When the new faculty structure at Sussex was first mentioned, discussed further at university-wide forums and School and Department meetings, our reaction was perhaps similar to many others. Whilst ‘indifferent’ might be too strong, our thinking was that this was a decision taken at a university leadership level which probably wouldn’t change much on the ground, aside from potential pooling of resources in a challenging higher education climate. We felt that any changes we needed to make would filter down in time through our Head of Department, but that, in short, it would remain ‘business as usual’ for the Law School. The ‘Conversations on Teaching for Community and Belonging’ initiative by Emily Danvers gave us an opportunity to explore how the new faculty structure might enable us to develop supportive relationships with colleagues outside of our department, what that might look like and how it may help us navigate challenges going forward post the voluntary leavers scheme.
In the last few years of her role as Deputy Director of Student Experience for LPS, Fiona developed a number of initiatives which were well-received by the student body. In this piece, we consider how we might draw from those initiatives to develop a faculty-wide space, but with a staff rather than student focus. That is not to say that building faculty wide student relationships is not important, but that, as Ni Drisceoil (2025) discusses in her critique of what student ‘belonging’ means and who does that work, staff community and belonging often takes a backseat. We conclude with some thoughts as to how we might move forward.
Community and belonging sessions for students in LPS – what did we do and why did we do it?
For the last couple of years in LPS, we have hosted a weekly breakfast or lunch event for students. We know that very many of the students find that the peers that they share their first year accommodation with end up being some of their closest friends – both at university and beyond. Friendships are also forged at departmental level but, in addition, we wanted to give the students an opportunity to come together, informally, and meet students from other departments in the school.
The get together would happen in the same room, the student common room, at the same time each week. As the Law school runs a two week timetable, it meant that different Law students would be available to attend, depending on whether it was an even week or an odd week. There was a small group of students from each department who would come every week, but we also had new faces at every get together – students who had heard about the event, or students who just happened to be in the common room when the event was happening.
When we asked the students about their motivation for attending, they gave a variety of different reasons. It was interesting to note that some of the students came to the event with the intention of seeking advice (perhaps about managing workload, or how to tackle their reading etc). The students found that having a casual conversation with a member of faculty whilst sharing some food was a preferable option to pursuing the more formal route of booking an office hour with an academic advisor whom they may know less well.
LPS Staff events: what can we learn?
In thinking about faculty-wide initiatives, it’s important to consider what is already happening in schools and departments and what we might learn from that. In LPS, we have online school forums, which are well-attended by both academic and professional services staff and a useful way to catch up on what’s happening at School level. In terms of more socially oriented events, we have regular ‘Coffee and Cake’ sessions, which are not well attended. Without undertaking a survey, we can’t provide reasons for this, but it may be that this being a Head of School initiative and booked into our calendars, gives the impression that this is a space where we might be able to socialise, but not share concerns and ask ‘silly’ questions. Time is of course also a factor, with events such as these falling down the priority list as we juggle competing responsibilities. An open plan office space for professional services staff is perhaps more conducive to those conversations than the academic offices, so it could be that a faculty wide space for academic staff would provide an opportunity to have those conversations, with the benefit of perspectives as to what happens elsewhere.
What might be possible in the new faculty? Some ideas:
· Twice monthly scheduled spaces at different times on different days, and starting on the half hour, to maximise faculty availability
· A small cross-faculty team to rotate the ‘host’ role and spread the word in the different departments. As discussed above, a friendly facilitator was pivotal to the success of the LPS student initiatives
· Keep organisation minimal, and be clear that this is not a leadership initiative
· Clear comms on the purpose of the space: to drop in, meet people, share ideas and concerns, ask questions in an informal space without needing to schedule a meeting
· No need for food! No need for themes!
· Don’t be discouraged if no one turns up. These things take time.
References and further reading
Ní Drisceoil, V. (2025): Critiquing commitments to community and belonging in today’s law school: who does the labour?, The Law Teacher, DOI: 10.1080/03069400.2025.2492444
For more on community and belonging for students see Moore, I. and Ní Drisceoil, V. ‘Wellbeing and transition to law school: the complexities of confidence, community, and belonging’ in Jones, E. and Strevens, C. (Eds.) Wellbeing and Transitions in Law: Legal Education and the Legal Profession (Palgrave Macmillan 2023).
Haruko Okamoto is an Education and Scholarship academic in the School of Life Sciences in the Faculty of Science Engineering & Medicine. She has a doctoral degree in Biology (Plant Physiology & Genetics) from Tokyo Metropolitan University and has worked with Agri tech industry in the UK supporting sustainable agriculture. She obtained a postgraduate qualification in teaching and learning for higher education in 2015 from the University of Southampton where she was a lecturer. She joined Sussex in 2018 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2021.
Logo created by Lucy Thomas (Biology student) and Ruth Farrant (Geography student)
What we did
Haruko has been developing a phone app, PhotoFolia, with Dr John Anderson and Professor Daniel Osorio which uses images taken by smart phone camera to accurately estimate levels of green pigment chlorophyll in leaves which is one of the best indications of plant health. This function to accurately estimate chlorophyll in leaves allows users to research agricultural crops and organisms with chlorophyll grown under various environmental conditions over time. While growers and horticulturists have clear goals to analyse their subjects, this very function is available to any smart phone users including teenagers with inquisitive mind. We have been supporting 6th form students develop hypothesis to test environmental impact to pollutants on plants growing around them.
Clearly, our UG students are trained in their A-levels and are continuing to develop their research skills at Sussex. Here we provided UG and PGT students with our outreach opportunities together with the use of PhotoFolia to engage in STEM education. We were awarded the Education Innovation Fund in the academic year 2024/25 to build the STEM Ambassadors and volunteer network for students and staff.
Building the community
We met weekly throughout the academic year 2024/25. Regular members made a core group which decided on agenda, created outreach activities and materials and worked towards two outreach events, International Day of Women and Girls in Science in February 2025 and Open Day STEM student society outreach in June 2025. It was felt these regular weekly meetings were key to keeping the community work together. We met on a weekly basis for two hours during Autumn 2024 and Spring 2025. Here, we made meeting times and attendance flexible to accommodate students’ busy schedules.
We had three missions. We will create an inclusive community where students feel their value in the society. We advertised our meeting on our career’s Canvas page initially in October 2024 and the community grew to 60 UG/PGT/PGR students from across the Faculty of Science, Engineering, and Medicine as well as from the Faculty of Social Science over the following 9 months.
Creating communication lines
Another anecdotal take home here was the importance of keeping good communication. We cocreated a Canvas page for STEM volunteers/ambassadors with the participating students. This allowed students to own the community and to learn developing html-based web pages and to communicate with each other on Canvas.
Providing outreach opportunities
Daniel and I are members of the School of Life Sciences’ EDI committee and together we supported the EDI lead, Majid Hafezparast and the Athena Swan lead, George Kostakis in organising an event for the International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2025 on the 11th of February. Here are the list of activities created.
June Open Day STEM Student Society Outreach Event 7 June 2025
Supported students to deliver their outreach activity at a local 6th form college BHASVIC on 5 June 2025
Provided travel expenses for UG outreach
With the EI Fund, we supported student travel expenses to outreach. Travel expenses are less likely to impact student ability to participate in on campus outreach during the term time. However, Open day outreach events are scheduled on weekends and this can become a barrier for some students. On this assumption, we set aside funds to support students. The outcome of this is that we now have an estimate of cost to support students on weekend activities.
Why we did it
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths for STEM Ambassador scheme organised by STEM Learning is one of the perfect ways to integrate students’ passion for the STEM topics with skill sets such as timely communication, collaborative experience, community building, resourcefulness, initiative, and career preparedness. STEM Ambassador scheme is run entirely on volunteering by the members.
Volunteer experience is said to be valued by more than 80% of potential future employers (2016 Deloitte Impact Survey). While many of the doctoral training programmes and PGR students have access to funding for outreach travel support etc, there is currently no support for UG and PGT students.
Our main objective was to support UG/PGT students studying STEM subjects to develop STEM outreach skills, to build the STEM volunteering community, and to co-create STEM outreach opportunities on campus.
We supported UG/PGT students individually to connect with each other and to find the common interest in STEM outreach. We also connected with many STEM student societies develop hands-on activities along with exhibiting their findings to build STEM outreach.
Our approach to date is to signpost STEM volunteering opportunities to the Career’s Hub, which itself is a great way for our students to find what they want. Such activities can be led by academics in the School or in most cases students decide whether to join or not. Currently, there isn’t any resources nor support for organising Life Sciences students to become a STEM ambassador.
How It Went
Nearly half of the 60 student volunteers engaged in attending and participating in outreach activities and a quarter of the group are registered as STEM ambassadors with public profile since we started in October 2024. Four student societies, Women in STEM, Interdisciplinary Sciences, Neuroscience, and Wild at Sussex, contributed and created posters and outreach activities. We collaborated with many more professional services including the central open day team. Together, we were able to run an outreach event during the June Open Day in 2025.
Students nominated us for the Teaching Awards in 2025 clearly appreciated the support from us and the university.
Haruko advances STEM engagement at the University of Sussex through citizen science projects like PhotoFolia, ColourWorker and Shelltering Sussex while fostering an interdisciplinary community that champions innovative learning.
She hosts weekly open meetings that provide tailored guidance on topics ranging from JRA proposals to Student Society outreach events. These sessions ensure students’ ideas are heard and nurtured, empowering them to explore subjects beyond their curriculum and contributing to a more diverse and inclusive academic environment.
Beyond routine academic support, Haruko actively creates spaces for cross-disciplinary dialogue, encouraging students from non-STEM backgrounds to engage with scientific methods and concepts. This approach has broken down traditional barriers and sparked creative collaborations, with her group now including students from IDS, Global Studies, and Life Sciences…Haruko has boosted participation among groups less likely to engage with STEM, underscoring the relevance of science and celebrating campus diversity…Haruko Okamoto’s passion for collaborative learning and innovative education makes her and her team outstanding candidates for the award, as they continue to inspire and empower students.
Nomination endorsed by the student societies ‘Interdisciplinary Sciences Society’ and ‘Wild at Sussex’
Future Practice
The STEM volunteering group will continue to meet every week, expand our network, and continue contributing to building STEM outreach community at Sussex. We have plans to develop links with STEM student societies and the Student Union at Sussex to organise outreach events on campus.
Top tips
Meet regularly at the same time
Create outreach opportunities on campus where everyone feels safe
Be inclusive
Acknowledgements
We’d like to thank the funding and support we had for this Education and Innovation Award. We’d also like to thank the Head of School of Life Sciences and the Head of Department of Biochemistry and Biomedicine for their continued support.
The Learning Matters Podcast captures insights into, experiences of, and conversations around education at the University of Sussex. The podcast is hosted by Prof Wendy Garnham and Dr Heather Taylor. It is recorded monthly, and each month is centred around a particular theme. The theme of our ninth episode is ‘inclusive online distance learning’ and we hear from Sarah Ison and Brena Collyer De Aguiar.
Wendy Garnham: Welcome to the Learning Matters podcast from the University of Sussex, where we capture insights, experiences, and conversations around education at our institution and beyond. Our theme for this episode is supporting Online Distance Learning, and our guests are Sarah Ison, Librarian for Online Distance Learning at the University of Sussex, and Brena Collyer De Aguiar, Senior Learning Technologist for Online Distance Learning. Our names are Wendy Garnham and Heather Taylor, and we are your presenters today. Welcome, everyone.
Sarah Ison: Hello.
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: Hello. Hi.
Wendy Garnham: Today, we’ll be discussing how Brena and Sarah support online distance learners, the challenges and opportunities of teaching in a global online environment, and what lessons we can take from Online Distance Learning (ODL) into wider teaching practice at Sussex and across the sector.
Heather Taylor: So, Brena, to start us off, could you tell us a bit about Online Distance Learning at Sussex and your individual role within the Online Distance Learning team?
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: Yeah. So we have a number of master’s online courses, and also the PG cert. So they are 100% online courses. My role is I’m an Online Distance Learning Senior Learning Technologist. And I’m mainly responsible for liaising with academics around course development. So when they develop the courses and the modules, supporting them with academic, with assessment and pedagogic advice and design as well, you know, on trying to promote innovative learning experiences. I’m responsible for designing the academic training, so the essential training they have to attend when they are involved in ODL. And I also do a lot of reviews in terms of accessibility and make sure our courses are accessible.
Heather Taylor: So, Sarah, same question to you then. Can you tell us a bit about your role in the Online Distance Learning team at Sussex?
Sarah Ison: Sure. So I’m the Online Distance Learning Librarian, and I’m dedicated to supporting students with their information literacy, their research skills, referencing, and helping them to avoid academic misconduct, hopefully. And I offer one-to-one sessions with students that want a little bit more support tailored to whatever they’re working on. And I provide recorded sessions and live sessions throughout their module so they have a chance to drop into like a session just to ask questions or come to my kind of launch session, which gives an overview of the way in which I can help support them. And so I could also support academic staff if they’re developing new modules, help them get their reading list together, and have some colleagues based in the library who actually get the reading lists embedded in Canvas and make sure that they’re working. And I also sometimes run bespoke sessions within a module on the request of the academic just to tailor something specific in specifically or at a certain point in the module to help really encourage the students to think about something in particular that relates to my remit. So, you know, library skills, information seeking, finding scholarly material, that sort of thing.
Wendy Garnham (03:18): You work with a diverse global cohort of students, many of whom are international or mature learners, sort of balancing work and life commitments and coming from a range of cultural backgrounds. How do your roles help foster a sense of community and belonging among students who are studying remotely, often across different time zones or cultures and age groups?
Sarah Ison: So I teach kind of once a module. I offer a session to all new students, whatever subject they’re studying. I try to schedule it in the middle of the day to sort of meet whatever time zone they’re in. Obviously, that is quite challenging, and it’s an opportunity for students to come across each other, just in terms of at the start of a session, they’re quite informal. And I encourage them to put in the chat where they’re from, what’s the weather like, how are they feeling? Put an emoji and kind of reflect how you’re feeling at that moment in time. Just a couple of minutes at the start to just kind of do a little icebreaker, and just try and make it a friendly space, really, where people can ask questions throughout. They can either raise their hand formally in Zoom or they can just unmute and throw out a question or put it in the chat. And, yeah, I just try and make myself kind of really approachable so students feel comfortable to ask questions as we go along or follow up with a one-to-one if they need. And, yeah, it’s a challenge because of all the different time zones, and it’s amazing the range and variety of people that study on ODL. You’ve got people working full time, part time with caring responsibilities. They’re studying their second or third language. I’m in awe of what they are juggling to commit to completing their degree or their postgraduate studies at Sussex. It’s incredible.
The Canvas site that I look after is called the Study Online Student Support Site or the SOS for short. That’s a space where students can utilize the discussion board area and come together across courses. So in their modules, they’re just meeting other people on their module. But on the SOS, they can throw out a question, get a discussion going, and connect with their peers who are studying on different topics, which is really good. And I’m always looking for ways to kind of build on that sense of community and just give students the opportunity to kind of meet each other but within my remit of supporting them. So, one thing I do is provide top tips every Tuesday. We have Top Tip Tuesday and Titbits Thursday because we needed another word beginning with ‘T’ for Thursday, where I try and drop in timely relevant tips depending on the week of the module that just helps them, whether it’s focusing on how to get your head around a long document, a big scholarly article, how to condense that down, note taking tips, other top tips that just help them as busy learners who are juggling a lot. I’d like to give them time saving tips and things and just help them get things done efficiently. So a lot of my focus is if you watch this video, it’s only 20 minutes, but it will save you lots of time in the long run. So, yeah, really trying to support through time saving techniques and making it relevant at the right point in the module as well.
Wendy Garnham: Just on that note, you mentioned the discussion board. Do you get quite a lot of buy-in to the discussion board?
Sarah Ison: Not masses. So that is something that I think can always be encouraged. And if the usage dips a bit, then I can promote it a bit more. So that’s a good reminder that I can keep on promoting that because it just gives them a chance to share things. But the students do set up their own WhatsApp groups. So they do kind of get their own discussions going off official university platforms. So, you know, we don’t always know what’s going on there. But, yeah, I think Canvas is the main place where we can encourage community and coming together in different ways.
Brena Collyer De Aguiar (07:05): So I work much more with the academics, and I would say that my role, so my support goes into two phases. So one is the design phase, where, you know, I will support academics on thinking about making assessments more authentic. Trying to bring, you know, and make it very clear their space for the students to bring their own experience, but also what’s related to the place they live. We have large cohort courses. We have an MSc that is Sustainable Development, so it’s a very big number of students. And how do you also connect those experiences? The other way I try to bring this is trying to promote this conversational tone in the content itself. Like, trying to bring the teaching presence even, you know, when they’re doing their synchronous learning. And then it moves into support the academics during the teaching phase. So I lead, I’ve designed the training, the essential training they have to go. So it’s how, how do you set expectations for academics on how do you make the module live, how do you communicate, how do you set your expectations. So all the live sessions in the ODL modules should be recorded, and that’s to promote a second moment for engagement for those that due to their time zones or work commitments can’t join the live, etc. But also putting some tools in practice. So we do use, you know, we have the VLE – Canvas. We use, we organize the cohort according to time zones just to kind of be easy for academics to deliver live sessions that are according to their time zones. We also promote discussion boards that are set by groups just so they can, you know, communicate between themselves. And of course, some tips on design, you know, like, like Sarah uses as well. Having the discussion boards for introduction that allow them, display a place for connecting through their identity. So discussion boards that are fun or ask them to post pictures of their bookcase and try to guess, you know, who else is reading the same or who could be that person. So that’s kind of how I try to promote those spaces for the students through the design and support academics.
Heather Taylor (09:24): So, Sarah, online engagement can be a challenge, especially as many Online Distance Learning students and mature learners are balancing work and study. What approaches, whether through course design or student support, have you found effective in encouraging engagement and motivation?
Sarah Ison: So I’ll focus probably more on student support. And, as Brena said, she’s not directly student facing. And I’m probably the only one in the Online Distance Learning team at Sussex who is seeing students regularly. And so which is nice because then I get feedback and get quite a lot of dialogue with them. And there is a Student Success team that also provides a lot of support for them, very personalized. They call up the students, check how they’re doing. And I liaise with them to make sure that they’re aware of any updates I’ve given to the SOS or like with AI. There’s a lot of relatively new content that’s gone on the Sussex website that I’m drawing attention to in my sessions. So I’m telling Student Success, this is what I’m telling them so that, you know, if you get a call from a student, you know, to talk about progress and they’re like, “Oh, AI, can I use that?” then they won’t be like, “Oh, what’s the latest advice?” You know, I have a good sort of bridge between them to make sure we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet. And, so, yeah, I support through kind of the session and just being there for students and providing drop-in sessions throughout the module. And the one-to-one element really works well. Obviously, you can’t provide that to everyone, it would be impossible, but so far, it’s not become overwhelming. And there’s a student I’ve engaged quite a lot with who has come to realize that she thinks she’s got ADHD. She’s awaiting a proper diagnosis, but we’ve talked a lot about how to, well, I’ve been trying to help her how to compartmentalize the different things she has to do because she gets so overwhelmed by the amount of reading, the amount of learning she has to do. So we’ve worked together to try and break it all down and think about how she can approach her module. Probably goes slightly beyond my remit, but in terms of managing her readings and the library work and the research skills. She’s like, “Life hacks! Give me life hacks!” I’m like, “Okay. Here’s some top tips from last Tuesday”. But, yeah, we talked about how she thinks her brain works. And that has really helped me think about how can we be inclusive. How can we just offer stuff from the get-go, from the beginning that is accessible to everyone, no matter if they’re neurodivergent or neurotypical. How people learn is so varied that the way that we and the team work together really helps each other because that really informs the, like, the handouts that I provide, you know, the online resources, and what I put on the SOS. You know, I’ve got that in my mind, “This has got to be accessible and inclusive”. And, yeah, trying to provide videos at the point of need that people can dip into and won’t take too long to go through is kind of a key way that I provide support to the students. So, yeah, trying to do the personalized thing one-to-one is really important, but you can’t do that for everyone. And so, therefore, the more generic videos, you just try and make them as inclusive as possible. So that’s kind of my main methods of trying to do that through videos, the SOS, and one-to-one and live sessions.
Heather Taylor (12:24): You know what? I think, you know, like you said, “But you can’t do it for everyone,” and you’re completely right. But I think importantly, you know, and on theme, it isn’t for everyone, is it? Some people don’t want one-to-one. Some people, you know, prefer to just, some people prefer to absorb information relatively passively. Some people want to engage with it and, you know, in different ways. So, actually, yeah, that’s great.
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: I think for ODL students, the design of the modules, so we have a very strong element of consistency across all modules and pages, which then reduces that cognitive anxiety they would have, you know, on trying to look for the information. And also thinking about, you know, it’s student-centered, so it’s thinking about removing as many barriers as we can. So, like, you know, in most of the modules, for example, would have links directly to the guides and to the Study Hub and signposting the resources and examples. For example, we really work with templates, templates for submissions, templates for information. I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in terms of engagement in a couple of projects that we used. We gamified a module, for example, and that kind of made them travel in time, so that was a very engaging experience. So, I’ve, like I said, I am on top of UDL fun. I’m a playful person, and I, you know, I love immersive experience. So every time I can put my finger there, it’s like, “Let’s do something fun”. Of course, you know, like I said, in terms of consistency, not only in the layout, the learning is structured. So they have three different learning phases, which they are encouraged to, you know, go through the lecture content, go through applying those, the learning, but also reflecting on that on top of having spaces for creating community, engaging with, you know, throughout the cohort. Yeah. And flexibility. You know, you can, you can show your presence in different ways and also, you know, in different formats.
In terms of engagement, that’s the only thing that I don’t know if I should say this, is the tutor presence really makes an impact. We have, for example, I’m telling you about a lot of stuff in terms of design. But if the tutor is not engaged, if the tutor doesn’t show his presence on the discussion boards, for example, try to promote the, the discussion, you know, to continue or use announcements in Canvas and show that that module is live and that the teacher is there, you see a huge, you know, difference in terms of engagement. In opposite, if you have a tutor that is really there, and I know the challenge, you know, and we have large cohort modules, which then we require bigger teaching teams, you see that the experience is completely different. So it’s a mix of putting the, you know, designing but making very clear that the human element is there.
Heather Taylor (15:23): Yeah. I think they’re so important. I think even when you’re, you know, when you’re lecturing in person, obviously, like, if I’m lecturing in person, I have to be there and engaging because I’m there. But being just even being enthusiastic about it makes a big difference to the students. They’re not gonna get enthusiastic about something that I sound bored of, right? And I completely get what you’re saying with this, the tutor engagement. If the tutor is not engaging with the with the, you know, online resources and discussion boards and so on that you’ve got, the students essentially are probably gonna think, “Oh, this isn’t really necessary”. “You know, if they’re not doing it, why would I do it?” you know? So, yeah, that’s quite a challenge, though, for you then because then you’re sort of, you know, you’ve made something good. It just needs to be delivered the way you intended it to be delivered.
Wendy Garnham: I love the idea of the gamification. That sounds really good.
Sarah Ison: I was very emotional when you launched that module. It was at the Educational Festival, wasn’t it? And you worked, you collaborated with the academic, and it was amazing. They did, like, this preview. It was like a film premiere. I was really like, “Oh my gosh. I want to study this module”. And I’m not even, you know, I’m interested in Sustainable Development, but it’s not my thing to study. And I was just like, “Wow, this is amazing”. And I felt so proud of you because it was such a different sort of module, completely different to gamify that. And it’s had some amazing positive reviews, isn’t it? Yeah.
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: It is. It’s called, we renamed the module. We called Project Dandelion. And, you know, when you, when you think about, and I know that I again, most of the immersion in that gamification was made through storytelling. So it’s, we really thought the narrative to bring to put the students into that story. We also, the thing that I thought was really good on that as well was because the module was quite depressive, because we were talking about the climate change and waste, etc. So it was a way to actually, how do you say? Swift. Instead of the end being bad, we said, “Okay, we sorted it out. Now you need to travel back in time and figure out what we’ve done”. So then you can see that they are much more in a much happier place, you know. They connect to the emotions and what they could do. Storytelling. Storytelling. And it’s, you know, everyone, we are all, don’t they say that since, you know, the beginnings, every human being is a storyteller? No, we grew telling stories. I love that, so I, I need to stop talking.
Heather Taylor: That is so, so clever though, when you say it, though, because it’s depressing. But you really don’t want to end a module with the world being on fire, do you? You know?
Wendy Garnham: So ODL students at Sussex show strong academic outcomes, including low levels of academic misconduct, I’m pleased to say. How do you support students’ academic literacies, particularly for those returning to study or unfamiliar with the UK academic context?
Brena Collyer De Aguiar (18:23): All academics involved on teaching an ODL module, they need to attend what we call the ODL essential training. The first one, it’s about the teaching, and the second one is about marking because, you know, they are all online, so it’s a bit different than what we do on campus. And on the essential training, I bring, you know, the awareness, so it’s user-centric. It’s making sure they understand that they are dealing with people that are around the world, that they may be too far from, you know, the academy, or if they were close, like me, for example, struggle with the referencing here. You know? Just to make them very aware that those challenges are present. They can’t just assume that they are UK-based students and signposting the resources. So where would you go for support or, you know, flagging that Sarah is there, the module is there, as well as I’ve mentioned before, in the syllabus page and then kind of important places throughout the modules, that always link to resources and to further module information as well as support. The other support moment we have is every time a module, ODL module runs, we have the module survey. And that kind of triggers what we call the module evaluation is where we will be sitting, you know, the development team, the pedagogic advice team, the academic with the survey and reflect further. So every time there is an academic literacy challenge or, you know, it’s always going back and thinking, do we need to signpost more resources? Do we need to have Sarah stepping in into the first welcome live session to point them, you know, how to access those specific resources at the library? And hopefully, you know, addressing the challenge and improving every time the module runs.
Sarah Ison: In the last couple of years, I embedded a few new slides into my live session that I do in the first week of every module, acknowledging the cultural differences when it comes to referencing and what people’s experience might have been in whatever geographical place they’re in. Because one of the academics on ODL told me once how all the way up through her master’s, she was in South America, and she never had to reference, like, anything. It just wasn’t done, you didn’t need to, you could just write, and that was your essay. You handed it in. Fine. And how different is that here? And so I’m then, it just made me think, well, I can’t assume that all the students joining know the UK Western way of referencing and exactly how it should be unless it’s made really explicit. And academics and people like myself, I think, in a support position have a really important job to make that as clear as possible from the beginning. So I see it as a privilege that I meet these students. I try and make it really clear that what they’ve been used to might be different to what’s expected now. So I try and be really clear about, you know, academic misconduct, what that actually means and how to avoid that and the importance of referencing and how you must cite your sources. You must say where those ideas came from. And I really kind of drive that home.
And I was able to kind of adopt the university’s academic practice online workshop. So that’s a Canvas site that students get referred to after an initial case of academic misconduct. They then have to work through it, understand what it means by collusion and academic misconduct, etc. They have to work through that and then it’s a quiz and they have to be checked off that they’ve done it. So I was able to offer that from the beginning. I promote that to the students. They’re all, all ODL students are enrolled on it. They’ve got access to it. We’re in the process of updating it at the moment with other key colleagues from the university. But using it proactively to say, “Have a look at this”. “You know, you might end up coming back here if you were accidentally, you know, plagiarized or something”. “But here’s the information”. “You know, it’s optional, but please do, you know, invest some time in understanding how to avoid academic misconduct”. So trying to be strategic and always mentioning about referencing the importance of it. But I think it was really important to address the cultural differences and not assume everyone knows what’s going on just because they’ve enrolled at Sussex. They don’t necessarily know what’s expected when it comes to that because it might be so different to what they’re used to.
And, we now have a dedicated Online Distance Learning librarian inbox, so students can just fire off questions, and it’ll be covered by me or a couple of my colleagues in the library. There’s always a place students can come to ask. As most librarians will say, if we don’t know the answer, then we’ll probably know where to find the answer and connect you with the information that you need. That’s one of the best things of the job. One of my colleagues does say, she doesn’t quite know how I get so excited about academic skills, but, you know, she’s like, “I feel really inspired now to think about, you know, reading and writing”. And I just, I get excited when I connect people with the information that they need. And a lot of my job is signposting, helping people find what they need, to achieve what they need, but also to avoid important things like academic misconduct.
Wendy Garnham (23:11): I think that is important not to make too many assumptions about what people are bringing to the learning session. So I think it’s quite easy when you’ve been delivering content for some time just to assume that there are certain sort of basic levels of understanding that may not necessarily be there, certainly with quite a diverse cohort. So it’s a good reminder.
Heather Taylor: Yeah. Brena, what are the key things you’ve learned from supporting Online Distance Learning students, and what advice would you offer to academic staff, whether teaching online, in hybrid mode, or face to face about inclusive practice, engagement, and student-centered course design?
Brena Collyer De Aguiar: You probably can sense. I’m not from the UK. So I, I’ve linked my experience with my work as well in terms of diversity and coming from a different cultural background. And I would say that for me, one of the things that I’ve learned more is about expectations. So online learning, you know, requires a lot of expectations to be set. And this should be part of the design from the beginning to the end. Expectations in terms of time that you’ll be spending on that learning, expectation about how, language, you know, technical expectations as well. From the expectations, making sure that the design and my thinking and my advice really brings inclusion as the focus. Like, let’s think further. I was aware, already applying to my kind of other software design work, but now it’s an accessibility that goes beyond. And to understand and probably showcase that, you know, by having the content accessible, you’re not only benefiting students who need, you’re also promoting different ways, you know, for everyone to access the information.
In terms of our advice, and those kind of link very well with the UDL principles, you know, it’s for me, again, being from Brazil, we are all about emotions and feelings. So it’s trying to bring some empathy, pedagogy to your practice. You know, try to promote connection and presence. And when I talk these usually, I flag that this also includes the tutor. So it’s about enabling, you know, that space for everyone, not just the learners, but everyone involved on that caring learning community that, again, enables a better learning space. Joy and fun. I’m all over playful learning, immersion, storytelling. There are, you know, you don’t need to be a pro. You, you know, there are small things you can add to your learning and teaching practice that can make learning more fun. And I would say not promoting ourselves, reflect and develop, you know. I would say if you could and I know some module leaders would do the reflection session in the end with the students to bring their perspectives, what they missed. But as well, you know, connect with your colleagues that had similar experience, and, of course, the resources and the training available.
Sarah Ison: Yeah. I feel I feel like I’ve learned a lot about, just the importance of accessibility and learning design and how that relates to being inclusive. And a way in which that’s been more personal for me has been working with people who are neurodivergent and have really clearly explained to me what helps them work well in a team, what helps them work when I was managing them kind of in that relationship. And then that’s helped me think about, “Okay, what about neurodivergent students?” How are they going to see what we’re offering and what small things can we do, as Brena said, “What small things can we tweak that actually makes all the difference to those learners and is accessible for everyone?” It’s not making it harder for neurotypical people. It’s just making everything easier for everyone. And so that’s kind of my key thing for this question, really, that considering how other people learn and take on that information. If you think about that in terms of what you’re asking them to read, if you’re an academic and you’re building a module, you know, think about how you’ve laid out your reading list material, how clear you’re being about what the expectations are. You know, if there’s a group assignment, how that’s going to be, you know, processed by someone, you know, that’s not you. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is so important to just trying to be inclusive. And as with Brena, I’m haven’t done a lot myself, but playful learning is such an amazing way to learn. And so I want to kind of find more ways of doing that in the opportunities that I have through working with ODL students. But, yeah, small things make a big difference. So remembering that as you go forward will hopefully be a good thing.
Wendy Garnham (27:52): It sounds as though one of the real strengths is sort of being able to draw students in to sort of experience what they’re learning about or to at least, as we’ve said, like, immersing them in that. So I guess, so is that more difficult with Online Distance Learning compared to when you’ve actually got students in the room with you?
Sarah Ison: There’s so many tools we can use now to just break out into groups and to collaborate in so many different ways using Padlet boards and other kind of tools that just help you just get ideas together to work together. And we have this amazing relationship in our teams where although we’re made up of three quite distinct groups of colleagues and our work doesn’t always overlap, we have this brilliant, like, connection where because we have short regular meetings as a whole team, we use all these different tools that we could use when working with students as well. You know, I’ve used a Padlet board sometimes where I’ve said, “How are you feeling, students, about you at the start of your module? This side, put up emojis and pictures, whatever. If you’re feeling a bit, you know, negative about stuff, if you’re feeling good, work on this side”. And then at a glance, I could get people’s instant reflections on how they’re feeling about what I was about to talk to them about, which helped me to then possibly adapt my approach to the rest of that session. So you have to be quite flexible and fluid and be able to perhaps, you know, stray a bit from what you might have been planning. So if everyone suddenly says, “I’m really scared about reading long articles because I’ve, you know, had a break in study, and I don’t even know how to read an academic article”. You might think, “Oh, okay, if 20 people are saying that, I better focus on that in this session and maybe talk less about reading eBooks or something”. You know, there might be different things you can focus on. And when you bring that interactiveness into a session and you get other students’ input, it shapes what you do, but they feel listened to and that’s, you know, inclusive.
Wendy Garnham: Yeah. Sarah Ison and Brena Collier de Aguiar, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. And thank you for listening. Goodbye.
Heather Taylor:
This has been the Learning Matters podcast from the University of Sussex created by Sarah Watson, Wendy Garnham, and Heather Taylor, and produced by Simon Overton. For more episodes as well as articles, blogs, case studies, and infographics, please visit blogs.sussex.ac.uk/learning-matters.
Keep listening for some bonus chat about today’s topic.
Heather Taylor (30:32): I guess as well, you know, I think these students have decided for whatever reason, they want to do an online course, and I think that can make a really big difference in terms of when we’re trying to deliver something. I think the problem sometimes with having online resources for in-person students is they are quite passive with it sometimes, you know, whereas these students are choosing to do this.
And I think that, you know, remember that year when we was all with the COVID? Remember COVID? And, anyone who signed up to come to the uni knew right from the beginning, it’s going on. It’s all gonna be online, right? I think they knew from the outset, didn’t they? Yeah. Because of the timing of the government or whatever. But, I’m not allowed to mumble. Sorry, Simon. Yeah. And I think that, actually, that year, and it really made me think about it because you both talked about empathy. So you were talking about empathy. You were talking about the importance of connecting, listening, responding. And I actually think that year with the with the students who were all online, I don’t feel as though I had any less of a bond with them or any less of a rapport or, and I think it’s because we all signed up to the same thing, right? And I did tell them at the beginning, “I haven’t taught online really before, I want you to get the best out of this. In order for you to get the best out of this, you gotta work with me, you gotta help me – you gotta get involved – you gotta use the chat, you gotta use the discussion”. And they were so committed. They were so lovely, weren’t they?
Wendy Garnham: They were really engaged.
Heather Taylor: So I think, yeah. And I think, you know, I don’t know. I think that’s really important, though, making, you know, it’s really lovely that we have these online courses because for some people, that is just better. It’s going to suit them better. It’s going to suit, you know, around their schedule or just even the way they like to learn. So I’m really pleased that you’ve not just and I know you wouldn’t do this anyway, but I’m really pleased that, you know, you didn’t just take something that was a standard course and go, “We just say it online”. You know? And you’ve gone, “All right, how can we make this good?” “How can we make it engaging?” “How can we make it meaningful?” “How can we connect with the students?” And I think that’s such a, you know, fantastic thing, basically.
Wendy Garnham: I think just making the students feel heard is like the absolute bottom line because I think also when you’ve got big groups, I mean, it sounds as though you have got quite big groups for the online courses. And, you know, as great as that is, it’s still like, the bottom line is, how do you then make all of those students feel heard as individual? And I think some of the things that you shared are really sort of going to promote that sense of, you know, “I matter, I was seen in this course or, the tutor’s hearing me”. And I think that is, it’s quite hard to get to that level, but I think it’d be useful no matter who’s teaching what, in what context. I think that’s sort of quite a key message for me to take from that.
Dr Luis Ponce Cuspinera, Associate Professor in Engineering, offers reflections on his experience of curriculum redesign.
What were the motivations behind a curriculum review in Engineering and Informatics?
There were several. I’d recently returned to Sussex after three years at Dyson, where I helped set up a new engineering institute. That experience, of designing everything from scratch, really opened my eyes. When I returned to Sussex I noticed some modules had changed, especially post-COVID, and the course felt less cohesive. Individual modules were strong, but they weren’t always working together as a unified programme.
I also realised that some course conveners had inherited programmes they didn’t fully understand and who hadn’t had the chance to reflect on the course as a whole. At the same time, the university was launching Curriculum Reimagined and discussing changes to the Sussex Academic Framework. It felt like the right moment to act, especially since we hadn’t had a curriculum review in years due to the pandemic.
How did you engage and support your colleagues throughout the review process?
I started with separate workshops for Engineering and Informatics staff to tailor the discussion to each group. I introduced the concept of curriculum review, what it is, why it matters, and shared insights from pedagogic research and my own experience designing curricula.
I then gave course conveners a set of actions to reflect on and followed up a few months later. I also pointed them to support from our Academic Developer, Sam Hemsley, and encouraged them to engage with Education Enhancement. My aim was to empower them to take ownership of their courses, not impose changes from the top down.
What pedagogic strategies did you encourage to enhance the student experience?
I focused on three key areas:
Assessment bunching. I encouraged conveners to review how assessments were spread across the semester. Debunching assessments can reduce student stress and improve wellbeing.
Course alignment. I asked conveners to consider both technical and non-technical alignment. Are modules building on each other logically? Are students learning skills they can apply soon after? Are professional and employability skills embedded throughout the course?
Graduate characteristics. I encouraged conveners to define what kind of graduate their course is shaping. What should students be able to do by the end of the degree? This helps clarify the course’s identity and appeal and supports recruitment.
What challenges did you encounter, and how did you navigate them?
Change can make people defensive. Some conveners felt their courses didn’t need improvement, especially if recruitment was strong. I tried to contextualise the need for change, highlighting evolving student expectations, sector trends, and future regulations.
Sometimes I brought data to support the case for change. I also used my subject knowledge to guide conversations and challenge assumptions. It was important to respect people’s time and priorities, especially when they were juggling research or other commitments.
What outcomes or early impacts have you observed since the review?
One big win was that our conveners were well-prepared when the new academic framework was implemented. They’d already started thinking about necessary changes.
We’ve seen updates to two postgraduate courses that weren’t recruiting well. Conveners added new interdisciplinary modules, which aligns with university priorities and could boost recruitment. One undergraduate course successfully debunched assessments, which is complex but impactful. Another convenor created a visual map of module alignment, far exceeding what I’d shown in the workshop. It’s great to see colleagues take ideas and make them their own.
One challenge though was student engagement. I’d hoped for more involvement from students in the review process. Some conveners used NSS feedback, but I’d like to see more direct student input, perhaps through working groups. That’s something I’ll reflect on and improve in future reviews.
By turning our attention in a serious way to how we use and think about our voices and ears, we can help students develop their communicative resources as thinkers, listeners, and speaking citizens.
Sussex colleagues, join us on 26th November (13:00-16:00 at 255 Bramber House) to explore the role of oracy in higher education. Discover practical strategies for embedding speaking and listening into the curriculum, and learn how oral assessments can support inclusion, engagement, and academic integrity. Oracy, defined as the ability to express oneself fluently and communicate effectively, is an often-overlooked skill in higher education. This event invites educators to consider how oracy can be embedded into teaching and how oral assessments can support inclusive pedagogy. Register via Eventbrite.
Why oracy?
Oracy education encompasses a wide range of practices, including discussions, presentations, vivas, performances, and debates. These activities not only help students develop and demonstrate mastery of their discipline but also prepare them for life beyond university. As Michael Rosen, advocate for developing students’ oracy skills at all levels of their education, states: “talk precedes writing and is crucial to understanding cognition … when you talk, you hear what other people say and how they think, and that helps you formulate ideas for yourself” (2024).
The rise of generative AI and its implications for academic integrity have further highlighted the value of embodied skills, such as speaking and listening. Oral assessments make it more difficult for students to outsource their work to AI tools and enable educators to better connect with students, assess their understanding, and support their skill development.
Challenges
Despite their benefits, oral assessments require careful resource planning. Depending on the type of assessment, they can be resource-heavy for both main marking and making re-sits. From the student perspective, they can be time-intensive and anxiety-inducing. Issues of fairness and bias, such as how accent, confidence, or language fluency affect perception, must be addressed through staff training, the scaffolding of assessments, and reasonable adjustments. This event will provide a space to discuss these challenges openly, share practical strategies, and reflect on how oracy can be supported across disciplines.
Sussex: a hub for oracy
The University of Sussex already has excellent leaders in oracy education. Dr. Verona Ní Drisceoil (Reader in Legal Education (Law, Politics and Sociology)) has pioneered ‘voice work’ in legal education, and Sussex hosts the UKRI-funded Speaking Citizens project led by Dr. Tom F. Wright (Associate Professor in Rhetoric (Media, Arts and Humanities)). Wright’s new book, Oracy: The Politics of Speech Education (Cambridge University Press), explores the historical, political, and pedagogical dimensions of oracy, offering a roadmap for implementation across sectors.
Why attend?
Come and hear from Verona, Tom, and other Sussex academics as they share their expertise and experiences of embedding oracy into their curricula. This event will not only offer valuable insights into how oracy can be effectively integrated into teaching and learning but also provide an opportunity to network with colleagues from a range of disciplines. It may be particularly beneficial for those looking to develop aspects of their educational practice and could serve as a useful point of reflection for fellowship applications to the Higher Education Academy.
Programme
This in-person event (Bramber House 255) consists of a series of lightning talks interspersed with time to chat and network with colleagues to share ideas and resources.
13:45–14:35 — Lightning talks: Getting students talking in teaching spaces
Cath Senker (Assistant Professor in Academic Skills (University of Sussex Law School)) – Whose voices are we hearing in the classroom? Promoting oracy for learning
Emma Newport (Associate Professor in English Literature (Media, Arts and Humanities)) – The extracurricular impact of Sussex Writes on student confidence speaking in class
Fiona Clements (Assistant Professor in Law (Law, Politics and Sociology) – Encouraging oracy in the classroom
Sarah Otner (Associate Professor in Innovation Management (University of Sussex Business School)) In-class debating
BREAK 14:35-14.45
14:45–15:25 — Lightning talks: Oracy and assessment
Matthew Cole (Assistant Professor in Technology, Work and Employment (University of Sussex Business School)) – Group presentations as an assessment
Benoît Guilbaud (Associate Professor in French, Language Pathways Convenor (Media, Arts and Humanities)) – The range of oral assessments used in modern languages: challenges and opportunities
Ernesto Cabellos (Assistant Professor in Filmmaking (Media, Arts and Humanities)) – Pitching with confidence: Oracy, accentism and AI in Film & Media Education
BREAK 15:25-15:35
15:35–15:55 — Plenary: Sharing insights and takeaways
What have we learnt from today
What might we take forward into our own practice?
Ideas for the Learning Matters blog write-up and other forms of output
Buckley, K., 2024, June 7. Talking the Talk: Interactive Oral Assessment to Promote Academic Integrity in Large Postgraduate Teacher Education Programmes. Pedagogy for Higher Education Large Classes (PHELC), Online Symposium. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11410269
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
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Please note that blog posts reflect the information and perspectives at the time of publication.
