and staff have access to it, and also because it protects user data. Prompts within Copilot must be clear and specific to be effective. For example, a student might copy and paste a section of a journal article into Copilot and ask: “Summarise the author’s main argument from pages 44–47,” or “Identify and explain the research methods used in this excerpt.” AI can also be asked to evaluate strengths and weaknesses or define key terms. Crucially, students are reminded never to rely on AI alone—the process is co-authored with AI, not outsourced. AI can make mistakes. The work generated by AI needs to be checked by the student. However, AI is a tool that can speed up the note-making process for students. Martin’s approach, therefore, not only strengthens critical engagement with reading material but also helps students see AI as a tool for learning, rather than a shortcut.
This workshop wasn’t just about AI—it was about empowering students in their note-making strategies and academic skills more broadly. It encouraged students to find their own voice rather than rely on a borrowed one, humanising the writing process, reducing fear, and making space for personal expression.
In the afternoon, Brena Collyer de Aguiar and Alice Taylor led a session rooted in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and inclusive instructional design.
After an opening activity (spot the difference) exploring barriers to learning, we were introduced to the three pillars of UDL:
Engagement (how learners are motivated)
Representation (how content is presented)
Action and Expression (how learners demonstrate knowledge)
The focus was on anticipating a wide range of learning needs—permanent needs, temporary needs, and situational needs—and creating environments where all students feel agency and ownership over their learning.
The session highlighted the value of storytelling, playful learning, and locative narratives (learning anchored to real-world places) as ways to make content more meaningful and inclusive.
Alice Taylor built on this by introducing the ADDIE model of instructional design (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation). We were encouraged to think of module design as iterative and collaborative—with evaluation and student feedback at every stage.
Brena and Alice encouraged participants to work in small teams to begin designing a module, drawing on UDL, storytelling, and the ADDIE model as they saw fit. It was refreshing to be able to select from a range of educational theories in a way that felt accessible and not overly complex.
A connecting thread between the workshops: student voice
Both workshops, in different ways, centred the importance of student identity and voice. Martin’s writing frame helps students find confidence in expressing their ideas, particularly in a second language. Brena and Alice’s frameworks help educators create spaces where students feel seen, heard, and empowered.
Whether through reflective note making or story-based learning, the message was clear: inclusive education isn’t just about removing barriers. It’s about making sure students recognise and value their own learning experiences and their academic identity.
Mark Bagley is a Professor of Organic Chemistry in the School of Life Sciences. Mark delivers many of the taught modules in Synthetic Organic Chemistry as part of the Chemistry degree programmes offered by the University and leads a vibrant research team in the School. Mark also serves as Degree Convenor of the Chemistry BSc and MChem UG programmes.
What I did
As part of a major review of our undergraduate Chemistry curriculum, I developed a new Level 5 module on ‘Researching and Communicating Chemistry’ which uses a 100% portfolio assessment designed to help students articulate their transferrable skills and experiences in a way that is relevant to future employers. This is one of a number of expressly skills focused modules woven through our new undergraduate curriculum, developed in collaboration with Kaz Field, our partner Careers and Employability Consultant, to scaffold students’ disciplinary and transferrable skills development from year one onwards.
Why I did it
Feedback from the Chemistry PSRB, the Royal Society of Chemistry, at our reaccreditation visit in May 2019 emphasized the need for a shift from our very academic focused curriculum to a more skills-oriented approach to match the shifting needs and expectations of employers and Chemistry graduates nationally. This coincided with a School wide curriculum review and an expansion of the remit of university Careers and Entrepreneurship Consultants at Sussex to support Schools to embed employability in the curriculum. One outcome of this was the creation of an Embedding Employability Steering Group, guided by Kaz, and comprising cross school membership. We quickly recognised that, while we were already teaching our students a wide range of skills, our students really needed them to be scaffolded through the curriculum and also needed our help to recognize and articulate them, for example in CVs and interviews.
How I did it
The module is assessed by a 2-minute presentation, and a skills portfolio submission. The portfolio comprises a self-assessment of competency in employability skills (conducted in week 1 on which students were required to reflect at the end of the module), a CV and interview (with marks and feedback provided by CV360 and BigInterview respectively), a group poster and essay, and an individual chemical data analysis task. Students were given the chance to deliver a formative, 1-minute, flash presentation and to submit an essay draft. I also mapped out for them the many activities they would undertake through the semester which they could draw on as evidence in their portfolio (an example is provided below).
The CV and interview elements were supported by sessions delivered by Kaz, who also contributed a workshop on effective team work which helped launch the group assessments. Finally, I attached to the group essay a Buddycheck peer evaluation which made it possible to easily to adjust marks easily for individual group members based on their peers’ ratings of their contributions to the project.
How it went
The module ran for the first time last semester and went really well (of course there are tweaks to be made). I could see the students were nervous going into the module, especially about their oral presentation skills. This was despite, when it came around to it, them being capable of giving very high-quality presentations. They were also nervous about the career skills assessments, despite having been taught about writing CVs and preparing for interviews in their first year and being familiar with skills focussed portfolio assessments, having completed lab skills focused versions in their first year. It was also clear from reading the students’ competency self-assessments that they tended to under value their existing transferrable skills (such as oracy) and had a real lack of confidence using the skills language.
By the end of the module, it was really nice to see that most students showed significant improvement in their self-assessment and confidence levels. In fact, at the end of the semester we ran an informal session in which students were asked to step up to give a flash presentation on their group’s poster, and many of those who volunteered mentioned they’d hated public speaking at the start of the module but now actively enjoyed it! It was also clear in the portfolio submissions that the module had helped them develop a language to describe their skills, which was beneficial for future employment.
The biggest surprise was how dysfunctional many students were at working in teams. While some groups functioned well, others really struggled with communicating and working effectively together. This included working to deadlines and managing the responsibility of working for a team. It was clear that, while non-attendance likely reflected wider issues with engagement, the students who didn’t attend Kaz’s introductory workshop were those most likely to struggle with the group task. Having attached a Buddycheck peer evaluation to this assessment meant students were able to score their peers’ contributions to the group assessment against a range of criteria. This meant those who contributed least got a lower mark, and vice versa, which mitigated against some freeloading behaviours. Interestingly, because students also scored their own contributions to the group, the same pattern of under confidence could be seen, with many giving themselves lower scores than they received from their peers. The automated feedback from Buddycheck compares self-scores with those from their peers so will, I expect, have boosted many students’ confidence in working in groups going forward.
Student feedback demonstrated that they liked that the module was dynamic, that it felt relevant and was taught enthusiastically, but I think they hated the fact they were being taught skills rather than in depth chemistry (which would be less relevant for most career destinations). This is despite me having packed in a lot more hardcore chemistry teaching than they seem to have realised! Nevertheless, many have said it was their favourite module and they have developed important skills.
I think they also came away with a wider understanding how skills development is embedded in their degree and how many of the activities we get them to do build on, or support, activities in different modules, which bodes well for when they come to complete the NSS!
Future practice
Next time I think we’ll trim and focus the introduction to team work session to give students more time to get on with the activities, which might include asking them to designate a leader whose role it will be to keep them on track. I also plan provide more guidance on how to communicate with each other and organise the activities of the group. I’ll also be much clearer with them what’s likely to happen if they don’t engage; that students who don’t meet with their peers will likely have their contributions scored poorly which will affect their mark. But also, that students who give that little bit extra can also be rewarded by the team ad see their marks increase, which is important because you need people with enthusiasm to help drive the team forwards.
I also want to get the groups up and running much more quickly, so will require them to plan out and timetable their future meetings and activities after the introductory session. I’m also going to make the groups bigger (up to 6-7 in a group, rather than 4-5), to account for drop out.
Top tips
Plan out skills training sessions, session learning outcomes, and the structure of the portfolio well in advance and take advice on all aspects, especially with your partner Careers and Employability Consultant, as they have lots of really valuable experience to offer.
Buddy check is a really powerful tool but can be a bit intimidating at first, so I would advise people to be cautious and to take advice from people who’ve used it (e.g. the Educational Enhancement team).
Be certain to review any reasonable adjustments to ensure students are able to perform to the best of their ability in the multifaceted nature of skills training and assessment.
Allocate sufficient staff resources to govern and guide the students, as well as mark their portfolio assessments as skills training and evaluation can be resource intensive.
On 13th March 2025, final-year History students from the University of Sussex spent a day by the sea visiting the Towner Eastbourne. The day offered students a valuable opportunity to work together and reflect on how the skills and knowledge they’ve developed throughout their course can be applied beyond the University.
The day began at 9am at Brighton train station. At first, things were quiet—everyone was still waking up and gathering their thoughts for the day ahead. But during the 30-minute train ride to Eastbourne, the atmosphere became more relaxed, and conversations started to flow. As the day progressed, energy and engagement grew—highlighting the value of stepping outside traditional teaching spaces.
At the Gallery, students explored the exhibitions and went behind the scenes into the archives, gaining insight into how the organisation operates. The students had a room of their own at the Museum, allowing them to come together, share ideas and reflect on what they had seen. This space was also used for short workshops and talks for the students, introducing them to various aspects of object collection and community engagement.
Student room, where there were workshops and where we shared ideas and reflected on what we’d learnt throughout the day
The day was organised by Professor Lucy Robinson and Associate Professor Chris Warne and formed part of a broader effort to help students see how the study of history shapes public life—and how they, as historians, can contribute to that work by bringing their discipline expertise and skills into the wider cultural landscape. The visit was part of Do It Together (DIT) Digital. Lucy explains:
DIT Digital is a really important part of how Chris and I work. It’s part of a wider collaborative research and impact project with the Subcultures Network and the Museum of Youth Culture (MOYC). We want our students to benefit from how universities connect with the wider world beyond the lecture and seminar room. We want to weave teaching into all of our research and public work, providing students with real world experience. In this case for example, DIT Digital will feed into our event that we are organising as part of the Brighton Festival for the University’s Festival of Ideas. Students will be our collaborators in the project, developing an ethics application, designing a collections forms, and working with the public at the events to collect objects for the MOYC’s archive.
Quote from Prof. Lucy Robinson.
In preparation for their work at the festivals, the visit encouraged and trained students to think about how to record, interpret, and present historical objects to people—and how community-facing institutions like Towner play a key role in this process. As its name suggests, Towner is a space designed for the town; a place where art and everyday life intersect.
Capturing and sharing objects digitally
One of the aims of the day was to help students explore how digital tools can be used to document, share, and interpret historical objects. George Robinson and I introduced students to Padlet, which enables students to capture historical material in a variety of formats.
Students using Padlet to capture and curate objects
Padlet allows users to record content directly or upload media from their phone or device. Each object entry can be complemented with links to relevant external sources, such as podcasts, journal articles, or YouTube videos—enriching the historical context with multiple perspectives.
Students also explored how to curate their Padlet boards, transforming them into either:
a deep dive into a single object, layered with media and supporting content.
a digital museum, echoing the store at Towner, where viewers can explore a diverse collection of objects across time periods and themes.
Importantly, Padlet also allows for community engagement. It can be an open access resource where members of the public can:
contribute objects, stories, and images
reflect and comment, creating a dialogue around shared histories
co-curate collections, encouraging shared ownership of cultural memory
Behind the scenes: The Towner store
A highlight of the visit was a tour of Towner’s art store—a temperature and bug-controlled archive space. The tour was led by Liz Corkhill (Skills and Opportunities Producer at Towner). Part of Liz’s role is to extend the gallery’s collections to the wider community, and she shared her knowledge of the collection, offering fascinating stories about the wide array of objects held by Towner.
Liz showing students the store at the Towner
Among other things, students discovered that:
Only 18% of the works at Towner are by women, and the gallery is actively working to improve representation. (This figure, notably, is still higher than the National Gallery, which currently stands at around 1–3%.)
The Towner houses the world’s largest collection of works by Eric Ravilious.
A well-run art store is all about organisation—where objects are carefully categorised, clearly labelled, and correctly stored.
Art, archaeology, and everyday objects: The Findings
It was excellent to hear about The Findings—a public art project by artist Verity-Jane Keefe, exhibited at Towner and across Eastbourne.
The project responded to the recent excavation of a significant Bronze Age settlement at Shinewater and Langney (near Eastbourne). Keefe’s work bridged archaeology, art, and everyday life, exploring what it meant to find, hold, and interpret objects from the past.
Her installation featured large-scale brass sculptures, cast from everyday objects unearthed at the site—soft drink cans, bricks, pre-historic tools—juxtaposing the ancient with the contemporary. Keefe worked with local schools, businesses and organisations to select, preserve and place the found objects in public spaces across Shinewater and Langney, including shopping centres and housing estates, inviting passersby to engage with them.
Artefacts found on the archaelogical dig at Shinewater and Langney, cast in brass and on display at the Towner.
The Findings was a community project, resulting in community-made art. It was a clear demonstration of collective approaches to history, and one that reflected the ethos of both the Towner Gallery and the teaching philosophy of Lucy and Chris.
The Museum of Youth Culture
Also attending the day was Ann O’Toole from the MOYC, which celebrates the lived experiences, creativity, and everyday heritage of young people in Britain.
Ann showing students artefacts from the Museum
Students were invited to engage with this idea of everyday heritage by bringing in their own objects that spoke to personal or cultural stories of youth. These were items like a parent’s 1980s Psychobilly leather jacket, a photo at a festival that represented notions of collectivism and nostalgia, and an Acid House CD that had been listened to by both the student and their parents at different points in history, heard through different perspectives, experienced in different ways. These objects, just ordinary things, represented cultures, politics and ideologies of the youth in Britain. Having been scanned by Ann, these objects are now part of the MOYC’s digital collection.
As each student scanned their object/s so that they could form part of the MOYC archive, Ann explained the importance of metadata, ensuring that objects are recorded correctly and can therefore be adequately searched for and understood by the public via the database.
Connecting with Ann was a valuable experience for the students, many of whom followed up with her afterwards to explore volunteering opportunities at the MOYC. After engaging with the students and supporting them in recording objects, Ann shared some key advice about working in the industry. She emphasised the importance of building connections, explaining that it’s often the people you know who help you find job opportunities. She encouraged students to take advantage of internships and volunteer roles—even if just for a few hours—as these experiences not only help develop industry skills and knowledge, but also clarify personal interests and preferences. She also noted that some institutions, like the MOYC, even offer payment for volunteer work.
What did students gain?
I’m sure that each student gained something very individual to them. Here are some of the things I observed:
Insight into how historical knowledge can shape careers in heritage, museums, archives.
Practical skills in digitisation, curation, and creative presentation.
A deeper understanding of how community history and public engagement are central to the work of museums and galleries.
On the train home, one student said it had been incredibly helpful to meet people like Ann from MOYC andLiz from the Towner—to hear about their roles and learn how they got into their careers. Another reflected:
It’s great to talk to professionals, get their advice, and see behind the scenes in this kind of work.
Another student commented that the day had boosted their confidence in engaging with cultural spaces and noted that, while it was nice to have this at the end of their degree as a culmination of their hard work, they would have benefited from more opportunities like this throughout their course.
Next Steps
As an Academic Developer, the day inspired me to help strengthen the connections between the University and cultural institutions like the Towner. This experience was really enriching for the students, not only in terms of enhancing employability, but also in supporting student confidence, satisfaction and wellbeing by applying disciplinary knowledge to life beyond the University and seeing the positive impacts in can have on the community.
Learning Matters provides a space for multiple and diverse forms of writing about teaching and learning at Sussex. We welcome contributions from staff as well as external collaborators. All submissions are assigned to a reviewer who will get in touch to discuss next steps. Find out more on our About page.
