Prof Wendy Garnham, Professor of Psychology and Director of Student Experience for the Foundation Year, shares her experience of editorial scholarship.
Can you tell us a little about your experience co-editing books on teaching and higher education?
I’ve co-edited several books on topics like active learning, pre-arrival platforms for transition into HE, and outdoor learning. I am currently editing a book on active learning and have a co-edited book on creative approaches to academic advising coming out this year. Some of these were published with SEDA as part of the SEDA Focus series by Routledge.
What motivated you to take on an editorial role?
Mainly interest. When I am interested in a topic, I really want to explore different perspectives and ideas. Editing gives you the chance to draw in expertise from across the sector, both in the UK and internationally. It’s incredibly inspiring and thought-provoking to see other people’s ideas. The other reason was that I was elected to the SEDA papers committee, which gave me insight into the publishing process, how books come together, what’s involved in being an editor or author. That experience really sparked my interest further and I now co-chair this committee. I also love writing of course, so it all came together naturally.
In what ways has serving as an editor contributed to your development on the education and scholarship track?
Networking opportunities have been huge. I’ve connected with people who share my interests, not just at Sussex but nationally and internationally, even across sectors like the NHS. It’s opened up collaboration opportunities and helped me build relationships that feed into other projects.
On a practical level, editing helps you stay up to date with themes and trends. For example, our outdoor learning publication sparked interest among colleagues at Sussex and led to discussions about creating an outdoor classroom. It reminded me that scholarship isn’t solitary, it’s collaborative, idea-sharing work.
What learning opportunities has this editorial work given you?
So many! One of the biggest is to realise the importance of clear communication. This includes setting expectations, structuring contributions according to publication guidelines and managing deadlines amongst other things. When co-editing, it’s vital to be clear about who’s responsible for what, without that things can get messy.
Time management is another big one. You need to be reliable with deadlines, especially when working with external contributors. Planning ahead and building in buffer time is essential. You’re modelling the behaviour you expect from others.
It’s a very different process from writing a book solo. When you’re editing, you’re managing a team, coordinating contributions, and shaping a shared narrative. You learn so much, copyright law, permissions, quote lengths, marketing insights and more. You also have the opportunity to mentor others. One of our books led to webinars and now a new book project led by another team member. It’s not just about publishing, it’s about what comes next.
What are some of the key challenges in taking on an editorial role?
Contributors dropping out is a common challenge, especially with long timelines. People leave the sector, workloads increase, life happens. You need to plan for that, what’s your backup if someone drops out? Clear communication helps mitigate this. So does setting realistic timelines. Expect someone to be late and build in buffer time.
Another challenge is ensuring the book has a cohesive narrative. You need to think carefully about how chapters fit together and what story you’re telling. Increasingly, publishers also ask for diverse and international voices, which adds complexity but also richness.
What are your top three tips for colleagues considering becoming editors?
Clarity of communication. Be clear with co-editors about roles and responsibilities from the start. Avoid overlap or mixed messages to contributors.
Regular updates. Keep contributors informed, even if there’s no immediate action required. Monthly updates help maintain momentum and flag potential issues early.
Realistic planning. Don’t make the project too long or too short. Build in buffer time and set achievable milestones. Without a clear timeline, projects risk stalling.
Helen Todd is a Learning Technologist within the Educational Enhancement team and works to develop and support the Online Distance Learning courses at the University of Sussex.
What I did
I first came across Buddycheck through a colleague, and I could immediately see how useful it would be for our Online Distance Learning (ODL) modules that involved group assessments. Many of our students collaborate across different time zones and continents and they never meet their peers in person. That makes group work particularly challenging, so I wanted to find a way to give them more structured support.
We piloted Buddycheck on one module, where students complete two evaluations: one halfway through the group work, and another after submission. The idea was to give students the chance to reflect on their group experience, flag any issues, and request support if needed. After a successful pilot, we rolled it out across all ODL modules with group assessments.
Why I did it
The motivation came from recurring challenges with group work. In the past, we often didn’t hear about problems until after submission, which made it difficult to intervene or support students effectively. Sometimes it would come down to one person’s word against another’s, which isn’t a fair or reliable way to evaluate contribution.
By using Buddycheck, I wanted to make group dynamics more transparent and give students a structured way to express concerns, or celebrate success, before it was too late. It also allowed us to signpost students to their Student Success Advisor, who could provide personalised support if they were struggling to connect with their team.
How it works
Buddycheck is embedded into the module workflow but is not an assessed element. Students complete a short evaluation midway through their group work, which helps us identify any problems while there’s still time to address them. The final evaluation, after submission, is more reflective and allows for both scaled responses and extended written feedback.
Tutors and Student Success Advisors can access the evaluations. Advisors in particular play a key role in monitoring responses and reaching out to students who flag difficulties. Tutors, meanwhile, can use the evaluations as supporting evidence if issues arise in group assessments. The system is easy to set up at module launch, and I provided training to both academic staff and the Student Success team to ensure everyone understood their responsibilities.
Impact and student experience
The introduction of Buddycheck has reduced the number of last-minute complaints about group work, which suggests students feel more supported and staff are better equipped to monitor progress. Advisors appreciate having clear evidence when students raise concerns, and tutors can use the evaluations to check whether groups are working effectively.
Interestingly, while we designed the final open-ended question as a way for students to raise problems, many have instead used it to share positive feedback. Here are just two examples:
“Our group worked together collaboratively with a collegiate approach. Considering we did not know each other, come from different countries/cultures, I think we managed the task really positively and submitted ahead of the deadline.”
Online Distance Learning student
“My team was the best I worked with during my time at Sussex. We established a reading club to continue our collaboration, as we had strong interaction and teamwork.”
Online Distance Learning student
Feedback like this has been a welcome reminder that group work, while often challenging, can also provide a real sense of community and collaboration for ODL students, some of whom may otherwise feel isolated.
Future practice
Looking ahead, we’re building on this work as part of a wider project to improve guidance and support for group work. I’m collaborating with colleagues from the Business School and our partner, Boundless Learning, to develop clearer resources and a student guide to group work. These will sit alongside Buddycheck to help students understand expectations and navigate common challenges. I don’t plan to make major changes to the Buddycheck setup itself, though I have already streamlined the mid-point evaluation to encourage higher completion rates.
Top tips
Communicate early and clearly – Make sure all stakeholders (tutors, advisors, administrators) know what Buddycheck is, how it works, and who is responsible for monitoring it. Running demos and sharing training materials really helps.
Keep the student experience front of mind – New tools should enhance, not complicate, learning. ODL students already juggle multiple technologies, so ensure Buddycheck is easy to complete and doesn’t add unnecessary workload.
Learn from others – Before rolling out Buddycheck, I spoke to colleagues who had used it on campus, researched what other universities were doing, and even consulted one of the tool’s developers. That mix of perspectives gave me confidence in how to adapt it for ODL.
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 eighth episode is ‘communities of practice’ and we hear from Dr. Wendy Ashall and Dr. Maria Hadjimarkou.
Recording episode 8: Wendy Garnham, Wendy Ashall, Simon Overton, Maria Hadjimarkou, and Heather Taylor.
Welcome to the Learning Matters podcast from the University of Sussex where we capture insights, experiences, and conversations around education, our institution and beyond. Our theme for this episode is Communities of Practice and our guests are Doctor Wendy Ashall from Global Studies and Doctor Maria Hadjimarkou from Psychology. Our names are Wendy Garnham and Heather Taylor, and we are your presenters today. Welcome everyone.
Wendy Garnham:
Can you give us an idea of what communities practice you are or have been working with? And I’m going to direct that to you, Wendy, first of all.
Wendy Ashall:
So I co-chair the SEDA Transitions Community of Practice, which brings together practitioners globally to talk about all things to do with supporting students in transition, so as they enter the university, as they journey through, and as they leave the university to enter the world of work.
Wendy Garnham:
Maria, same question to you. What Communities of Practice are you working with?
Maria Hadjimarkou:
So for the past year, I have been attending the Community of Practice of Transitions that was just mentioned. And in October 2024, I created my own Community of Practice, which is community dedicated to the teaching of biological psychology. So, yeah, it’s been really great.
Heather Taylor:
So, Maria, can you tell us a little bit about the context of your scholarship that led you to develop your Community of Practice?
Maria Hadjimarkou:
So I I feel that psychology students generally find the biological aspects of the curriculum a bit more challenging. So I thought that other colleagues probably feel the same way. So I thought it would be a good idea to form a community to bring colleagues from other institutions together and see whether we can resolve some of the challenges that we are facing in an increasingly diverse student population.
Heather Taylor:
And same question to you, Wendy.
Wendy Ashall (02:15):
So before I joined the University of Sussex, I was teaching access to HE courses in further education. So an awful lot of what we were doing was about supporting students who were joining new to the university context, so preparing them with study skills, confidence, etc. When I came to the University of Sussex to teach the foundation year, I was delighted to discover that I had colleagues that were as interested in supporting our students to equip themselves with the skills and self confidence they need to be really successful undergraduate students. Myself and Wendy Garnham then worked together on a SEDA special, special 44, I think it was, which was looking at student transitions. And to support the publication of that SEDA special, we decided, because it was still in mid COVID, to do a series of online webinars to publicize the special. And actually, the Community of Practice kind of grew organically out of that. Those webinars were so well attended and well received we realised that there was a community of people across the country and then ultimately globally who were really interested in discussing this further and supporting each other.
Wendy Garnham:
I think the support was a really key issue for the community to sort of develop further, just people coming together with a shared interest, which I guess both of you may well have been finding in your communities, just trying to support each other in the challenges within those areas. Which brings us to the next question, which is really what issues do you see as being particularly challenging in establishing and maintaining these sorts of communities? And I’ll address that to you first, Maria.
Maria Hadjimarkou (04:10):
So as I said, my community is rather new. So my challenge at moment the is to maybe increase the number of participants, so get the word out. And another challenge is also because everybody is busy and we work on different institutions, it’s rather tricky to find a common time where people can make the meetings and attend. But luckily, the meetings are remote, so we can really have the meeting at a time where people can make it.
Wendy Garnham:
Was there any sort of issue that you felt, Wendy, was particularly challenging in establishing and maintaining the community?
Wendy Ashall:
Yeah. I think I mean, when we first started, we had that interest building off the back of the publication. So the challenge has been more about the maintenance part of it. I think the scheduling is a problem, and particularly as the network, the community has grown. So we now have members in Australia, and so finding a time that enables them to attend but also fits in our busy teaching schedules. And I think that’s one of the other challenges. It’s about workload because the types of people who are keenest to be involved in a community like this are those who tend to have higher teaching loads or admin responsibilities, etc. So trying to keep that energy going for us to actually host it, but also for attendees. And I think sometimes it’s difficult to make sure that you’ve got the next speaker booked in time so that you’re keeping that momentum going, that you’re getting the invite out there early enough so that people can protect the time in their diaries.
I’m very blessed because Wendy Garnham is a diva with our Padlet board. She’s absolutely amazing. She’s sharing lots of resources on there, which I think then helps the community exist outside and in between the individual meetings.
Wendy Garnham:
Making me blush. I think one of the issues that you hit on there was just that sort of that workload impact, sort of trying to maintain that investment. But having that regular meeting, I think, is absolutely critical. You know, from my perspective, just knowing that every month there is going to be a meeting, it sort of does prime you a little bit to expect that at some point in your calendar each month. I think, you know, if it becomes irregular, that’s probably quite a challenge for people to remember about the existence of the community, I guess.
Wendy Ashall:
Yeah. I think one of the other challenges is because a lot of the people, you’re only meeting them online. I mean, we’ve been blessed to have some in person meetings, which has been fantastic, and I’d love to do more of that because not everybody wants to have their camera on, which is understandable, but we don’t want to be triggered by horrible memories of COVID teaching.
Yeah. It’s so lovely when everybody’s got their cameras on and everybody’s nodding and smiling as you’re talking. It’s it that helps create the energy as well.
Heather Taylor:
Yeah. Yeah. 100% actually. And you’re right about that sort of nightmare of COVID because there’s nothing quite like talking to a blank screen, but you’re right, even with the cameras on, I think you don’t get the same, you know, having the opportunity to see people in person is, yeah, really important.
Wendy Ashall:
But then I suppose on the other side, being able to do something like that online has enabled us to reach way more people, And there’s no way we’d be able to get everybody together in fact, so this is enabled – by doing it online we’ve got colleagues from across the country. It’s brilliant, you know, to be able to do that.
Heather Taylor:
Yeah. Maybe you should do a conference.
Wendy Ashall:
I have suggested it. I’m like, I haven’t had time.
Wendy Garnham (07:58):
I think sort of when you’ve got colleagues in, like, Australia and America, I know Maria you said you’ve got some international members of the community. So I think, you know, the downside of being online is sort of somewhat outweighed by the fact that you’ve got a bigger community in the sense that you’re able to integrate people from all over the world into your community practice, it does sort of create a bit of a challenge, I agree, in terms of timing, but I guess sort of one outweighs the other. So, you know, people in Australia, say, would not be able necessarily come to a conference, but doing it online every month, we can make contact, we can share our good practice.
Heather Taylor:
So Maria, what impact do you hope your scholarship in this area will have?
Maria Hadjimarkou:
I’m hoping to be a resource for the community, to be a resource for other colleagues, so to figure out solutions and be able to help each other because we all face common challenges in teaching biological psychology. So and it’s already we already see evidence of that, that we share similar challenges, and we can exchange ideas, share best practice, and figure things out as we go.
Heather Taylor:
I mean I can view it from a student’s perspective. I know we’ve had this chat before where, you know, biological psychology, for me, you know, I didn’t do well at GCSE biology. I think I’ve got a D in my science GCSEs, which is, you know, okay. But it’s not perfect for if you’re gonna be studying essentially biology at undergraduate level. So, you know, I did really struggle with it. And I think, you know, I think it’s tricky because it’s such an important subject, same as research methods. They will have this issue with some students just don’t want to learn it, be it so sort of key to psychology. So, yeah, I was just wondering sort of what you know, in order to get students engaged, get those students that maybe don’t have a very good background in biology, have you have you got any examples of sort of things you might have done so far or conversations you’ve had around that even?
Maria Hadjimarkou (10:16):
So, yes, it is always a bit of a challenge, so we always have to rethink and improve the way that we teach. So a lot of times, we need to break things down a bit more to have very organized lectures, to say ahead of time what is expected from the students, maybe have more interactive components and also use analogies because the biological or molecular aspects of the lectures may seem a bit abstract, so it’s hard for them to understand. So I generally tend to use analogies, which make things a bit easier for them understand. So for example, when I teach my neurodevelopment lecture and talk about the growth cone of a neuron, I tend to say that the extension just goes around and looks for other neurons to make contact. Then I always mention the analogy of them, for example, waking up in the middle of the night and reaching out and searching for it with their eyes closed, and they’re kind of trying to feel for their phone. So that, I think helps them to put a picture and understand the content a bit better.
Heather Taylor:
Yeah. I think that’s a great way to remember as well. It would make it, you know, having something personally, because if I do find it quite abstract, yeah, having something like that where it’s, you know, something I do, right, you know, I do wake up and try and find my phone, it is I think it’d be much easier for them to remember as well. So I think that’s brilliant. That sounds great. Yeah.
So same question to you then, Wendy. What impact do you hope your scholarship in this area will have?
Wendy Ashall:
I think there’s two different dimensions to it. So on the one hand, it’s about improving the student experience and student outcomes. So one of the things that’s really, I found, really enriching about the Community of Practice is that we’re bringing together colleagues who are sharing what they’ve been doing and the learner centered approaches that they’re taking in supporting students, but also thinking about the support needs of different types of students as well without sort of falling back on problematic deficit models, but really thinking through, okay, what does this mean for this cohort when we do this thing when we’re supporting students as they move from Year 1 to Year 2 or whatever? So it’s really taking that student centered learning journey approach. And I think a Community of Practice can be so powerful and really quickly disseminating those ideas because publication can take such a long time, and there are quite a lot of barriers to publication. But if I can go onto a call and Maria can explain what she’s doing, and then I can go, oh, I can steal that idea and use it in my practice straight away. Yeah. I think that’s really, really powerful. But the other side of it is the support for ourselves as colleagues that we get to network with other people, that we get to share our ideas and test them out with people who are informed and so get that feedback before we might even think about putting together a publication. We’ve got that audience to say, well, I’ve got this idea. I’ve been working on this, what do you guys think? And it’s so I think the Transitions Community of Practice is so warm and friendly and supportive. You feel held by it, so it’s given us that opportunity to really test our ideas and develop really supportive networks.
Heather Taylor:
Yeah. Amazing.
Wendy Garnham (13:45):
Yeah, I think the networking for Communities of Practice generally is the absolute key. It’s like taking what you’re doing outside of the four walls of your classroom, sharing it with, you know, the bigger community, getting feedback on it. You know, it might be that somebody else has tried something similar, or, you know, perhaps somebody’s tried what you’re already thinking of, and they’ve got some advice so you can tweak it. So it is a real work in progress feeling, but in that very supportive context. Everyone’s cooperating with this sort of the central theme of the community in mind. So, I mean, one of the things I know has happened even in some of the discussions is there’s been a lot of talk about belonging. One of the offshoots of that is there’s now a Community of Practice specifically looking at belonging. So, you know, just from one big community, we’ve now got offshoots occurring. So, yeah, I think that networking is really central, really key, but it has been a really positive experience.
Wendy Ashall :
Can I add to that? Because I’d meant to share an email with you, Wendy, that came in before Christmas, and I haven’t got around to sending it because I’ve been so busy. But one of the members of our Community of Practice emailed to say that actually to say thank you for being allowed to attend, like we were gatekeeping or something. It was brilliant. And he’d got promoted because he’d been able to share some of the ideas in his department. They’d been really quite warmly received and had a good impact on student experience and outcomes, and that had fed into his promotion application. I will bump the email over. But it’s that kind of thing. So we’re improving the experience for students, but we’re also supporting ourselves as colleagues as well.
Wendy Garnham:
Maria, I’m just wondering, given that we’ve been talking about Communities of Practice, do you want to just tell listeners exactly what happens during one of your Community of Practice meetings to give us an idea of sort of what Community of Practice feels like to actually be part of.
Maria Hadjimarkou (15:58):
So it can vary, really. But in some of the sessions, we just discussed, for example, some challenges that we may have recently or, yeah, as we started to progress a bit more, we started to have people who want to lead and present a topic. So we had, for example, recently, a presentation on alternative assessment modes that involved the use of AI, which is one of the big challenges that we are facing. So yes, it can it can be very relaxed, and that I think that’s a strength of the community that we can get together and exchange ideas, in an informal kind of, setting. And from time to time, people can present their work and lead their sessions. So, yeah, this is generally what happens.
Wendy Garnham:
And same question to you, Wendy.
Wendy Ashall :
Because our Community of Practice arose organically out the publications, the early webinars were very much focused on the publication chapters. So we had the authors of each chapter presenting their work and being available to answer questions on it. Since then, as the community has grown, the content of each individual session has varied slightly. So sometimes we have somebody coming with a question that they want the hive mind of the community to help them find an answer to. Other times, we have colleagues sharing interventions or policies or activities that they’ve been delivering to support their students and getting feedback on it. Recently, for example, I’ve just finished my doctorate, so I totally selfishly shared the findings, one of my findings chapters with the community, which was really good because it kind of helped me prepare for the viva, which was a little bit selfish, but, you know, there we go. And lately, Wendy did a session as well thinking about particular challenges.
Wendy Garnham:
Yeah. Talking about time management and how that impacts successful or unsuccessful transition.
Wendy Ashall:
But what we now because we have so many members, what we tend to find is that people are wanting to share their work. So whatever it is that they’re doing or whatever stage of that, they can then get support, like, whether they’ve got an emergent idea or something that’s really worked up and has been delivered that they’re evaluating that they want to get out there. And that means that the sessions vary in content. So I know some sessions, we’ve just posed questions like, what does everybody think about this? So, yeah, and that keeps it fresh as well, I think.
Heather Taylor (18:45):
Love that idea actually that you can present work at any stage of where you’re at because of, you know, some people I mean, I know I’ve done this before where I’ve developed an idea. It’s just a small thing for a lesson to help the students with something, and I’ll put so much effort into it right? And then I’ll deliver it. And sometimes it’s a flop, you know? And I almost feel like it’d be really beneficial to have just to have these conversations with other people where they can go, oh no, I tried that, you know, that maybe do it a bit more like this or, you know, it’s lovely just to have other people who are enthusiastic about what you’re doing give you input and feedback, and yeah, great.
Wendy Garnham:
So one of the things that made me think of was sometimes people will just, you know, in presenting one thing, they’ll mention, oh, you know, I was wondering about X or wondering about Y. I know one of the conversations that came up in the transitions Community of Practice was about what students are led to expect of university. So, looking at the expectations before they arrive, And just wondering about that at the end of one presentation led to a number of people in the community coming together after to really sort of look at how we might take that forward. So, sometimes it’s just the conversation itself just initiates further ideas or projects. So, it can be another valuable impact, I guess. So, our last question really is just what advice would you give to anyone regarding creating a Community of Practice? Wendy, I’ll address that to you first.
Wendy Ashall:
Have Wendy Garnham do it with you. No. But seriously, I think because it came out that publication and because we work closely together anyway, and we’re both very student focused, that having the fizzing of ideas between us, I think, has been really generative. And that then means that when we go into the sessions, we’re quite enthusiastic, and we bounce off each other. And I think that helps energize the meetings as well, And don’t underestimate the work involved. I think that would be the other thing because these things look like it’s just an hour out of your day, but I know that Wendy does the mailing list. I throw together the slides. There is work that goes on behind the scenes updating the Padlet, etc, that maybe isn’t visible that you might need to consider if you’re setting up a new one.
Wendy Garnham:
And same question to you, Maria.
Maria Hadjimarkou:
Oh, I would say don’t hesitate. It’s a brilliant thing to do, and I was hesitating at the start. But it’s really nice because you’re not alone in whatever it is that you are thinking about. Maybe you’re having some difficulty with teaching or anything. There’s probably more people that are having the same questions, challenges, issues, as you. So I would say go ahead, with it. It may not be massive. So but it’s really worth it, and you’ll find other people to share your ideas and brainstorm together and find solutions. So, yeah, I would say go ahead.
Wendy Garnham:
It sounds like from both of you, it sounds like one of the real benefits of creating a Community of Practice and participating in it is that sort of supportive element. That’s come through in a lot of the answers. Do you want to say anything more about that sort of sense of support?
Wendy Ashall (22:26):
Yeah. I think sometimes I mean, particularly when you work in research intensive institutions, there is an awful lot of support for people who are engaged in research, a lot of career guidance, a lot of focus on the REF and impact studies. So when you’re teaching focused, you can be a little isolated, maybe people don’t want to talk about teaching in the same way or supporting students in the same way. So being able to build that community beyond your own institution really means that you feel held, that you’re not alone in your focus and in your in what you consider important. And I think that’s really important in these days. You know, in particularly with the challenges we face in the current climate in universities, having that feeling that you’re not alone cannot be undervalued.
Wendy Garnham:
That sort of feeling of being heard I guess.
Maria Hadjimarkou:
Besides the common challenges and the common experiences or ideas that we can share in the community, I also find benefit to the fact that we’re exposed to diversity because different institutions do things differently. Their curriculum is set up differently. There is a big difference in the sizes of departments. So for example, in Sussex, we’re a big psychology school. Other universities may have just 20 faculty members, for example. It’s very different. So it has been very enlightening to see. So through this diversity, you may also have other ideas or just gain different perspective on things. So I think that’s viable as well.
Wendy Garnham:
I would like to thank our guests, Wendy Ashall and Maria Hadjimarkou.
Wendy Ashall:
Thank you.
Wendy Garnham:
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.
Heather Taylor:
That was cool, hopefully you’ll get more, I mean yours has got loads in it already, ain’t it? Your participants in your Community of Practice.
Wendy Garnham:
There’s well, there’s over a 100, But, you know, you get about anywhere between 10 and 30 at a meeting, and that’s part of what you were saying about, you know, it’s sort of it’s basically you can lay on a meeting but not everyone’s going to get there because of work commitments or teaching commitments or whatever, so you just have to roll with it that actually if one month you only get 10 people come in, for those 10 people that’s really valuable. And so it doesn’t mean that it’s no longer having an effect or it’s no longer gaining traction. It probably is, it’s just that that particular time just doesn’t work for a lot of people – like our December meeting, you know, normally the attendance at the December meeting is quite small but that’s often because you know some have finished early, certainly you know if they’re at universities in Scotland they might have finished and so they’re taking leave, other people are sort of deep into the last week of term and so you know it’s a question of do you just not have the meeting but then you lose that regularity or do you have a meeting and just a few come which is what we tend to do but it’s still useful for those people who can attend.
Heather Taylor:
I think as well it’s worth noting you know you said you started in October and you’ve got like 20 people, that’s like quite amazing I think.
Maria Hadjimarkou:
Yeah I hope we continue to grow.
Heather Taylor:
But I mean even that even still just, know, what are we in? It’s not even in March yet are we? So that’s yes like that.
Maria Hadjimarkou:
No it’s been good like you said not everyone will be in but the people that do come it’s really nice.
Heather Taylor:
I often can’t go to transitions because of teaching but know what? But when I don’t have teaching that week, it’s really nice. And even though I’m not always going, like, well, I’m rarely going because of my teaching, but I really like it that it’s there. Do you know what I mean, though? So I know it’s there. It’s like a supportive place to go if I have a separate idea or you know what I mean?
Wendy Ashall:
Yeah.
Heather Taylor:
And so which is which is probably super annoying for you if you have people like me thinking that but it is actually comforting like you were saying about being held.
Wendy Ashall:
Yeah.
Heather Taylor:
It is actually comforting as an education and scholarship lecturer to know and especially one who’s so keen on transitions, you know, like obviously foundation year to well, because I do admissions, it’s wherever they’ve been to foundation into Year 1. I’ve got academic advisees all over the years. So it’s really nice just to know that there is a place where people care about that. So, yeah, brilliant.
Simon Overton (27:41):
I actually have a proper question. So I come from teaching, from primary and to lesser extent secondary school teaching. But coming here into further education, it’s the first time I’ve heard this phrase Community of Practice. And I wondered why. Why is that a thing that exists in further education and not, or does it exist elsewhere but under you know, with a different name?
Wendy Ashall:
I’m familiar with it from pedagogic research. The idea that we create communities of practice for our students, particularly in small group teaching, it’s about creating a place in which you are role modelling what it is to do the academic work of your discipline, but also supporting students to build their social capital and their skills.
So I can’t remember that, who is it that did the Community of Practice. I’ve cited it recently, and I can’t remember. Was it Lave and Wenger? I think it might have been Lave and Wenger, but it’s this idea that your classroom practice is about building a community and that you’re training students or supporting students to develop skills and self confidence and social capital to exist in that community. So that’s what you’re doing in your teaching practice. But likewise, as educators, we’re still learning. And so but we don’t often have the opportunity to learn from each other because you’re alone in the classroom.
Wendy Garnham:
I think the interesting thing there is that when I first worked in HE some years back, it was very much about you were sort of in competition with your other colleagues and it was every man for himself. And then coming back into it, having taught, you know, again through primary, secondary, sixth form, coming then back into HE, suddenly the landscape had changed a lot and it’s now more about cooperation. I think now we value cooperation and we see that actually that is where you can be innovative and you can drive education forward, is by looking at collaboration, cooperation, all those things that I really wanted many, many years ago that just didn’t exist. And I think the community’s idea has really grown out of that different perspective. It’s actually now we are all a community, you know, we’re all working in HE so let’s just sort of come together as a group.
So you know from my perspective, aside the pedagogical side of things, think that’s sort of like a natural transition to realising that actually coming together is what works. And that’s where a lot of the innovation happens. Whereas before it was very much you were on your own, you tried things out on your own, you know, it was really sort of in competition, you didn’t want to share anything in case your idea was sort of taken by someone else. Whereas now it’s like, well it’s great, you know, if someone else takes my idea it shows impact. So yeah, I think communities, the whole idea of communities I think is very closely tied in with this new sort of lovely perspective that actually it is about collaboration and cooperation. That would be my take on it.
Wendy Ashall:
That’s interesting because your experiences of higher education got me thinking about my time in further education where everybody was so much more part of a community that you weren’t in competition with your colleagues, would share ideas, you were in a shared office even so you know if you’d come running in late on the morning and you didn’t have anything for your 09:00 class somebody go quick do this handout you know I did it last week with my lot and it worked really well. You’ve got time to quickly adapt it. So you did feel supported more in what you were doing in your teaching practice. So it’s interesting that maybe higher education is beginning to catch up with other aspects of the education sector in that regard.
Wendy Garnham:
Yeah, I think that I can very much sort of identify with that. I think there is that sense of, you know, community certainly and you know when I was teaching in sixth form it was very much a sort of team, and the team planned and the team worked together to try and tweak what was happening from one term to the next. Whereas coming into HE, the first time I was in HE, before I’d even taught anywhere else, it was very much, you know, I say every man for himself. And then going into schools, it was quite a culture shock going the other way, going into that sort of team environment, you were part of a team. But yeah, it’s interesting how we’ve now flipped that and we’re now getting that team spirit back, which I think is where the communities idea comes in.
Heather Taylor:
There is so much more student focused as well because like, just within psychology foundation year, me Wendy Garnham and Chris, who does academic development, will always consult each other with changes we’re making or you know just check that what we’re doing is going to align with what they’re doing and so on because of our ultimate goal is to essentially make sure the students have the best experience and are best prepared for going into Year 1 and it would be an absolute I mean I’ve only ever known it this way right so it would be an absolute nightmare for me if that wasn’t how we were doing things because it would feel pointless because if you go into teaching you’re going into teaching and this is wherever in teaching you’re doing it, you’re going into it because of your commitment to students and their learning and their growth and essentially their outcomes and what they want to do next so the idea of competing with other people in the place you’re working how is that going to benefit anybody you know?
Wendy Garnham:
But it might also be because of the sort of the creation of like the education focused roles because when I was here the first time you know they didn’t exist. You know, there was just no education and scholarship route. There was no teaching fellow route. You literally were sort of employed as a lecturer and your goal was to develop your research profile. So maybe that has also had quite an impact, the idea that now you have education focused roles and so that has helped to sort of bring in this more cooperative sort of perspective. I don’t know. I mean, I’m guessing, but it sort of makes sense, I think.
Wendy Ashall:
I don’t want to finish on a bum note. The sector is facing significant challenges as we all know at the moment, and my worry is that those challenges might be impacting disproportionately on teaching focused members of staff. And so actually these communities are more important than ever before, particularly when we’re thinking about student experience because if each module is just doing its own thing, then how is that impacting on the student’s journey through? But does the sector really value teaching in the way that it needs to improve the student experience and to ensure that students are met with at the place at which they’ve started and supported to get to where they need them to be. I worry that that might not be the case. Yeah. Sorry.
Heather Taylor:
No, I agree.
Simon Overton:
Yeah. Perhaps though that the very fact of the existence of communities of practice points to the underlying idea that people do care very much and are willing to create something that they don’t have to do necessarily for part of their job or whatever their academic or job role demands. But they do that anyway and maybe that speaks to some sort of underlying truth that it’s not under threat, that it will survive, that it will maintain and that we could perhaps be positive about that.
Dave Smalley is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology with a focus on educational scholarship. His current teaching portfolio includes coordinating and contributing to a new MSc course in Applied Child Psychology, alongside leading a large final-year undergraduate module in Educational Psychology. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Dave has held roles in recruitment, admissions, and student experience.
What I did
When we created the MSc in Applied Child Psychology, we didn’t adapt existing modules, we started fresh. From day one, the approach was about building something meaningful, functional, and forward-thinking. We didn’t include content because it was “standard” or “traditionally important.” Instead, we asked ourselves: is this genuinely valuable for the student?
The result was a programme with two key aims: to give students a holistic view of child psychology, incorporating mental health, family systems, education, policy, and technology, and to embed employability throughout.
Why I did it
I’ve taught educational psychology for years, and in doing so, I’ve come to recognise a key gap in the postgraduate course offering nationally. Many students know that they want to use psychology to improve outcomes for children, but they aren’t quite sure how. Do they want to work in education, mental health, with families, in EdTech etc.? They want a postgraduate course that both helps improve their employment prospects and makes them stand out from their peers, but they also want to develop a more refined understanding of what applied child psychology professions entail.
So I wanted the MSc to be about more than academic knowledge. It needed to support students in imagining what it means to actually work as a child psychologist across diverse professional landscapes. I also wanted students to walk away feeling more employable, more confident, and more connected to their potential career paths.
How it works
We infused employability across the curriculum in three key ways: through content, pedagogy, and assessment. Module content was built from a practitioner’s perspective. This means that while theory and research remain critical parts of the syllabus, their inclusion was always evaluated in terms of their utility. We first considered what practitioners need to know and then sourced the relevant research and theory that underpin it. It doesn’t sound groundbreaking, but it is very common in both UG and PG study to see seminal research and theory taking centre stage, with applications of the theory and research crammed in as an afterthought. We wanted to turn that more traditional academic approach to content development on its head.
Our pedagogical approach is all about providing the space for students to learn while experiencing what it is like to be an applied child psychologist. In most sessions, students learn by doing (e.g., carrying out a standardised assessment on a peer, or creating a psychological conceptualisation of a case study child). Sessions often focused on applying psychological frameworks to real-world problems or exploring how policy and practice intersect. We also have a heavy groupwork focus, applying many different evidence-based techniques (such as problem-based learning, team-based learning, jigsaw classrooms). The combination of groupwork (to learn) and individual assessment (to demonstrate learning) is very much in-line with the way that applied child psychologists operate in the real world. Importantly, our employability-focused pedagogy is underpinned by learning outcomes that require students to apply understanding of theory and research to some degree of real world practical application.
Assessment followed suit. We ensured that every module had at least one task grounded in an employability skill, whether that was a case study analysis, a reflective piece, or a simulated professional task. To support students in realising the employability relevance of each assessment, we went a step further and made the value of each task explicit on the module Virtual Learning Environment. Every assessment would have an ‘assessment brief’ that outlines why we are asking the student to complete the assessment, including statements that students could cut and paste into their CV. E.g. “I have applied professional frameworks to develop a psychologically-relevant integrated conceptualisation of key issues and areas of focus for case study children, namely the Problem Analysis Framework and the Interactive Factors Framework.”
Impact and student feedback
Although we’ve only just completed the first year, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. One of the most rewarding things has been seeing students make the connection between what they’ve learned and the career they want to pursue. We’ve already had graduates secure roles as Assistant Educational Psychologists and placed on PhD programmes. That kind of impact with real, tangible outcomes makes the effort worthwhile.
Not only is he the kindest, most helpful lecturer I have ever had, he makes specific efforts each week to incorporate applicability into the content. In all lecture material, he told us how we can use what we have learned to write effective CV’s, to heighten our chances of future employment. In each workshop he also incorporated activities that emulate real life scenarios in the educational psychology field. He is extremely supportive and has reached out to us many times offering support in finding graduate jobs, and makes it clear he will support us even after graduation. He clearly really cares about our success.
MSc Applied Child Psychology student
Recruitment numbers tell their own story too. Despite being only in its second year, our course has seen very strong interest. 26 students enrolled on the course in its first year and are expecting to double that in year two.
Dave Smalley has created a masters course that has been nothing short of life changing. Every decision he makes is for the benefit of the students and I feel that every single part of the course has been delivered excellently. He has taken great strides to make learning inclusive, and accessible to all students. Every lesson he delivers with a smile and we all greatly appreciate his positive impact on our lives.
MSc Applied Child Psychology student
Future practice
Looking ahead, I’m focused on refining the link between learning and employment outcomes. We’re building a cross-referencing tool that maps job descriptions and person specifications to the knowledge and experience students gain on the course (the assessment statement quoted above directly meets one of the person specifications for an Assistant Educational Psychologist for example). This helps them clearly demonstrate how they meet professional criteria, essentially translating academic achievement into job market language.
We’re also keeping in close touch with alumni to track their progression and see where the course has helped or could do more. This will not only help future students but may provide a foundation for research into postgraduate employability and curriculum design.
Another area of development is experiential learning. We’re keen to offer even more opportunities for students to apply what they’re learning in simulated or real-world settings. Finally, as the course grows, we’ll need to stay agile to ensure that quality of delivery remains high despite increasing numbers.
Top tips
Include at least one employability-focused assessment per module. Whether it’s a real-world case study or a task that mirrors professional responsibilities, make it something that students can immediately relate to their career goals.
Support students in recognising their own value. Many postgraduates, especially mature or career-changing students, lack confidence. Make it explicit what skills they’re gaining and how those translate into employability. It’s not just about the grade, it’s about recognising their professional growth.
Design with utility in mind. Let the practical needs of future practitioners guide your content decisions. Use theory and research to support function not the other way around. Think: what does the student need to be able to do in the real world, and how can university level learning and academic content serve that?
Dr. René Moolenaar is an Associate Professor in the Strategy & Marketing department of the University of Sussex. He is also a Director of a Management Consultancy and Non-Executive Director.
Disconnect to Reconnect: Experiential Learning on the Sussex MBA
Innovative teaching and learning are at the heart of the Sussex MBA. In an environment where students spend so much of their time inside at their desks looking at screens, René is taking a new approach.
What I did
The ‘Digitally Disconnected and Mindfulness’ marketing task is a teaching session where MBA students are encouraged to ditch their laptops and phones, allowing them to focus entirely on feeling connected to the natural world around them.
Taking full advantage of the beautiful and leafy green campus, MBA students step into a new type of classroom. After finding a quiet space, students focus on their breathing and use four of their senses (sight, touch, smell, and hearing) to explore their surroundings and create an experiential marketing campaign inspired by nature.
“There is something about being in nature when having to complete a task. Particularly after practicing some basic mindfulness; it brings a level of calmness and a different perspective on the challenge to be resolved. I just love giving students this unique experience.”
Dr. René Moolenaar, Associate Professor in Strategy
Why I did it
The decision to develop a nature-based activity was first and foremost my own interest and experience of learning in nature. Having practiced mindfulness in nature, I experienced first-hand the inspirational and creative effects. This activity embodies experiential learning principles (Kolb and Kolb, 2005) by immersing students in an outdoor experience where they actively apply marketing concepts in an unfamiliar yet real-world setting. Research by Williams (2017) highlights the psychological and cognitive benefits of exposure to nature, suggesting that time spent outdoors can enhance mental well-being and creativity. Whilst listening to nature sounds restores attention (Gould van Praag et al., 2017) and Kerr and Maze (2019) promote looking up and out on nature has a range of neurological benefits. Therefore, in the context of marketing, where innovation and originality are highly valued, nature provides a conducive environment for students to think beyond conventional ideas and actively engage in more innovative problem-solving.
Impact and student feedback
Working in a practical, creative environment gives students a fresh perspective. One student commented: “It was truly a great experience. I may be implementing something similar at work, maybe ‘walking meetings’ or ‘walking 1:1s’ using the park next door to the office.”
Sustainability is central to teaching and learning at the University of Sussex Business School, and after the session one student reflected on how nature never lets anything go to waste. They observed: “Woodlice repurposed an empty snail shell. It was a beautiful lesson in sustainability and resourcefulness.”
“In marketing, just as in nature, when a product or strategy no longer performs as expected, it’s not necessarily useless. With creativity and adaptability, it can be transformed to meet new needs and provide fresh value. This reinforces the importance of creativity and innovation in our marketing approaches, ensuring that we can continuously create value, even from seemingly obsolete resources.”
The Sussex MBA’s Mindful Marketing task exemplifies how breaking away from conventional methods and utilising our beautiful campus can lead to profound educational experiences. By fostering a deeper connection with nature and encouraging creative thinking, this activity prepares students to tackle real-world challenges with a fresh perspective and a commitment to sustainability – a highly valuable skill.
Future practice
Nature-based learning has strong potential for transferability across disciplines beyond marketing management. For example, psychology students could use a similar activity to study the cognitive benefits of nature-based mindfulness, while environmental science students could observe ecosystems firsthand and develop conservation ideas inspired by their findings. This interdisciplinary applicability aligns with Sobel’s advocacy for place-based education, which connects learning with real-world settings to make it more relevant and memorable (Sobel, 2004).
Place-based education fosters a deeper appreciation for the natural environment, making it an excellent approach for fostering sustainability-focused learning in various fields. Inclusivity was considered in developing this activity, offering students the option to stay closer to the Business School. Furthermore, pre-activity briefings were used to prepare students and ensure appropriate clothing for the anticipated weather conditions.
I am planning to develop this activity further by finding ways to facilitate even greater connection with nature for the students, explore the difference between different nature environments such as water and fields that have just been harvested. I am also interested in exploring how this activity could be applied to larger cohorts.
Top tips
Break-away from the traditional teaching spaces and explore how campus can become your Mindful classroom.
Prepare students with a detailed brief for the activity once you have settled on an activity (check for any anxieties or need to stay connected because of caring responsibilities).
Just do it 😊 even if the weather isn’t quite kind, students are often less concerned than you might be.
Enjoy!
References
Gould van Praag, C. D. et al, (2017). Mind-wandering and alterations to default mode network connectivity when listening to naturalistic versus artificial sounds. Scientific Reports, 7, Article 45273.
Kerr F. and Maze L. 2019. The art & Science of looking up: Transforming our brains, bodies, relationships and experience of the world by the simple act of looking up. www.lookup.org.au
Kolb, A. Y., & Kolb, D. A. (2005). Learning styles and learning spaces: Enhancing experiential learning in higher education. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 4(2), 193–212.
Sobel, D. (2004). Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities. The Orion Society, Great Barrington, MA
Williams, F. (2017). The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative. United States, W.W. Norton
Dr. Adhip Rawal, Assistant Professor in Psychology
My work as an Assistant Professor in Psychology has focused on relationality and the connection between head and heart. I believe there is consciousness in the heart and this way of embodied knowing is important to the future. I would like to see a commitment in education to protect the inspiration of young people for their life paths, but we have constructed a reality opposed to this knowledge where we are pressured to suspend what deeply engages us and has the capacity to transform the world. I feel there are students who are no longer willing to accept these dilemmas of an education that fails to bring meaning to their lives. I would like to find people who are interested in the work of transparent communication and re-imagining the healing impulse of education. Stay in touch: Deep Callings: Liberation of the Heart. The project discussed below is an Education and Innovation Fund project, the fund aims to drive positive changes in how we deliver our teaching and learning experience by stimulating student and staff co-creation and rewarding innovation and teaching excellence.
Who is looking for you?
A North American television broadcaster commissioned a field study some years ago. They recruited 12 people who were strangers to each other from the greater New York area and split them into 6 pairs. Each pair approached Manhattan from a different direction and their challenge was to find the other 10 people, who were also somewhere in Manhattan, an area of 1.7 million people. They were given $100 for transportation and nothing else. It took them 3 hours to complete this task. We are equipped to finding each other and there is something powerful about an intention which is shared. In my time at the University of Sussex, almost every day came with an impulse to wander the campus, because of some deep and palpable longing. During those hours of meandering there would often come a moment where my path crossed that of another person who was also wandering and longing to know something about their lives. After several of these kind of experiences, I began to ask myself whether there was something about humans searching that was so attractive that a meeting could come about between these people to engage something essential. Does the heart know when another heart is in range for the possibility of deep and just conversation? Is that not possible, that people are looking for each other because their hearts have something to say?
There is an evolution that happens when a person can bring a deeply felt inner possibility into expression. It reveals a source of knowing that re-organises the will and protects the young person from being overshadowed by external influences and values. Suddenly there is the company of someone whose expression carries a seed of the future.
It is remarkable what possibilities can be recovered when we are freed from someone else’s aspirations and left to our heart’s reality, even if for a moment. That moment can be enough to intuit a deeper knowing that becomes a light in the mind and to what we conceptualise as reality. These intimate encounters, though they took place during the day, felt like they opened a window to the night sky where the heart is still pondering dreams of ‘What could be’’? There is an evolution that happens when a person can bring a deeply felt inner possibility into expression. It reveals a source of knowing that re-organises the will and protects the young person from being overshadowed by external influences and values. Suddenly there is the company of someone whose expression carries a seed of the future.
In psychological language, such moments are a relativisation of the ego: “There are higher things than the ego’s will, perhaps my unconscious is forming a personality that is not me, but which is insisting on coming through to expression’’ (Jung, 1963). It seems there is something within our nature that is not neutral and carries a predisposition to begin. Hannah Arendt (1993) once said: ‘with the creation of man, the principle of beginning came into the world…And this again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before’.
Will you help me read my heart?
My work centres on paying attention to the impulses that speak to the potential beginning that lies latent in the heart of the youth. Is it really such a strange idea that an open heart generates human development and yields awareness of deeper dimensions of existence? The poet Arthur Rimbaud once expressed this need to find oneself through someone else’s eyes, which I have seen in my students who are longing to be seen for who they could become, when he said: “We are in the month of love; I am nearly seventeen…I’ve got something in me, I don’t know what, what wants to soar”. Even muscles have memory and there can be a chain reaction in a young person’s heart that becomes their future when they are communicated with in a way that provides the vital impulse of love. My students have, sometimes with tears in their eyes, asked me to support their future: “Something you said in a lecture one or two years ago is the reason I am here. It touched me. Can we make this the semester of the heart?’. This relational agreement that sets free a person’s self-expression is not one mediated by knowledge but by the experience of resonance that comes about by the sharing of presence and the building of bridges over which the ontological signals that help us understand our gifts can travel between us.
Do you love the future?
There is something that consents to such a request of a young person to know their inner life for the process of self-discovery and the project ‘Stories of the Heart: Who We Are & What We Know’ is part of this human development initiative to understand and resource these people with their own resilience and gifts. It tells of the life paths of five students and is exploring their longings, hardships, turning points, and aspirations. It is based on an intention to create space for a way of sharing that allows deeper levels of a person’s biography, life meaning and potential to be present than tends to be possible in typical interactions where they are secluded behind layers of shame, defence and politeness.
Towards the end of his life Sigmund Freud confessed that his destiny necessitated him to remain a man of letters, while a doctor in appearance. The letter is a vehicle of affection and suggests there is more than function and physiology, the soul is reminiscing in the heart. It draws attention to the idea that we carry a capacity for deeper subjectivity, but this can remain latent if the rational mind does not give authority to other modes of knowing that express the meaning and beauty of a human life. Essential information that comes to us to create our sense of self necessitates a vicinity to the heart. Have you not heard the whisper that was in accord with your path? The story of the heart is your deep story, under the surface. It comes from abandoned places and re-cycles what the self has lost. Periods of isolation often take a person’s self-attentiveness to its farthest reaches and are ones when the young person must be able to communicate what they become aware of to ease their suffering. This awareness includes a space of the heart in which a stream is sourcing knowledge from the future. A Czech proverb says, there are people who are gazing at God’s window, and I have worked with students who know this place that receives consciousness of the spiritual world and its guidance for the youth. This inner space of the heart, or ‘Herzinnenraum’ as Rilke called it, gifts a person with a knowing of what is theirs to love in the world. This care is rooted in what Alfred Adler called ‘Gemeinschaftsgefühl’, the feeling for community, which connects self and world into an awareness that sustains life and completes someone else’s joy.
I believe these people are telling us what kind of discourse and sacrifices they need from us to mentor their intelligences. I also believe education needs to invoke a mode with heart so it can be a context that facilitates a person’s self-recovery and understanding of the world. It is not enough to have a heart; we need to trust it and there is a development that takes place when we engage with the heart’s curriculum.
There is a legend that lion’s cubs are stillborn. Another lion awakens them. The first participant of this project spoke for 6.5 hours. I believe these people are telling us what kind of discourse and sacrifices they need from us to mentor their intelligences. I also believe education needs to invoke a mode with heart so it can be a context that facilitates a person’s self-recovery and understanding of the world. It is not enough to have a heart; we need to trust it and there is a development that takes place when we engage with the heart’s curriculum. But my time in academia is ending. I made a commitment to develop this work to the limits of my understanding and then look for help. I no longer believe that this will come from the university. In all my years of wandering the campus, the people I met were always students. Maybe academics do not wander. But there is a feeling that I must follow deeper callings and that somewhere, someone is looking for me.
I often have to think of you, especially when I am thinking of the future. It is quite extreme, through our conversations, I have the feeling that a wholly new resource is with me, which I was not paying attention to before. I am using this resource now to better understand what my needs and longings are, but also my fears and things where I am stuck or hung up. I am so grateful I have found a new channel of experience and knowing, with your help. I wanted to thank you for this. It’s somehow funny isn’t it that one ignores natural resources the psyche gifts us.
Participant
References
Adler, A. (1998). What life should mean to you (A. Wolf, Ed. & Trans.). Hazelden. (Original work published 1931)
Arendt, H. (1993). The human condition (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1958).
Freud, S. (1992). Letters of Sigmund Freud. (E.L. Freud, Ed). Dover Publications. (Original letters written between 1873-1939).
Hanson, E. (1960). My poor Arthur: A Biography of Arthur Rimbaud. Henry Holt. (Original letters written 1870–1891).
Jung, C. G. (1963). Memories, dreams, reflections (A. Jaffe, Ed.; R. & C. Winston, Trans.). Vintage Books. (Original work published 1961).
Rilke, R. M. (2005). The poetry of Rilke (E. Snow, Trans. & Ed.). North Point Press.
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.
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.
