It was quite an organic process that began with a flipped learning workshop I facilitated, one of many, but this particular session had an energy to it. The discussions were really lively, and as the session concluded, several participants were like, “I wish we had more time to talk about this. Could we meet regularly?” So, we established a group dedicated to active learning. Although the initial focus was on flipped learning, it quickly became clear that the scope extended much further. This was around 2016–17, and as the group expanded, I sought opportunities to share leadership. Professor Wendy Garnham, whose passion and vision were evident from the outset, joined me in co-organising and developing the group.
Then something spontaneous happened. Wendy and I attended a conference at Anglia Ruskin University, where, at the close of the event, the organisers asked if anyone would host the next gathering. I just stood up and volunteered us. Wendy was surprised, we hadn’t got approval from Sussex, but I was confident it was the right step. That decision marked the beginning of a wider journey. From there, the network continued to grow, eventually becoming a global community with numerous satellite groups.
What motivated you to run that first workshop and volunteer to host the conference?
I’ve always felt strongly about making a difference in education. It’s one of the most transformative forces in the world. I’d read a lot of evidence showing that active learning is powerful, especially for making education more equitable and empowering marginalised groups. When I joined Sussex, I loved it, but the dominant teaching culture still felt quite traditional. I wanted to challenge that.
I was also inspired by the amazing people I met, Wendy, the Education Enhancement team, colleagues at Anglia Ruskin, and people like Andrew Middleton. The people I met introduced me to new ideas and helped me grow as an educator.
How has being part of the Active Learning Network benefited you as an educator?
It’s been transformative. Having a regular group of people who inspire you to keep learning, experimenting, and improving is invaluable. It’s helped me grow, stay motivated, and become more open-minded. The global nature of the network also broadens your perspective. You realise that education looks very different in other contexts, and that challenges you to rethink your own practices.
What impact has the network had on your teaching and the teaching of others?
A huge impact. Every time I plan or deliver a session, I draw on conversations and ideas from the network. It’s like having a richer palette to work with. I’ve seen colleagues get promoted, earn fellowships, and thrive in their careers thanks to the network. Personally, I received a National Teaching Fellowship a couple of years ago, and I wouldn’t have achieved that without the support and coaching from people like Wendy. I’ve also helped others with their Principal Fellowship applications, and we regularly support each other in that way.
One standout project was our collaborative book, 100 Ideas for Active Learning, with 100 chapters from 109 authors worldwide. It started as a Google Doc and grew organically. For many contributors, it was their first publication, and they felt proud to be part of it. It’s a practical, accessible resource that’s evidence-informed but not weighed down by academic jargon. We wanted it to be inclusive and collaborative. I don’t have a PhD, and being neurodivergent can be a barrier in traditional academic spaces. But we’ve built a community where people with all kinds of challenges can contribute meaningfully. It’s about creating the kind of empowering environment we want for our students, too.
What tips would you give to others considering setting up a network or community of practice?
Find your people. Even if you don’t feel like you fit into your institution’s culture, there are people out there who share your passion. Build routines and culture together through monthly meetings, shared documents and annual events. That’s how you create impact.
Share leadership. Distributed leadership is key, let go of control and empower others. The more you share, the more opportunities arise. No one can do everything alone, and generosity with leadership makes the whole initiative stronger.
Be brave and different, challenge the status quo. We faced resistance from senior academics, leadership, and other institutions. But if you believe in your vision and have a supportive group, you can push through. Sometimes you just have to stand up and say, “We’ll do it,” even if you’re not sure how yet.
Higher education can be tough, especially if you feel like you don’t fit in. The network has made it bearable, and even joyful, for many of us. It’s about solidarity, support, and making education better for everyone.
Dr Lorraine Smith: Associate Professor (Biochemistry)
Applying for Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) can feel like a daunting task. One that often gets pushed aside amid the daily demands of teaching, research and other demands of academic life. Dr Lorraine Smith (Associate Professor in Biochemistry), a colleague who successfully navigated the SFHEA process, gives us valuable insights into what the journey looks like, and how it can shape both personal and professional development.
Why did you apply for Senior Fellowship?
There were two main reasons I applied for Senior Fellowship. First, it was about career progression. When I joined, I only had Fellowship, and my colleague and friend encouraged me to pursue further qualifications.
Second, I realised I’d been given poor advice in a previous role. I was in a management position and should have applied then. When I contacted Advance HE, they confirmed that management experience was key, so I had to quickly reflect on my experience in that role to build my application from that.
What did you find most helpful during the application process?
The most helpful thing was setting aside dedicated time to work on the application without distractions. I couldn’t have done it during term time because my teaching schedule is so busy. Being on the education and scholarship track, I used the summer period and set clear deadlines. That made all the difference.
Were there any challenges with making the application?
Yes, absolutely. I found the writing style quite challenging. It’s a mix of reflective practice and academic referencing, and you also have to align everything with the framework. It felt like spinning lots of plates at once.
I started by jotting down my thoughts and shaping them into case studies, then did the reading to support them, keeping in mind which framework elements I was evidencing. The reflection came as I thought about how my practice impacted students and staff.
My application didn’t pass the first time, but the feedback was clear and constructive. I reached out to former colleagues to fill in the gaps, and that made all the difference.
I think we’re so used to being critical of ourselves that shouting about our strengths can feel really uncomfortable. I’m better at it now, but I still find it easier to spot what I could improve than to say, “I’m really good at this.”
Senior Fellowship is all about impact. Where you’ve been influential, where you’ve led, and how others have taken on board what you’ve done. That can be a challenge to engage with, but it’s essential to the process.
How has the process of applying for Senior Fellowship contributed to your development as an educator?
The process really made me reflect on my own practice and read more deeply into pedagogy and curriculum design, which was incredibly helpful. During term time, there’s so much going on that reflection often gets pushed aside.
I also learned a lot about myself as a manager. I’m very much a doer, and I hadn’t really considered my strategies for managing staff or modules. The application gave me space to think about why those approaches work, why I’ve had good feedback, and how I adapt to individuals to work collaboratively and avoid conflict.
Has achieving Senior Fellowship had an impact on your colleagues or the teaching culture that you work in?
Yes, I think it has. I’m now always up for discussing pedagogy with colleagues, and we have a really collegiate way of working in our department. We collaborate well and socialise too, which I think the students notice. We regularly come together to talk about how to approach modules, and there’s a very open attitude to teaching.
It’s also given me more confidence in sharing good practice. One example is our recent curriculum redesign, where around ten faculty members collaborated on the design and delivery. I felt really proud of that. It was a genuinely collective effort to make the new module the best it could be.
Three top tips for undertaking the Senior Fellowship application
Lorraine offered three practical tips:
Start gathering evidence early. Save emails, feedback, and reflections that demonstrate your impact.
Keep a diary of good practice. Jot down projects or moments that might become case studies later.
Set SMART targets. Be realistic about what you can achieve and break the application into manageable chunks.
And perhaps most importantly be kind to yourself. Progress may be slow, and life will inevitably get in the way, but this is part of your career development and deserves your attention.
For anyone considering Senior Fellowship, Lorraine’s experience offers both practical guidance and inspiration. It’s not just about ticking boxes. It’s about recognising the value of your work and sharing it with others. The University of Sussex supports SFHEA applications. For further information, please see our web guidance.
Conversations around teaching rarely happen beyond formal training opportunities that often take place early on in our careers. After this, and especially during term-time, space for talking in our busy working lives is often limited. Incidental corridor chats are seen to generate a collaborative and positive working culture and, for some, were mourned during the pandemic and its aftermath. Indeed, post-COVID (or maybe this was always the case?), we rarely have time to talk to our colleagues about anything at all. When it comes to teaching, who do we approach when things go well, or not so well? Who is talking? Who is listening? And who cares? This was the premise for our project, drawing colleagues together across the then newly formed Faculty of Social Sciences, to talk about how we facilitate conversations about teaching, and our wider working lives, to enhance a sense of community and belonging for staff.
The conversation theme was inspired by Jarvis and Clark (2020) whose work emphasises how the informality of a conversation about teaching flattens power relations and allows people to make meaning together without the intensity of an agenda or outcome. They position this work in contrast to formal teaching observations with their traces of surveillance, performance and measurement. Too often we rely on these individualised encounters to ‘develop’ teachers, where in fact, authentic conversations might more meaningfully transform teaching, where colleagues hear something, share together and be inspired by each other in the everyday. This reflects Zeldin (1998, p.14) who notes that: ‘when minds meet they don’t just exchange facts; they transform them, draw implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. A conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards; it creates new cards.
With the provocation to encourage transformation through talking together, Emily, Suda and Verona set up an initial launch event for all the faculty to generate some initial conversations about teaching. The questions and topics that emerged from this focused on the following questions.
Why is community and belonging important for diverse academic flourishing?
How and where is community and belonging created and developed?
How might the labour of community and belonging work become visible, valued and rewarded?
The 12 colleagues who attended were afterwards put in cross-faculty threes and connected by email, with suggestions that they meet again to continue these conversations. As project leads, we were deliberately hands-off at this point, as the purpose of this project is to see if and how these conversations form organically.
A couple of months later, 5 of us met to blog together for the day, about our response to the questions, along with other themes that came up along the way. What we share in this blog collection is the story of our collaboration conversations.
In Jeanette and Fiona’s blog, they talk about what we can learn from student collaborations, which are often and rightly prioritised in the work of higher education.
In Suda and May’s blog they write about the value of time and space to slow down the academic pace and to generate community.
In Emily’s blog, she talks about the joy and challenges of teaching across different disciplines and how collaborations are structurally challenging.
What we learnt from this project is the ethics and timeliness of the conversation format, as a collegiate response to the complex and evolving challenges facing the sector, our students and ourselves as teachers. We all relished time to talk and think about the uncertain, the tricky, the everyday, the thorny, the unequal, the caring and uncaring practices – all of this important ‘stuff’ that sustains us as teachers but has no space in our working lives. We also did not only talk about teaching but about other collaborations that we value.
Our recommendation is that teaching (and other) collaborations should be exploratory and conversational rather than only a tool for appraisal, What we are seeking is regular open and meaningful dialogue about teaching and academic working lives that is not ‘done to academics at the behest of institutional leaders’ but conversations ‘with or among colleagues, characterized by mutual respect, reciprocity, and the sharing of values and practices’ (Pleschová et al, 2021:201).
References
Jarvis, J., & Clark, K. (2020). Conversations to Change Teaching. (1st ed.) (Critical Practice in Higher Education). Critical Publishing Ltd.
Pleschová, G., Roxå, T., Thomson, K. E., & Felten, P. (2021). Conversations that make meaningful change in teaching, teachers, and academic development. International Journal for Academic Development, 26(3), 201–209.
Read the blog collection on Conversations on Teaching for Community and Belonging
Across the faculty of social sciences, many of us share research interests, professional expertise and academic knowledge that shape the topics we teach. When we met to collaborate on this project, for example, we found most of us teach about issues related to education, social justice, and globalisation. Yet we rarely teach outside the confines of our disciplines and departments. And where we do, it is through favours and friendships, rather than anything structurally organised. Our compartmentalised teaching arrangements often produce a culture that can work against collaboration.
A couple of years ago, Jeanette and I met through a shared interest in education for those of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller heritages. This was an area I research, and Jeanette had just started a community legal education initiative, Street Law, in partnership with the community organisation Friends, Families and Travellers. She asked me whether I’d talk to her students about teaching. Of course, I’d love to. I liked her. I liked the project. It was my area of expertise. Why not?
I’ve since done this a couple of times and get a huge amount from teaching Law students who I normally would never get to meet. Thinking about their contexts, disciplines and experiences and translating my pedagogical knowledge to them is also a useful exercise in understanding what and why I prioritise as an educator. But it isn’t in my workload. I don’t have to and am not, directly ‘rewarded’, in the very narrow sense of my own time. Jeanette confesses in our collaboration project that she feels guilty about asking me. But we work in the same university and now in the same faculty. Why shouldn’t we teach across these artificial academic boundaries?
This raises questions about how much of academic life might be sustained by these sorts of favours. It reminds me of the complicated emotions of gift-giving, where the receiver bestows something with surrounding norms of exchange and appreciation. On the one hand, forging positive relationships and having reciprocal practices of care are important ways to navigate academic work and its pressures (Frossard and Jeursen, 2019). Doing this cross-faculty teaching was joyful and enriching – a ‘gift’ to me as well as Jeanette. Also, an academy where we only did what was in our job description would surely fall apart!
But, on the other hand, these practices lead to under-recognition of labour or overwork. Academia has long been organised into silos – whether departments or modules – producing a sort of bento-box style organisation rather than a rich, interdisciplinary tasty stew. It is only when trying to foster collaboration through teaching across departments that we notice how the structures and cultures produce or preclude the kinds of interdisciplinary work we may find personally enriching.
In reflecting on this experience, what becomes clear is the tension between the joy and enrichment of interdisciplinary collaboration and the structural barriers that make such collaboration exceptional rather than expected. While cross-faculty teaching can feel like a ‘gift’—personally fulfilling and intellectually stimulating—it also reveals the fragility of a system that relies on goodwill rather than institutional support. When collaboration is sustained through favours rather than formal recognition, it risks becoming invisible labour, disproportionately carried by those with the capacity or inclination to give more than is required. If we want to foster truly interdisciplinary, socially engaged teaching that reflects our shared academic interests and values, we need to rethink how work is recognised, rewarded, and organised. Moving beyond the bento-box model of academic life will mean embracing new structures that not only encourage, but also sustain, collaboration across boundaries.
Frossard, C., & Jeursen, T. (2019). Friends and Favours: Friendship as Care at the ‘More-Than-Neoliberal’ University. Etnofoor, 31(1), 113–126. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26727103
Since we’ve been teaching at Sussex, it’s felt like we’ve been in a state of perma-crisis: Strikes, pandemics, financial losses, have all contributed to a sense that we are on the brink of imminent disaster and we need to react quickly to avert an impending collapse. In this context a lot of pressure is put on as individual academics to do more and more with less and less. We need to teach more students and give them extra support even though there are fewer resources. We need to bring in more grants even though funding sources are shrinking, and publish more research in an increasingly narrowing field of “world leading” journals. Failure to do this, we are told, is an existential threat to the University and could result in more job losses, including our own. This sense of existential dread has meant that many of us feel like hamsters in a wheel – desperately scrambling from one task to the next in an attempt to just keep going and hope that eventually things will calm down. But the calm never seems to come, and in this highly individualised and reactionary wheel of toxic productivity, we seem to have lost a sense of community and belonging. In this blog we consider: Where in this endless cycle of work and crises is there space to think and reflect on why we’re doing this both as individuals and as a community? How can we break the vicious cycle of individualism and reaction and instead foster an environment where there is space to think and reflect in a collective and collaborative way to build the kind of University that we want?
By participating in the Conversations for Teaching for Community and Belonging, we have come to realise that there is a community of like-minded staff members who feel similarly , and that the answer to these questions begins with time and space. Time to step away from the hamster wheel of toxic productivity. Space to reflect on our individual identities and sense of purpose. Space to support and be supported by our colleagues. And from that space to foster a wider sense of community and belonging. This space requires us to have protected and meaningful time to just think and discuss with each other these bigger-picture and wider issues, which are not easily captured in bureaucratic processes. So much of the day-to-day running of the university relies on labours of caring and collegiality, and yet so much of this labour is hidden and not celebrated or even spoken about. We don’t want these spaces to be just one-off lip-service events or individualised awards, but rather collective spaces to talk through issues and share experiences with no expectation of a measurable output. By setting aside time for reflection, we argue we can move away from these feeling of constant reaction to immediate crises.
In the short time that we’ve had to engage in conversations with one another in this small project, we have been able to learn about what colleagues across faculties are doing in their teaching and research, and also share experiences that are point to issues of both concern and hope. We have been able to foster a sense of openness precisely because there is no sense that we are in competition for some sort of reward at the end, or that we have to produce something to demonstrate “value for money”. While we appreciate that much of what we do on the hamster-wheel of productivity is part of the job, we argue that it shouldn’t take up all the space, and should not be moving us away from other essential elements of our practice that require us to slow down to reflect, learn, collaborate, feel, care, read, and think.
When the new faculty structure at Sussex was first mentioned, discussed further at university-wide forums and School and Department meetings, our reaction was perhaps similar to many others. Whilst ‘indifferent’ might be too strong, our thinking was that this was a decision taken at a university leadership level which probably wouldn’t change much on the ground, aside from potential pooling of resources in a challenging higher education climate. We felt that any changes we needed to make would filter down in time through our Head of Department, but that, in short, it would remain ‘business as usual’ for the Law School. The ‘Conversations on Teaching for Community and Belonging’ initiative by Emily Danvers gave us an opportunity to explore how the new faculty structure might enable us to develop supportive relationships with colleagues outside of our department, what that might look like and how it may help us navigate challenges going forward post the voluntary leavers scheme.
In the last few years of her role as Deputy Director of Student Experience for LPS, Fiona developed a number of initiatives which were well-received by the student body. In this piece, we consider how we might draw from those initiatives to develop a faculty-wide space, but with a staff rather than student focus. That is not to say that building faculty wide student relationships is not important, but that, as Ni Drisceoil (2025) discusses in her critique of what student ‘belonging’ means and who does that work, staff community and belonging often takes a backseat. We conclude with some thoughts as to how we might move forward.
Community and belonging sessions for students in LPS – what did we do and why did we do it?
For the last couple of years in LPS, we have hosted a weekly breakfast or lunch event for students. We know that very many of the students find that the peers that they share their first year accommodation with end up being some of their closest friends – both at university and beyond. Friendships are also forged at departmental level but, in addition, we wanted to give the students an opportunity to come together, informally, and meet students from other departments in the school.
The get together would happen in the same room, the student common room, at the same time each week. As the Law school runs a two week timetable, it meant that different Law students would be available to attend, depending on whether it was an even week or an odd week. There was a small group of students from each department who would come every week, but we also had new faces at every get together – students who had heard about the event, or students who just happened to be in the common room when the event was happening.
When we asked the students about their motivation for attending, they gave a variety of different reasons. It was interesting to note that some of the students came to the event with the intention of seeking advice (perhaps about managing workload, or how to tackle their reading etc). The students found that having a casual conversation with a member of faculty whilst sharing some food was a preferable option to pursuing the more formal route of booking an office hour with an academic advisor whom they may know less well.
LPS Staff events: what can we learn?
In thinking about faculty-wide initiatives, it’s important to consider what is already happening in schools and departments and what we might learn from that. In LPS, we have online school forums, which are well-attended by both academic and professional services staff and a useful way to catch up on what’s happening at School level. In terms of more socially oriented events, we have regular ‘Coffee and Cake’ sessions, which are not well attended. Without undertaking a survey, we can’t provide reasons for this, but it may be that this being a Head of School initiative and booked into our calendars, gives the impression that this is a space where we might be able to socialise, but not share concerns and ask ‘silly’ questions. Time is of course also a factor, with events such as these falling down the priority list as we juggle competing responsibilities. An open plan office space for professional services staff is perhaps more conducive to those conversations than the academic offices, so it could be that a faculty wide space for academic staff would provide an opportunity to have those conversations, with the benefit of perspectives as to what happens elsewhere.
What might be possible in the new faculty? Some ideas:
· Twice monthly scheduled spaces at different times on different days, and starting on the half hour, to maximise faculty availability
· A small cross-faculty team to rotate the ‘host’ role and spread the word in the different departments. As discussed above, a friendly facilitator was pivotal to the success of the LPS student initiatives
· Keep organisation minimal, and be clear that this is not a leadership initiative
· Clear comms on the purpose of the space: to drop in, meet people, share ideas and concerns, ask questions in an informal space without needing to schedule a meeting
· No need for food! No need for themes!
· Don’t be discouraged if no one turns up. These things take time.
References and further reading
Ní Drisceoil, V. (2025): Critiquing commitments to community and belonging in today’s law school: who does the labour?, The Law Teacher, DOI: 10.1080/03069400.2025.2492444
For more on community and belonging for students see Moore, I. and Ní Drisceoil, V. ‘Wellbeing and transition to law school: the complexities of confidence, community, and belonging’ in Jones, E. and Strevens, C. (Eds.) Wellbeing and Transitions in Law: Legal Education and the Legal Profession (Palgrave Macmillan 2023).
Haruko Okamoto is an Education and Scholarship academic in the School of Life Sciences in the Faculty of Science Engineering & Medicine. She has a doctoral degree in Biology (Plant Physiology & Genetics) from Tokyo Metropolitan University and has worked with Agri tech industry in the UK supporting sustainable agriculture. She obtained a postgraduate qualification in teaching and learning for higher education in 2015 from the University of Southampton where she was a lecturer. She joined Sussex in 2018 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2021.
Logo created by Lucy Thomas (Biology student) and Ruth Farrant (Geography student)
What we did
Haruko has been developing a phone app, PhotoFolia, with Dr John Anderson and Professor Daniel Osorio which uses images taken by smart phone camera to accurately estimate levels of green pigment chlorophyll in leaves which is one of the best indications of plant health. This function to accurately estimate chlorophyll in leaves allows users to research agricultural crops and organisms with chlorophyll grown under various environmental conditions over time. While growers and horticulturists have clear goals to analyse their subjects, this very function is available to any smart phone users including teenagers with inquisitive mind. We have been supporting 6th form students develop hypothesis to test environmental impact to pollutants on plants growing around them.
Clearly, our UG students are trained in their A-levels and are continuing to develop their research skills at Sussex. Here we provided UG and PGT students with our outreach opportunities together with the use of PhotoFolia to engage in STEM education. We were awarded the Education Innovation Fund in the academic year 2024/25 to build the STEM Ambassadors and volunteer network for students and staff.
Building the community
We met weekly throughout the academic year 2024/25. Regular members made a core group which decided on agenda, created outreach activities and materials and worked towards two outreach events, International Day of Women and Girls in Science in February 2025 and Open Day STEM student society outreach in June 2025. It was felt these regular weekly meetings were key to keeping the community work together. We met on a weekly basis for two hours during Autumn 2024 and Spring 2025. Here, we made meeting times and attendance flexible to accommodate students’ busy schedules.
We had three missions. We will create an inclusive community where students feel their value in the society. We advertised our meeting on our career’s Canvas page initially in October 2024 and the community grew to 60 UG/PGT/PGR students from across the Faculty of Science, Engineering, and Medicine as well as from the Faculty of Social Science over the following 9 months.
Creating communication lines
Another anecdotal take home here was the importance of keeping good communication. We cocreated a Canvas page for STEM volunteers/ambassadors with the participating students. This allowed students to own the community and to learn developing html-based web pages and to communicate with each other on Canvas.
Providing outreach opportunities
Daniel and I are members of the School of Life Sciences’ EDI committee and together we supported the EDI lead, Majid Hafezparast and the Athena Swan lead, George Kostakis in organising an event for the International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2025 on the 11th of February. Here are the list of activities created.
June Open Day STEM Student Society Outreach Event 7 June 2025
Supported students to deliver their outreach activity at a local 6th form college BHASVIC on 5 June 2025
Provided travel expenses for UG outreach
With the EI Fund, we supported student travel expenses to outreach. Travel expenses are less likely to impact student ability to participate in on campus outreach during the term time. However, Open day outreach events are scheduled on weekends and this can become a barrier for some students. On this assumption, we set aside funds to support students. The outcome of this is that we now have an estimate of cost to support students on weekend activities.
Why we did it
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths for STEM Ambassador scheme organised by STEM Learning is one of the perfect ways to integrate students’ passion for the STEM topics with skill sets such as timely communication, collaborative experience, community building, resourcefulness, initiative, and career preparedness. STEM Ambassador scheme is run entirely on volunteering by the members.
Volunteer experience is said to be valued by more than 80% of potential future employers (2016 Deloitte Impact Survey). While many of the doctoral training programmes and PGR students have access to funding for outreach travel support etc, there is currently no support for UG and PGT students.
Our main objective was to support UG/PGT students studying STEM subjects to develop STEM outreach skills, to build the STEM volunteering community, and to co-create STEM outreach opportunities on campus.
We supported UG/PGT students individually to connect with each other and to find the common interest in STEM outreach. We also connected with many STEM student societies develop hands-on activities along with exhibiting their findings to build STEM outreach.
Our approach to date is to signpost STEM volunteering opportunities to the Career’s Hub, which itself is a great way for our students to find what they want. Such activities can be led by academics in the School or in most cases students decide whether to join or not. Currently, there isn’t any resources nor support for organising Life Sciences students to become a STEM ambassador.
How It Went
Nearly half of the 60 student volunteers engaged in attending and participating in outreach activities and a quarter of the group are registered as STEM ambassadors with public profile since we started in October 2024. Four student societies, Women in STEM, Interdisciplinary Sciences, Neuroscience, and Wild at Sussex, contributed and created posters and outreach activities. We collaborated with many more professional services including the central open day team. Together, we were able to run an outreach event during the June Open Day in 2025.
Students nominated us for the Teaching Awards in 2025 clearly appreciated the support from us and the university.
Haruko advances STEM engagement at the University of Sussex through citizen science projects like PhotoFolia, ColourWorker and Shelltering Sussex while fostering an interdisciplinary community that champions innovative learning.
She hosts weekly open meetings that provide tailored guidance on topics ranging from JRA proposals to Student Society outreach events. These sessions ensure students’ ideas are heard and nurtured, empowering them to explore subjects beyond their curriculum and contributing to a more diverse and inclusive academic environment.
Beyond routine academic support, Haruko actively creates spaces for cross-disciplinary dialogue, encouraging students from non-STEM backgrounds to engage with scientific methods and concepts. This approach has broken down traditional barriers and sparked creative collaborations, with her group now including students from IDS, Global Studies, and Life Sciences…Haruko has boosted participation among groups less likely to engage with STEM, underscoring the relevance of science and celebrating campus diversity…Haruko Okamoto’s passion for collaborative learning and innovative education makes her and her team outstanding candidates for the award, as they continue to inspire and empower students.
Nomination endorsed by the student societies ‘Interdisciplinary Sciences Society’ and ‘Wild at Sussex’
Future Practice
The STEM volunteering group will continue to meet every week, expand our network, and continue contributing to building STEM outreach community at Sussex. We have plans to develop links with STEM student societies and the Student Union at Sussex to organise outreach events on campus.
Top tips
Meet regularly at the same time
Create outreach opportunities on campus where everyone feels safe
Be inclusive
Acknowledgements
We’d like to thank the funding and support we had for this Education and Innovation Award. We’d also like to thank the Head of School of Life Sciences and the Head of Department of Biochemistry and Biomedicine for their continued support.
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 ninth episode is ‘inclusive online distance learning’ and we hear from Sarah Ison and Brena Collyer De Aguiar.
Wendy Garnham: 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 supporting Online Distance Learning, and our guests are Sarah Ison, Librarian for Online Distance Learning at the University of Sussex, and Brena Collyer De Aguiar, Senior Learning Technologist for Online Distance Learning. Our names are Wendy Garnham and Heather Taylor, and we are your presenters today. Welcome, everyone.
Sarah Ison: Hello.
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: Hello. Hi.
Wendy Garnham: Today, we’ll be discussing how Brena and Sarah support online distance learners, the challenges and opportunities of teaching in a global online environment, and what lessons we can take from Online Distance Learning (ODL) into wider teaching practice at Sussex and across the sector.
Heather Taylor: So, Brena, to start us off, could you tell us a bit about Online Distance Learning at Sussex and your individual role within the Online Distance Learning team?
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: Yeah. So we have a number of master’s online courses, and also the PG cert. So they are 100% online courses. My role is I’m an Online Distance Learning Senior Learning Technologist. And I’m mainly responsible for liaising with academics around course development. So when they develop the courses and the modules, supporting them with academic, with assessment and pedagogic advice and design as well, you know, on trying to promote innovative learning experiences. I’m responsible for designing the academic training, so the essential training they have to attend when they are involved in ODL. And I also do a lot of reviews in terms of accessibility and make sure our courses are accessible.
Heather Taylor: So, Sarah, same question to you then. Can you tell us a bit about your role in the Online Distance Learning team at Sussex?
Sarah Ison: Sure. So I’m the Online Distance Learning Librarian, and I’m dedicated to supporting students with their information literacy, their research skills, referencing, and helping them to avoid academic misconduct, hopefully. And I offer one-to-one sessions with students that want a little bit more support tailored to whatever they’re working on. And I provide recorded sessions and live sessions throughout their module so they have a chance to drop into like a session just to ask questions or come to my kind of launch session, which gives an overview of the way in which I can help support them. And so I could also support academic staff if they’re developing new modules, help them get their reading list together, and have some colleagues based in the library who actually get the reading lists embedded in Canvas and make sure that they’re working. And I also sometimes run bespoke sessions within a module on the request of the academic just to tailor something specific in specifically or at a certain point in the module to help really encourage the students to think about something in particular that relates to my remit. So, you know, library skills, information seeking, finding scholarly material, that sort of thing.
Wendy Garnham (03:18): You work with a diverse global cohort of students, many of whom are international or mature learners, sort of balancing work and life commitments and coming from a range of cultural backgrounds. How do your roles help foster a sense of community and belonging among students who are studying remotely, often across different time zones or cultures and age groups?
Sarah Ison: So I teach kind of once a module. I offer a session to all new students, whatever subject they’re studying. I try to schedule it in the middle of the day to sort of meet whatever time zone they’re in. Obviously, that is quite challenging, and it’s an opportunity for students to come across each other, just in terms of at the start of a session, they’re quite informal. And I encourage them to put in the chat where they’re from, what’s the weather like, how are they feeling? Put an emoji and kind of reflect how you’re feeling at that moment in time. Just a couple of minutes at the start to just kind of do a little icebreaker, and just try and make it a friendly space, really, where people can ask questions throughout. They can either raise their hand formally in Zoom or they can just unmute and throw out a question or put it in the chat. And, yeah, I just try and make myself kind of really approachable so students feel comfortable to ask questions as we go along or follow up with a one-to-one if they need. And, yeah, it’s a challenge because of all the different time zones, and it’s amazing the range and variety of people that study on ODL. You’ve got people working full time, part time with caring responsibilities. They’re studying their second or third language. I’m in awe of what they are juggling to commit to completing their degree or their postgraduate studies at Sussex. It’s incredible.
The Canvas site that I look after is called the Study Online Student Support Site or the SOS for short. That’s a space where students can utilize the discussion board area and come together across courses. So in their modules, they’re just meeting other people on their module. But on the SOS, they can throw out a question, get a discussion going, and connect with their peers who are studying on different topics, which is really good. And I’m always looking for ways to kind of build on that sense of community and just give students the opportunity to kind of meet each other but within my remit of supporting them. So, one thing I do is provide top tips every Tuesday. We have Top Tip Tuesday and Titbits Thursday because we needed another word beginning with ‘T’ for Thursday, where I try and drop in timely relevant tips depending on the week of the module that just helps them, whether it’s focusing on how to get your head around a long document, a big scholarly article, how to condense that down, note taking tips, other top tips that just help them as busy learners who are juggling a lot. I’d like to give them time saving tips and things and just help them get things done efficiently. So a lot of my focus is if you watch this video, it’s only 20 minutes, but it will save you lots of time in the long run. So, yeah, really trying to support through time saving techniques and making it relevant at the right point in the module as well.
Wendy Garnham: Just on that note, you mentioned the discussion board. Do you get quite a lot of buy-in to the discussion board?
Sarah Ison: Not masses. So that is something that I think can always be encouraged. And if the usage dips a bit, then I can promote it a bit more. So that’s a good reminder that I can keep on promoting that because it just gives them a chance to share things. But the students do set up their own WhatsApp groups. So they do kind of get their own discussions going off official university platforms. So, you know, we don’t always know what’s going on there. But, yeah, I think Canvas is the main place where we can encourage community and coming together in different ways.
Brena Collyer De Aguiar (07:05): So I work much more with the academics, and I would say that my role, so my support goes into two phases. So one is the design phase, where, you know, I will support academics on thinking about making assessments more authentic. Trying to bring, you know, and make it very clear their space for the students to bring their own experience, but also what’s related to the place they live. We have large cohort courses. We have an MSc that is Sustainable Development, so it’s a very big number of students. And how do you also connect those experiences? The other way I try to bring this is trying to promote this conversational tone in the content itself. Like, trying to bring the teaching presence even, you know, when they’re doing their synchronous learning. And then it moves into support the academics during the teaching phase. So I lead, I’ve designed the training, the essential training they have to go. So it’s how, how do you set expectations for academics on how do you make the module live, how do you communicate, how do you set your expectations. So all the live sessions in the ODL modules should be recorded, and that’s to promote a second moment for engagement for those that due to their time zones or work commitments can’t join the live, etc. But also putting some tools in practice. So we do use, you know, we have the VLE – Canvas. We use, we organize the cohort according to time zones just to kind of be easy for academics to deliver live sessions that are according to their time zones. We also promote discussion boards that are set by groups just so they can, you know, communicate between themselves. And of course, some tips on design, you know, like, like Sarah uses as well. Having the discussion boards for introduction that allow them, display a place for connecting through their identity. So discussion boards that are fun or ask them to post pictures of their bookcase and try to guess, you know, who else is reading the same or who could be that person. So that’s kind of how I try to promote those spaces for the students through the design and support academics.
Heather Taylor (09:24): So, Sarah, online engagement can be a challenge, especially as many Online Distance Learning students and mature learners are balancing work and study. What approaches, whether through course design or student support, have you found effective in encouraging engagement and motivation?
Sarah Ison: So I’ll focus probably more on student support. And, as Brena said, she’s not directly student facing. And I’m probably the only one in the Online Distance Learning team at Sussex who is seeing students regularly. And so which is nice because then I get feedback and get quite a lot of dialogue with them. And there is a Student Success team that also provides a lot of support for them, very personalized. They call up the students, check how they’re doing. And I liaise with them to make sure that they’re aware of any updates I’ve given to the SOS or like with AI. There’s a lot of relatively new content that’s gone on the Sussex website that I’m drawing attention to in my sessions. So I’m telling Student Success, this is what I’m telling them so that, you know, if you get a call from a student, you know, to talk about progress and they’re like, “Oh, AI, can I use that?” then they won’t be like, “Oh, what’s the latest advice?” You know, I have a good sort of bridge between them to make sure we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet. And, so, yeah, I support through kind of the session and just being there for students and providing drop-in sessions throughout the module. And the one-to-one element really works well. Obviously, you can’t provide that to everyone, it would be impossible, but so far, it’s not become overwhelming. And there’s a student I’ve engaged quite a lot with who has come to realize that she thinks she’s got ADHD. She’s awaiting a proper diagnosis, but we’ve talked a lot about how to, well, I’ve been trying to help her how to compartmentalize the different things she has to do because she gets so overwhelmed by the amount of reading, the amount of learning she has to do. So we’ve worked together to try and break it all down and think about how she can approach her module. Probably goes slightly beyond my remit, but in terms of managing her readings and the library work and the research skills. She’s like, “Life hacks! Give me life hacks!” I’m like, “Okay. Here’s some top tips from last Tuesday”. But, yeah, we talked about how she thinks her brain works. And that has really helped me think about how can we be inclusive. How can we just offer stuff from the get-go, from the beginning that is accessible to everyone, no matter if they’re neurodivergent or neurotypical. How people learn is so varied that the way that we and the team work together really helps each other because that really informs the, like, the handouts that I provide, you know, the online resources, and what I put on the SOS. You know, I’ve got that in my mind, “This has got to be accessible and inclusive”. And, yeah, trying to provide videos at the point of need that people can dip into and won’t take too long to go through is kind of a key way that I provide support to the students. So, yeah, trying to do the personalized thing one-to-one is really important, but you can’t do that for everyone. And so, therefore, the more generic videos, you just try and make them as inclusive as possible. So that’s kind of my main methods of trying to do that through videos, the SOS, and one-to-one and live sessions.
Heather Taylor (12:24): You know what? I think, you know, like you said, “But you can’t do it for everyone,” and you’re completely right. But I think importantly, you know, and on theme, it isn’t for everyone, is it? Some people don’t want one-to-one. Some people, you know, prefer to just, some people prefer to absorb information relatively passively. Some people want to engage with it and, you know, in different ways. So, actually, yeah, that’s great.
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: I think for ODL students, the design of the modules, so we have a very strong element of consistency across all modules and pages, which then reduces that cognitive anxiety they would have, you know, on trying to look for the information. And also thinking about, you know, it’s student-centered, so it’s thinking about removing as many barriers as we can. So, like, you know, in most of the modules, for example, would have links directly to the guides and to the Study Hub and signposting the resources and examples. For example, we really work with templates, templates for submissions, templates for information. I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in terms of engagement in a couple of projects that we used. We gamified a module, for example, and that kind of made them travel in time, so that was a very engaging experience. So, I’ve, like I said, I am on top of UDL fun. I’m a playful person, and I, you know, I love immersive experience. So every time I can put my finger there, it’s like, “Let’s do something fun”. Of course, you know, like I said, in terms of consistency, not only in the layout, the learning is structured. So they have three different learning phases, which they are encouraged to, you know, go through the lecture content, go through applying those, the learning, but also reflecting on that on top of having spaces for creating community, engaging with, you know, throughout the cohort. Yeah. And flexibility. You know, you can, you can show your presence in different ways and also, you know, in different formats.
In terms of engagement, that’s the only thing that I don’t know if I should say this, is the tutor presence really makes an impact. We have, for example, I’m telling you about a lot of stuff in terms of design. But if the tutor is not engaged, if the tutor doesn’t show his presence on the discussion boards, for example, try to promote the, the discussion, you know, to continue or use announcements in Canvas and show that that module is live and that the teacher is there, you see a huge, you know, difference in terms of engagement. In opposite, if you have a tutor that is really there, and I know the challenge, you know, and we have large cohort modules, which then we require bigger teaching teams, you see that the experience is completely different. So it’s a mix of putting the, you know, designing but making very clear that the human element is there.
Heather Taylor (15:23): Yeah. I think they’re so important. I think even when you’re, you know, when you’re lecturing in person, obviously, like, if I’m lecturing in person, I have to be there and engaging because I’m there. But being just even being enthusiastic about it makes a big difference to the students. They’re not gonna get enthusiastic about something that I sound bored of, right? And I completely get what you’re saying with this, the tutor engagement. If the tutor is not engaging with the with the, you know, online resources and discussion boards and so on that you’ve got, the students essentially are probably gonna think, “Oh, this isn’t really necessary”. “You know, if they’re not doing it, why would I do it?” you know? So, yeah, that’s quite a challenge, though, for you then because then you’re sort of, you know, you’ve made something good. It just needs to be delivered the way you intended it to be delivered.
Wendy Garnham: I love the idea of the gamification. That sounds really good.
Sarah Ison: I was very emotional when you launched that module. It was at the Educational Festival, wasn’t it? And you worked, you collaborated with the academic, and it was amazing. They did, like, this preview. It was like a film premiere. I was really like, “Oh my gosh. I want to study this module”. And I’m not even, you know, I’m interested in Sustainable Development, but it’s not my thing to study. And I was just like, “Wow, this is amazing”. And I felt so proud of you because it was such a different sort of module, completely different to gamify that. And it’s had some amazing positive reviews, isn’t it? Yeah.
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: It is. It’s called, we renamed the module. We called Project Dandelion. And, you know, when you, when you think about, and I know that I again, most of the immersion in that gamification was made through storytelling. So it’s, we really thought the narrative to bring to put the students into that story. We also, the thing that I thought was really good on that as well was because the module was quite depressive, because we were talking about the climate change and waste, etc. So it was a way to actually, how do you say? Swift. Instead of the end being bad, we said, “Okay, we sorted it out. Now you need to travel back in time and figure out what we’ve done”. So then you can see that they are much more in a much happier place, you know. They connect to the emotions and what they could do. Storytelling. Storytelling. And it’s, you know, everyone, we are all, don’t they say that since, you know, the beginnings, every human being is a storyteller? No, we grew telling stories. I love that, so I, I need to stop talking.
Heather Taylor: That is so, so clever though, when you say it, though, because it’s depressing. But you really don’t want to end a module with the world being on fire, do you? You know?
Wendy Garnham: So ODL students at Sussex show strong academic outcomes, including low levels of academic misconduct, I’m pleased to say. How do you support students’ academic literacies, particularly for those returning to study or unfamiliar with the UK academic context?
Brena Collyer De Aguiar (18:23): All academics involved on teaching an ODL module, they need to attend what we call the ODL essential training. The first one, it’s about the teaching, and the second one is about marking because, you know, they are all online, so it’s a bit different than what we do on campus. And on the essential training, I bring, you know, the awareness, so it’s user-centric. It’s making sure they understand that they are dealing with people that are around the world, that they may be too far from, you know, the academy, or if they were close, like me, for example, struggle with the referencing here. You know? Just to make them very aware that those challenges are present. They can’t just assume that they are UK-based students and signposting the resources. So where would you go for support or, you know, flagging that Sarah is there, the module is there, as well as I’ve mentioned before, in the syllabus page and then kind of important places throughout the modules, that always link to resources and to further module information as well as support. The other support moment we have is every time a module, ODL module runs, we have the module survey. And that kind of triggers what we call the module evaluation is where we will be sitting, you know, the development team, the pedagogic advice team, the academic with the survey and reflect further. So every time there is an academic literacy challenge or, you know, it’s always going back and thinking, do we need to signpost more resources? Do we need to have Sarah stepping in into the first welcome live session to point them, you know, how to access those specific resources at the library? And hopefully, you know, addressing the challenge and improving every time the module runs.
Sarah Ison: In the last couple of years, I embedded a few new slides into my live session that I do in the first week of every module, acknowledging the cultural differences when it comes to referencing and what people’s experience might have been in whatever geographical place they’re in. Because one of the academics on ODL told me once how all the way up through her master’s, she was in South America, and she never had to reference, like, anything. It just wasn’t done, you didn’t need to, you could just write, and that was your essay. You handed it in. Fine. And how different is that here? And so I’m then, it just made me think, well, I can’t assume that all the students joining know the UK Western way of referencing and exactly how it should be unless it’s made really explicit. And academics and people like myself, I think, in a support position have a really important job to make that as clear as possible from the beginning. So I see it as a privilege that I meet these students. I try and make it really clear that what they’ve been used to might be different to what’s expected now. So I try and be really clear about, you know, academic misconduct, what that actually means and how to avoid that and the importance of referencing and how you must cite your sources. You must say where those ideas came from. And I really kind of drive that home.
And I was able to kind of adopt the university’s academic practice online workshop. So that’s a Canvas site that students get referred to after an initial case of academic misconduct. They then have to work through it, understand what it means by collusion and academic misconduct, etc. They have to work through that and then it’s a quiz and they have to be checked off that they’ve done it. So I was able to offer that from the beginning. I promote that to the students. They’re all, all ODL students are enrolled on it. They’ve got access to it. We’re in the process of updating it at the moment with other key colleagues from the university. But using it proactively to say, “Have a look at this”. “You know, you might end up coming back here if you were accidentally, you know, plagiarized or something”. “But here’s the information”. “You know, it’s optional, but please do, you know, invest some time in understanding how to avoid academic misconduct”. So trying to be strategic and always mentioning about referencing the importance of it. But I think it was really important to address the cultural differences and not assume everyone knows what’s going on just because they’ve enrolled at Sussex. They don’t necessarily know what’s expected when it comes to that because it might be so different to what they’re used to.
And, we now have a dedicated Online Distance Learning librarian inbox, so students can just fire off questions, and it’ll be covered by me or a couple of my colleagues in the library. There’s always a place students can come to ask. As most librarians will say, if we don’t know the answer, then we’ll probably know where to find the answer and connect you with the information that you need. That’s one of the best things of the job. One of my colleagues does say, she doesn’t quite know how I get so excited about academic skills, but, you know, she’s like, “I feel really inspired now to think about, you know, reading and writing”. And I just, I get excited when I connect people with the information that they need. And a lot of my job is signposting, helping people find what they need, to achieve what they need, but also to avoid important things like academic misconduct.
Wendy Garnham (23:11): I think that is important not to make too many assumptions about what people are bringing to the learning session. So I think it’s quite easy when you’ve been delivering content for some time just to assume that there are certain sort of basic levels of understanding that may not necessarily be there, certainly with quite a diverse cohort. So it’s a good reminder.
Heather Taylor: Yeah. Brena, what are the key things you’ve learned from supporting Online Distance Learning students, and what advice would you offer to academic staff, whether teaching online, in hybrid mode, or face to face about inclusive practice, engagement, and student-centered course design?
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: You probably can sense. I’m not from the UK. So I, I’ve linked my experience with my work as well in terms of diversity and coming from a different cultural background. And I would say that for me, one of the things that I’ve learned more is about expectations. So online learning, you know, requires a lot of expectations to be set. And this should be part of the design from the beginning to the end. Expectations in terms of time that you’ll be spending on that learning, expectation about how, language, you know, technical expectations as well. From the expectations, making sure that the design and my thinking and my advice really brings inclusion as the focus. Like, let’s think further. I was aware, already applying to my kind of other software design work, but now it’s an accessibility that goes beyond. And to understand and probably showcase that, you know, by having the content accessible, you’re not only benefiting students who need, you’re also promoting different ways, you know, for everyone to access the information.
In terms of our advice, and those kind of link very well with the UDL principles, you know, it’s for me, again, being from Brazil, we are all about emotions and feelings. So it’s trying to bring some empathy, pedagogy to your practice. You know, try to promote connection and presence. And when I talk these usually, I flag that this also includes the tutor. So it’s about enabling, you know, that space for everyone, not just the learners, but everyone involved on that caring learning community that, again, enables a better learning space. Joy and fun. I’m all over playful learning, immersion, storytelling. There are, you know, you don’t need to be a pro. You, you know, there are small things you can add to your learning and teaching practice that can make learning more fun. And I would say not promoting ourselves, reflect and develop, you know. I would say if you could and I know some module leaders would do the reflection session in the end with the students to bring their perspectives, what they missed. But as well, you know, connect with your colleagues that had similar experience, and, of course, the resources and the training available.
Sarah Ison: Yeah. I feel I feel like I’ve learned a lot about, just the importance of accessibility and learning design and how that relates to being inclusive. And a way in which that’s been more personal for me has been working with people who are neurodivergent and have really clearly explained to me what helps them work well in a team, what helps them work when I was managing them kind of in that relationship. And then that’s helped me think about, “Okay, what about neurodivergent students?” How are they going to see what we’re offering and what small things can we do, as Brena said, “What small things can we tweak that actually makes all the difference to those learners and is accessible for everyone?” It’s not making it harder for neurotypical people. It’s just making everything easier for everyone. And so that’s kind of my key thing for this question, really, that considering how other people learn and take on that information. If you think about that in terms of what you’re asking them to read, if you’re an academic and you’re building a module, you know, think about how you’ve laid out your reading list material, how clear you’re being about what the expectations are. You know, if there’s a group assignment, how that’s going to be, you know, processed by someone, you know, that’s not you. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is so important to just trying to be inclusive. And as with Brena, I’m haven’t done a lot myself, but playful learning is such an amazing way to learn. And so I want to kind of find more ways of doing that in the opportunities that I have through working with ODL students. But, yeah, small things make a big difference. So remembering that as you go forward will hopefully be a good thing.
Wendy Garnham (27:52): It sounds as though one of the real strengths is sort of being able to draw students in to sort of experience what they’re learning about or to at least, as we’ve said, like, immersing them in that. So I guess, so is that more difficult with Online Distance Learning compared to when you’ve actually got students in the room with you?
Sarah Ison: There’s so many tools we can use now to just break out into groups and to collaborate in so many different ways using Padlet boards and other kind of tools that just help you just get ideas together to work together. And we have this amazing relationship in our teams where although we’re made up of three quite distinct groups of colleagues and our work doesn’t always overlap, we have this brilliant, like, connection where because we have short regular meetings as a whole team, we use all these different tools that we could use when working with students as well. You know, I’ve used a Padlet board sometimes where I’ve said, “How are you feeling, students, about you at the start of your module? This side, put up emojis and pictures, whatever. If you’re feeling a bit, you know, negative about stuff, if you’re feeling good, work on this side”. And then at a glance, I could get people’s instant reflections on how they’re feeling about what I was about to talk to them about, which helped me to then possibly adapt my approach to the rest of that session. So you have to be quite flexible and fluid and be able to perhaps, you know, stray a bit from what you might have been planning. So if everyone suddenly says, “I’m really scared about reading long articles because I’ve, you know, had a break in study, and I don’t even know how to read an academic article”. You might think, “Oh, okay, if 20 people are saying that, I better focus on that in this session and maybe talk less about reading eBooks or something”. You know, there might be different things you can focus on. And when you bring that interactiveness into a session and you get other students’ input, it shapes what you do, but they feel listened to and that’s, you know, inclusive.
Wendy Garnham: Yeah. Sarah Ison and Brena Collier de Aguiar, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. And thank you for listening. Goodbye.
Heather Taylor:
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.
Keep listening for some bonus chat about today’s topic.
Heather Taylor (30:32): I guess as well, you know, I think these students have decided for whatever reason, they want to do an online course, and I think that can make a really big difference in terms of when we’re trying to deliver something. I think the problem sometimes with having online resources for in-person students is they are quite passive with it sometimes, you know, whereas these students are choosing to do this.
And I think that, you know, remember that year when we was all with the COVID? Remember COVID? And, anyone who signed up to come to the uni knew right from the beginning, it’s going on. It’s all gonna be online, right? I think they knew from the outset, didn’t they? Yeah. Because of the timing of the government or whatever. But, I’m not allowed to mumble. Sorry, Simon. Yeah. And I think that, actually, that year, and it really made me think about it because you both talked about empathy. So you were talking about empathy. You were talking about the importance of connecting, listening, responding. And I actually think that year with the with the students who were all online, I don’t feel as though I had any less of a bond with them or any less of a rapport or, and I think it’s because we all signed up to the same thing, right? And I did tell them at the beginning, “I haven’t taught online really before, I want you to get the best out of this. In order for you to get the best out of this, you gotta work with me, you gotta help me – you gotta get involved – you gotta use the chat, you gotta use the discussion”. And they were so committed. They were so lovely, weren’t they?
Wendy Garnham: They were really engaged.
Heather Taylor: So I think, yeah. And I think, you know, I don’t know. I think that’s really important, though, making, you know, it’s really lovely that we have these online courses because for some people, that is just better. It’s going to suit them better. It’s going to suit, you know, around their schedule or just even the way they like to learn. So I’m really pleased that you’ve not just and I know you wouldn’t do this anyway, but I’m really pleased that, you know, you didn’t just take something that was a standard course and go, “We just say it online”. You know? And you’ve gone, “All right, how can we make this good?” “How can we make it engaging?” “How can we make it meaningful?” “How can we connect with the students?” And I think that’s such a, you know, fantastic thing, basically.
Wendy Garnham: I think just making the students feel heard is like the absolute bottom line because I think also when you’ve got big groups, I mean, it sounds as though you have got quite big groups for the online courses. And, you know, as great as that is, it’s still like, the bottom line is, how do you then make all of those students feel heard as individual? And I think some of the things that you shared are really sort of going to promote that sense of, you know, “I matter, I was seen in this course or, the tutor’s hearing me”. And I think that is, it’s quite hard to get to that level, but I think it’d be useful no matter who’s teaching what, in what context. I think that’s sort of quite a key message for me to take from that.
Dr Luis Ponce Cuspinera, Associate Professor in Engineering, offers reflections on his experience of curriculum redesign.
What were the motivations behind a curriculum review in Engineering and Informatics?
There were several. I’d recently returned to Sussex after three years at Dyson, where I helped set up a new engineering institute. That experience, of designing everything from scratch, really opened my eyes. When I returned to Sussex I noticed some modules had changed, especially post-COVID, and the course felt less cohesive. Individual modules were strong, but they weren’t always working together as a unified programme.
I also realised that some course conveners had inherited programmes they didn’t fully understand and who hadn’t had the chance to reflect on the course as a whole. At the same time, the university was launching Curriculum Reimagined and discussing changes to the Sussex Academic Framework. It felt like the right moment to act, especially since we hadn’t had a curriculum review in years due to the pandemic.
How did you engage and support your colleagues throughout the review process?
I started with separate workshops for Engineering and Informatics staff to tailor the discussion to each group. I introduced the concept of curriculum review, what it is, why it matters, and shared insights from pedagogic research and my own experience designing curricula.
I then gave course conveners a set of actions to reflect on and followed up a few months later. I also pointed them to support from our Academic Developer, Sam Hemsley, and encouraged them to engage with Education Enhancement. My aim was to empower them to take ownership of their courses, not impose changes from the top down.
What pedagogic strategies did you encourage to enhance the student experience?
I focused on three key areas:
Assessment bunching. I encouraged conveners to review how assessments were spread across the semester. Debunching assessments can reduce student stress and improve wellbeing.
Course alignment. I asked conveners to consider both technical and non-technical alignment. Are modules building on each other logically? Are students learning skills they can apply soon after? Are professional and employability skills embedded throughout the course?
Graduate characteristics. I encouraged conveners to define what kind of graduate their course is shaping. What should students be able to do by the end of the degree? This helps clarify the course’s identity and appeal and supports recruitment.
What challenges did you encounter, and how did you navigate them?
Change can make people defensive. Some conveners felt their courses didn’t need improvement, especially if recruitment was strong. I tried to contextualise the need for change, highlighting evolving student expectations, sector trends, and future regulations.
Sometimes I brought data to support the case for change. I also used my subject knowledge to guide conversations and challenge assumptions. It was important to respect people’s time and priorities, especially when they were juggling research or other commitments.
What outcomes or early impacts have you observed since the review?
One big win was that our conveners were well-prepared when the new academic framework was implemented. They’d already started thinking about necessary changes.
We’ve seen updates to two postgraduate courses that weren’t recruiting well. Conveners added new interdisciplinary modules, which aligns with university priorities and could boost recruitment. One undergraduate course successfully debunched assessments, which is complex but impactful. Another convenor created a visual map of module alignment, far exceeding what I’d shown in the workshop. It’s great to see colleagues take ideas and make them their own.
One challenge though was student engagement. I’d hoped for more involvement from students in the review process. Some conveners used NSS feedback, but I’d like to see more direct student input, perhaps through working groups. That’s something I’ll reflect on and improve in future reviews.
By turning our attention in a serious way to how we use and think about our voices and ears, we can help students develop their communicative resources as thinkers, listeners, and speaking citizens.
Sussex colleagues, join us on 26th November (13:00-16:00 at 255 Bramber House) to explore the role of oracy in higher education. Discover practical strategies for embedding speaking and listening into the curriculum, and learn how oral assessments can support inclusion, engagement, and academic integrity. Oracy, defined as the ability to express oneself fluently and communicate effectively, is an often-overlooked skill in higher education. This event invites educators to consider how oracy can be embedded into teaching and how oral assessments can support inclusive pedagogy. Register via Eventbrite.
Why oracy?
Oracy education encompasses a wide range of practices, including discussions, presentations, vivas, performances, and debates. These activities not only help students develop and demonstrate mastery of their discipline but also prepare them for life beyond university. As Michael Rosen, advocate for developing students’ oracy skills at all levels of their education, states: “talk precedes writing and is crucial to understanding cognition … when you talk, you hear what other people say and how they think, and that helps you formulate ideas for yourself” (2024).
The rise of generative AI and its implications for academic integrity have further highlighted the value of embodied skills, such as speaking and listening. Oral assessments make it more difficult for students to outsource their work to AI tools and enable educators to better connect with students, assess their understanding, and support their skill development.
Challenges
Despite their benefits, oral assessments require careful resource planning. Depending on the type of assessment, they can be resource-heavy for both main marking and making re-sits. From the student perspective, they can be time-intensive and anxiety-inducing. Issues of fairness and bias, such as how accent, confidence, or language fluency affect perception, must be addressed through staff training, the scaffolding of assessments, and reasonable adjustments. This event will provide a space to discuss these challenges openly, share practical strategies, and reflect on how oracy can be supported across disciplines.
Sussex: a hub for oracy
The University of Sussex already has excellent leaders in oracy education. Dr. Verona Ní Drisceoil (Reader in Legal Education (Law, Politics and Sociology)) has pioneered ‘voice work’ in legal education, and Sussex hosts the UKRI-funded Speaking Citizens project led by Dr. Tom F. Wright (Associate Professor in Rhetoric (Media, Arts and Humanities)). Wright’s new book, Oracy: The Politics of Speech Education (Cambridge University Press), explores the historical, political, and pedagogical dimensions of oracy, offering a roadmap for implementation across sectors.
Why attend?
Come and hear from Verona, Tom, and other Sussex academics as they share their expertise and experiences of embedding oracy into their curricula. This event will not only offer valuable insights into how oracy can be effectively integrated into teaching and learning but also provide an opportunity to network with colleagues from a range of disciplines. It may be particularly beneficial for those looking to develop aspects of their educational practice and could serve as a useful point of reflection for fellowship applications to the Higher Education Academy.
Programme
This in-person event (Bramber House 255) consists of a series of lightning talks interspersed with time to chat and network with colleagues to share ideas and resources.
13:45–14:35 — Lightning talks: Getting students talking in teaching spaces
Cath Senker (Assistant Professor in Academic Skills (University of Sussex Law School)) – Whose voices are we hearing in the classroom? Promoting oracy for learning
Emma Newport (Associate Professor in English Literature (Media, Arts and Humanities)) – The extracurricular impact of Sussex Writes on student confidence speaking in class
Fiona Clements (Assistant Professor in Law (Law, Politics and Sociology) – Encouraging oracy in the classroom
Sarah Otner (Associate Professor in Innovation Management (University of Sussex Business School)) In-class debating
BREAK 14:35-14.45
14:45–15:25 — Lightning talks: Oracy and assessment
Matthew Cole (Assistant Professor in Technology, Work and Employment (University of Sussex Business School)) – Group presentations as an assessment
Benoît Guilbaud (Associate Professor in French, Language Pathways Convenor (Media, Arts and Humanities)) – The range of oral assessments used in modern languages: challenges and opportunities
Ernesto Cabellos (Assistant Professor in Filmmaking (Media, Arts and Humanities)) – Pitching with confidence: Oracy, accentism and AI in Film & Media Education
BREAK 15:25-15:35
15:35–15:55 — Plenary: Sharing insights and takeaways
What have we learnt from today
What might we take forward into our own practice?
Ideas for the Learning Matters blog write-up and other forms of output
Buckley, K., 2024, June 7. Talking the Talk: Interactive Oral Assessment to Promote Academic Integrity in Large Postgraduate Teacher Education Programmes. Pedagogy for Higher Education Large Classes (PHELC), Online Symposium. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11410269
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.
Please note that blog posts reflect the information and perspectives at the time of publication.
