Welcome to the February 2025 Academic Developers round up, where we share information, events and news.

Sussex Education Festival 

The Sussex Education Festival is back for its third year! On Friday 2 May, colleagues from across the university will come together to share their experiences, research and reflections on teaching and learning here at Sussex. Further information, and a Call to Participation is now live on the Staff Hub. 

New and updated Educational Enhancement Advice and Guidance web pages 

A new Assessment Equivalencies page provides guidelines for determining student assessment workloads and equivalences.  

Our Curriculum design step by step page has improved guidance on writing or reviewing course and module learning outcomes. See also our updated and expanded guidance on oral assessments, which now includes lots of ideas for oracy based teaching and assessment activities. 

The page on AI and academic integrity now includes general guidance on what to do if AI use is suspected and the Assessment in an AI world page now lists assessment types in order from highly vulnerable to academic misconduct using AI, to inherently resilient.  

In other AI news, see our most recent Spotlight on AI in Education: January 2025, click here to join the newly launched Teaching and Learning with AI Community of Practice Teams space. And find out more about the Sussex AI in Education Summit planned for April. 

New on Learning Matters is Episode 5 of the Learning Matters featuring Dr Sophie Anns’ work (Associate Professor of Psychology) on creating an autism-friendly university. If you have a spare 30 minutes, then give it a listen (or read the transcript). It’s really interesting! 

Events and workshops organised by Educational Enhancement

Learning Technologist workshops – now available Workshops to support staff using technology in teaching and learning : Staff Hub : University of Sussex free staff development.   

Enhancing assessment and feedback: A case study compendium (Published in October by Advance HE) features a case study from Angela Gao (USBS) titled: “Changing the paradigm: rethinking assessment in the AI era”. 

Employability 

Between 250-300 students per year benefit from the employability-focused Business Law and Practice module taught in the School of Law, Politics and Sociology, which has been shortlisted in the Lexis Nexis Legal Awards University Commercial Impact Award category. Read on Learning Matters about (1) the module convenors’ approach to working with students to develop the module, and (2) the module content, delivery and student feedback. 

Newly published: The Advance HE 2025 employability case study compendium. Nineteen case studies from across the sector.