I had the pleasure of joining the Life Sciences in mid-December for their teaching and learning away day (well, it was a morning, but there were biscuits!). I love attending these kinds of events. In my role as an Academic Developer, I have the privilege of working across disciplines and seeing colleagues’ hard work and innovative practice bear fruit. My magpie mind also gets the opportunity to pick up lots of sparkly insights and examples I can stockpile and share with colleagues from other Schools and Faculties as examples of great practice.
So, here are some recent gems from Life Sciences.
Embedding Employability – A student perspective
Greig Joilin and Valentina Scarponi shared insights into the impact of changes made to the Life Sciences curricula to embed employability skills and better enable students to identify and articulate those skills through their degree and beyond. These changes, which began roll out with the 2022/23 cohort, have included adding in dedicated skills modules through years 1 and 2, incorporating teaching and assessment tied to disciplinary areas, careers skills sessions, employer panels in each year, plus sessions on work experience.
Greig and Valentina surveyed students at the start and end of a skills module that includes CV writing and mock interviews (marked and feedback provided by AI tools, CV360 and BigInterview). At the end of the module, students reported recognising the importance of these career skills and that the new modules are helping them to develop them.
When asked what skills they still need to develop, communication and confidence remained high on the list. Therefore, the next steps under consideration are to do more to scaffold oracy skills through the curriculum.
Reflections from Portfolios for Biomedical Science Students
Lorraine Smith also talked about the impacts of encouraging students to evaluate their achievements and skills developed across their 2nd year via a reflective element in a portfolio assignment. Having provided students with lots of guidance on reflective writing from the start of the year, including YouTube videos of students talking about reflective writing, a workshop then took students through the process and provided safe space to have a go and engage in peer feedback. Importantly, using her own experience as an example, Lorraine started the workshop by talking to her students about her own experience of reflective writing (like Lorraine, I also find it uncomfortable!) and shared with them an example of her own writing and invited peer feedback from students.
The value of the reflections went beyond those for students themselves. Lorraine reported that the submissions gave her insights into the impact of the new Life Sciences curriculum on students’ development of, and ability to articulate, employability skills plus insights into how they had interpreted and acted on feedback they’d received along the way.
Embedding AI Literacy into the curriculum
At the end of the morning, Greig Joilin returned to the podium with a call to action to colleagues to plan how they will weave AI literacy into Life Sciences curricula. This need includes but goes beyond learning about the effective and responsible use of generative AI to helping students understand how all forms of AI are currently being used and will shape disciplinary practice in the future.
Investigating factors in large group teaching
Alex Stuart-Kelly shared the outcomes of an Education Innovation funded project, undertaken with Oli Steele from BSMS. Their work has provided some original and nuanced insights into the value of active learning in the classroom and into ways in which students prefer to participate, and those they would rather avoid. In short, they found that all active teaching approaches improved engagement, as did the use of clear narratives, sections (e.g. linked to specific session learning outcomes), recaps, and varied formats. Students also like low stakes opportunities to participate in the lecture, particularly when either social or anonymous (i.e. don’t require them to speak out individually) and integrated with feedback, which varied in difficulty.
Alex and Oli will be publishing their full study in due course. Until then, see Educational Enhancement teaching methods guidance and information about teaching tools that can be used to support student participation in the classroom.
Improving 3rd year project supervision and skills learning
Doran Amos shared insights from his investigation into student experiences and learning through their final year projects. Life Sciences students can choose to do an experimental project, a public outreach project or a critical literature review. Because of this, while all project supervisors work with a number of students, the nature of the work and how students and supervisors collaborate, varies.
Students identified pros and cons of individual and group supervision meetings. For example, while they value finding out how their peers are progressing and learning they aren’t alone in dealing with challenges or concerns, they also valued the opportunity in 1:1 session to ask questions they might feel less confident about voicing in front of others. Doran’s suggestion was to ensure that all students are offered a mix of group and 1:1 supervision meetings.
Accessibility and student experience in labs
Kristy Flowers, Life Sciences’ Senior Technical Manager for Teaching, shared the incredible work she and her team do to make lab work as accessible as possible for all of their students, including enabling a partially sighted student to engage in lab work by creating raised line and braille labelled diagrams and 3D printed slide preparation guides.
Perceptions of feedback: the use of self-reflection to improve student satisfaction
Jo Richardson shared outcomes from an Education Innovation funded research project led by Sue Sullivan from Psychology, in collaboration with Jo and colleagues from the Business School, Psychology and Sociology. The study found that students who were asked to complete a short reflective quiz on their engagement with a module (e.g. attendance, completing reading etc), who then received marks in the 50s were much more satisfied with their feedback than students who hadn’t done the reflective exercise. Learn more about the projects and the implications of its finding in their recently published research article.
Heroes in a half shell
Using the lovely example of a group of students who have adopted and developed a project investigating winkle populations (half shells – geddit!) on the Sussex coastline, Kevin Clark, talked about the importance of nurturing students’ curiosity and enthusiasm and the value of supporting them to just get on with projects that interest them.
Building the STEM ambassador network for students
Haruko Okomato talked about membership of the national STEM Ambassador Scheme, which is supported by UKRI, and how the scheme’s online community portal could be used to develop and support a staff and student network of volunteers at Sussex. Also – they provide free DBS checks!
If you would like to learn more about any of the examples of practice outlined above then look out for future case studies. In the interim, everyone who spoke at the event is happy to be contacted.