Think Better, Learn Better: Six Ways Reflection Can Transform Higher Education

Posted on by Laura Clarke

by Dr Laura Clarke, Academic Developer supporting Online Distance Learning

A person (perhaps a university student) looks in a mirror, which is reflecting them as a businessperson in a suit. It is an illustration.
Illustration by Adobe Stock.

As the summer assessment period brings the academic year to an end and the halls and schools empty out and the library falls… well, silent, so it is that many of us in Higher Education start to reflect on the year just past as we look towards the new year ahead.

But why do we “reflect” and not just “look”?

“Reflect” is a tricky word with two very close meanings. It means to look back (perhaps critically) on what has gone before: like listening to an echo that returns our own words to us. It also means to look at oneself, as in a mirror, and perhaps to see what other people see every day. In other words, to reflect is to investigate what we have done and who we are. This, by definition, makes reflection in pedagogy a much more powerful process than simply looking.

This makes reflection in pedagogy
a much more powerful process
than simply looking.

Reflection promotes critical thinking and metacognition (the process of thinking about one’s own thinking and learning). It enhances students’ comprehension of the subject matter whilst also cultivating adaptability, self-directed learning, and a proactive mindset. Asking students to describe and analyse their reflective accounts of the approaches and processes they used to inform or create their work, rather than assessing solely the assessment product, can also make assessments more AI resilient as they will need to be familiar with the process of creating a piece of work, not just the product.

Reflection is a skill that is often undervalued in higher education. Students are more likely to engage in reflection when they understand that it fosters critical thinking skills that are essential for making sense of their learning experiences. Given that most university assignments involve discursive writing, which requires presenting arguments with reasoning and evidence, it is essential to help students develop the skill of reflection. It is important to provide examples of reflective writing that employ a personal style, focusing on first-person experiences that are supported by references to literature and personal insights. Providing reflective models can also help students to understand the structure and process of reflection, guiding them toward analytical rather than descriptive expression.

Some popular reflective models are:

Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle (1998). This model consists of six stages: Description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action plan.

Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle (1984). This model uses a four-stage cycle: Concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation, and active experimentation.

Schön’s Reflective Practice (1991). This model differentiates between “reflection-in-action” and “reflection-on-action,” emphasising the importance of learning in real-time.

Rolfe’s Framework for Reflexive Practice (2001). This model consists of three phases: The Descriptive Phase, the Interpretive Phase and the Outcome Phase.

Reflection can easily be cultivated using a variety of activities in the classroom. Below are some examples of how to do this.

Exit slips

Before students leave your class, ask them to write a quick response to a reflective question. If your students are online, they can share ideas on a digital collaborative space such as Padlet.

Think-Pair-Share

Incorporate think-pair-share activities where students have a few minutes to reflect individually on a question or prompt, discuss their thoughts with a partner, and then share their insights with the whole class.

Concept mapping

Use concept mapping as a visual tool for reflection. Students can create mind maps to connect concepts, ideas, and their own understanding, fostering a deeper level of thinking. For concept mapping tools available at Sussex, see: https://staff.sussex.ac.uk/teaching/enhancement/support/tools/apps

Diamond nine

Ask students to rank nine ideas, viewpoints, or pieces of information into what they consider highest to lowest importance into a diamond-shaped hierarchy. This can be done in person using cards or post-its or using an online collaborative tool.

Discuss learning from previous assessments or feedback

Lead a discussion of insights from previous assessments completed and/or feedback received, e.g.: asking students to identify what they will continue doing, need to do differently, and why. This will also help develop student assessment and feedback literacy.

Reflection is more than looking back – it’s a thoughtful process of examining our experiences and seeing ourselves more clearly. By fostering this practice in our classrooms, we empower students to enhance their critical thinking, adaptability, and self-directed learning. Let’s embrace the power of reflection to not only improve our teaching but also to inspire our students to reach new heights in their educational journeys. Find out more at https://staff.sussex.ac.uk/teaching/enhancement/

Posted in Academic Development, Educational Enhancement, Learning theory

Preferred Platforms and Piloted Products

Posted on by Helen Morley

by Helen Morley, Learning Technologist, University of Sussex

It’s me again, so you can be pretty certain this blog is AI-focused!

Disclaimer: Blogs capture a moment in time; the information and any guidance or insights in this blog is accurate on 6 June 2024. If you’re reading this and want to check if there has been an update, please visit our website here: https://staff.sussex.ac.uk/teaching/enhancement/

An AI-generated image of a man in a suit and glasses, using a laptop. Blobs of coloured light float about. He has no eyes, probably because this is an AI image.
Image generated using Adobe Firefly using HM’s prompt “an academic testing IT software”. 5th June 2024.

This semester (Spring 23/24) we have seen even more developments in the use of artificial intelligence at the University of Sussex. Topics covered in editions of this blog include:

And Dr Verona Ni Drisceoil shared fascinating insights on assessment using AI on EE’s other blog, Learning Matters.

As we come to the end of the academic year, we have some exciting news to share!

Preferred Platforms

We now have two preferred platforms at Sussex. Preferred platforms are supported by ITS and have been subject to scrutiny for GDPR and other concerns. Sussex staff and students will be able to access the platforms using their login details (abc123@sussex…) and doing so ensures that any content uploaded or created stays within our “walled garden” meaning it cannot be accessed by outside agencies.  Having preferred platforms also supports our commitment to equality of opportunity as all students will be able to access the resources.

Microsoft CoPilot

The Microsoft CoPilot logo
Fig 1. The Microsoft CoPilot logo
Screengrabs of sections of the Co-pilot app showing green "Protected" icons with a sheild and a tick. These icons indicate that the user is accessing Co-pilot with their Sussex account.
Fig 2. The two different ways CoPilot will show that you are using your protected Sussex account.

As an organisation that uses Microsoft Office, we have institutional access to CoPilot, which is Microsoft’s “AI companion” or “digital assistant”, depending on which part of their website you’re reading. You can read more about this in the news announcement from the Better Sussex team on their news article. Currently, we have the version which offers “chat” and composition options; there is a more advanced option which can engage with other Microsoft apps such as PowerPoint which we don’t have yet due to cost and other concerns. When you use CoPilot, please make sure you are logged in using your Sussex account (e.g. abc123@sussex…) to ensure you are working within the protections offered by our licence.

Adobe Firefly

The Adobe Firefly logo
The Adobe Firefly logo

We have had a licence with Adobe for many years and are pleased that they are including Firefly, which is an image generating platform, in their provision. Adobe Firefly can create images from text prompts and interact with images the user uploads. You can add specific details in your prompt, e.g. specifying a cartoon style, and there is also a menu of variables you can select from including tone, lighting and “camera” angle. As with most AI tools, please be aware of the biases Firefly has; for example the image at the top of this blog is supposed to be of “an academic” and I’m sure you all know many academics who look nothing like the output!

Support and Guidance

CoPilot and Firefly are supported by the ITS team.  If you are using them for teaching and would like some guidance, please contact your school’s learning technologist or the EE team.  Colleagues from Educational Enhancement have already started sharing tips and quick guides on the preferred platforms and there will be a self-study Canvas course available in the near future.

Piloted Products

One of (many) great things about being a learning technologist at Sussex is the opportunity to take part in pilots for tools and software. There are some pilots in progress at the moment and I’m going to write about the one I was fortunate to lead.

Jamworks

The Jamworks logo
The Jamworks logo

In January we successfully applied to be part of a pilot run by Jisc to test the notetaking tool Jamworks. Jamworks integrates with Panopto to create transcripts and uses AI to generate highlights and quizzes which are sourced entirely from recorded lecture content.

We had two cohorts of students, and their lecturers, take part in the pilot and one more group will run during vacation teaching. Responses from the academics were largely positive and we were all impressed by Jamworks’ scope as an assistive tool for students with diverse requirements.

Observations we made included:

  • It was easy to set Jamworks up and integrate it with Panopto; it was particularly useful that students could access past recordings and not just ones that were made after we had started trialling the tool.
  • The accuracy of the notes was impressive, including subject-specific terminology which other lecture capture transcripts can occasionally make errors with.
  • The highlights were useful but in some cases Jamworks could have been a lot more discerning as they could be quite long.
  • The options for students to adjust their settings, including using a focused reading pane, was great to see and a definite win for accessibility.
  • We missed having the option to run reports on student usage and engagement, but we recognise Jamworks is fundamentally a learning support tool and not a teaching or monitoring tool.

When I reviewed my notes on Jamworks in anticipation of creating my evaluation, I watched a recording of an early meeting when it was demonstrated to the different university teams taking part in the pilot. I have taken a screenshot of my face at one point, which I think illustrates that I was seeing something I liked:

Helen Morley looking very impressed, with raised eyebrows and a grin.
Me, looking like I’ve just been shown something in Jamworks I was impressed with.

Next Steps

It is our ongoing commitment to support the adoption of appropriate and exciting technologies to enhance education at Sussex. If you’d like to take part in future pilots like the Jamworks one please get in touch and register your interest. Also, do come along to events like the AI Community of Practice (next dates tbc) and the Sussex Education Festival 2024 (10 and 11 July).

Posted in AI, Educational Enhancement, Learning Technologies

Five New Padlet Features for Higher Education To Try Today

Posted on by Rachael Thomas

by Rachael Thomas, Learning Technologist, University of Sussex

Since Padlet was launched in 2008, it has become one of the most popular educational tools used here at the University of Sussex. Unlike many online teaching aids, it allows for synchronous and asynchronous teaching opportunities. Padlet continues to evolve as an essential educational technology, unveiling innovative features like AI content generation, customisable collaboration tools, and an expansive template gallery to empower teachers and enhance student learning experiences. Here is an overview of some of the latest updates.

A laptop in front of a corkboard, with multi-coloured notes pinned to it. The image represents physically what Padlet does digitally.
Image generated using Firefly AI using the prompt “An exciting-looking online noticeboard showing off the features of wide posts, customised fields, pinned posts, Magic Padlet AI generated board”

Magic Padlet: Generate Padlets with AI

A screengrab of the Magic Padlet dialogue box, demonstrating the options available on Padlet for this.

Magic Padlet is an innovative tool that aims to make teachers’ lives easier by automatically generating classroom content in various formats. Here are some of the ways it can be used to support teaching:

  1. Lesson Plans: Magic Padlet can create lesson plans based on class information, saving teachers time and providing a starting point for further customisation.
  2. Map of Historical Events: Visualise historical events by entering the subject, event, and grade level. Magic Padlet places events on a map for easy reference.
  3. Timeline of Events: Generate straightforward timelines for history lessons or biographies.
  4. Reading Lists: Curate reading lists for historians and English teachers, tailored to specific grade levels.
  5. Classroom Activities: Create interactive activities, considering available resources like whiteboards, iPads, or traditional materials.
  6. Assessment Polls: Quickly generate multiple-choice questions for assessments.
  7. Custom Boards: Describe your vision, and Magic Padlet adapts to your needs, whether it’s a wall, map, or timeline format.

See here for more information about Magic Padlet. If you don’t see the Create with AI option in your University of Sussex Padlet account, contact ee@sussex.ac.uk to ask for your role to be changed to “Teacher”.

Template Gallery

Padlet’s Template Gallery is like a collection of blueprints for creating engaging learning experiences. Instead of starting from scratch, teachers can pick a template that suits their needs. The gallery offers over 250 templates, neatly organised by category. Need a template for note-taking, presentations, or research? No problem! Use the sidebar to filter by specific tasks or activities. Hover over a template to read a description of its purpose.

See here for more information about the Template Gallery

Freeze Padlets

When you freeze a Padlet, you prevent any further changes to its content, preserving your Padlet in a frozen state—no one can add, edit, or delete posts. Only admins have the power to freeze or unfreeze a Padlet. If you decide to unfreeze it later, it will function exactly as it did before

Click here to find out more about how to freeze a Padlet

Custom Text Fields

A screengrab of the custom text field dialogue box, demonstrating the options available on Padlet for this.

Padlet has introduced powerful features to enhance collaboration and communication among users:

Custom placeholders in Padlet allow you to convey clear instructions within the post composer. When creating a new post, you’ll find placeholder text in both the subject and body fields. Customise these placeholders to guide collaborators. For instance, prompt them to add specific information. As collaborators start typing, the placeholder text disappears, replaced by their content. Additionally, you can create custom text fields beyond placeholders. Unlike placeholders, custom fields retain the text you provide, allowing you to ask specific questions or provide additional context for collaborators. For example, ask collaborators to add their name in the subject field, then feedback on a posted video. Finally, customise attachment options are available in the post composer—show or hide specific attachment types based on your Padlet’s purpose.

With these enhancements, Padlet becomes an even more versatile tool for collaborative projects. Click here to find out more about how to customise text fields

Pinned & Wide Posts

A screengrab of the "Appearance" dialogue box, demonstrating the options available on Padlet for this. The "Wide" option is highlighted.

Pin a post to the top of your Padlet to keep important information (e.g. instructions) in view, or make your post wider, to accommodate longer posts. Click here to find out about Pinned and Wide Posts and more

Please click here to find out more about Padlet’s latest updates or contact educationalenhancement@sussex.ac.uk if you would like to be given access to the Sussex Padlet Backpack account, if you would like to update your role to gain access to the advanced features, or if you would like help or advice on how to use Padlet to support your teaching and learning.

Posted in digital skills, Educational Enhancement, Learning Technologies

How I Survived Distraction Overload and Created the Ultimate Online Learning Blueprint

Posted on by Helen Todd

by Helen Todd, Learning Technologist, University of Sussex

So I’m trying to write a blog post about engagement while WFH but I keep getting distracted.

I select the perfect track to relax but also focus the mind on Spotify, have a quick doom scroll of the news headlines and depress myself further by checking my current energy bill before realising that I’m wasting time and really must get on with work. So, I monitor emails, check my to-do-list and post banter to the work Teams chat. And this is just what’s happening online, looking out of the window I can see what looks suspiciously like sunshine – and I’m wondering if it would help to creative process to spend 10 minutes relaxing in the garden (with my phone of course).

An illustration of a person sitting at a work desk, daydreaming. A clock is on the wall behind them.
Illustration by Adobe Stock

This is what It’s like to work in the attention economy where digital platforms compete to draw us in and keep us engaged. Meanwhile our slowly evolving brains struggle to process this information overload. While trying to stay on track to complete a task, these distractions weaken our performance and increase stress. As I write this blog, I’m aware that I’m doing it with my neurotypical brain, in my first language, with functioning Wi-Fi, in a first world country, from a dedicated home office I can work in undisturbed. I’m also writing it as part of my working day – it’s not a graded assignment that I have to complete unpaid after a full day’s toil.

In the week of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, I’ll explain our Online Distance Learning (ODL) postgraduate courses are designed to support learners’ engagement and minimise distractions using principles that particularly benefit those with disabilities or impairments, but which are helpful for everyone.

Our ODL students may have chosen to study asynchronously for many reasons: because it suits neurodiverse learners to study at a time and pace that accommodates their needs or to fit round their working patterns and household commitments. Some do not have the luxury of reliable internet or even electricity connection. Also, as most are not UK based, many are not native English speakers. These students often log on to their courses after spending all day working and/or looking after family.

With so many diverse challenges for learners and reasons for distraction, our courses are designed to facilitate focus for as wide a range of users as possible.  We do this using the principle of Engagement as set out by the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework. This shows how to use tools that attract learners to the content, motivate them to stay and teach them strategies to manage their own engagement. By triggering positive emotions, the online environment can help learners initiate and persist with study despite difficulties, achieving learning that is deep and meaningful.

The UDL framework divides Engagement under three headings – I’ll now explain how we have used them to design the ODL learning environment:

  • Recruiting interest

When designing learning, we have a responsibility to create material that attracts attention. Boring content is not accessible content because it may contain relevant information that gets ignored. For example, an assignment brief which has little relevance to students’ real-world lives and interests will not be attended to as carefully as one which does.

ODL assessments are designed to be as authentic as possible. This is particularly important as our courses tend to be vocational and our students are often in well-established careers with a wealth of life experience that they can draw upon. For their Msc in Global Supply Chain management, students are asked to produce a report critically analysing the operations management of an organisation in which they work. To ensure students without the necessary workplace experience are not excluded from meeting the learning objectives, there is the option to use a case study. This kind of personalisation is very motivating as it means students spend less time on topics that aren’t relevant to them.

Authentic ‘real-world’ activities can also use fiction to engage. One of the modules in ODL’s Msc in Sustainable Development uses gamification and an imaginative twist help students learn about the topic of environmental politics without engendering a sense of doom. The novel format of this module attracts attention through various missions and quests which students undertake as part of ‘Project Dandelion’. These are designed in such a way to create situations where students feel safe enough to take risks and be creative.

  • Sustaining effort and persistence

Once we have learners’ attention, we need to motivate them to maintain it. However, as previously explained, the diverse nature of ODL students means that they differ in their ability to sustain the concentration and effort that deep learning requires. When studying online, geographically separate from one’s peers. there is also the risk of isolation.

To keep students motivated, it’s important to support them in remembering the goal of their learning. As such, they are reminded throughout each seven-week module how engagement in weekly discussion boards and tasks will help them to complete their final assessments. Academics also post regular announcements looking ahead or reviewing the progress of the modules.

Many people find it helpful to see explicit examples of what they need to achieve, so marking rubrics, models of assessments and recommendations of how to structure work are available on assignment briefs. Often tutors organise a live Zoom session before a deadline as an assessment Q and A. As ODL students are in different time zones, those not able to join synchronously can watch a recording and ask questions via a dedicated discussion forum.

To avoid the demotivating effects of isolation, ODL academics and learning environments can create a sense of community online. Often tutors will begin a module by posting a short introduction sharing a little bit about themselves and encouraging students to do the same. This can be done on a Canvas discussion forum, but a Padlet board is more visually attractive and provides many ways of presenting information.

On all ODL courses, peer-to-peer collaboration is encouraged as this is a great support system for sustaining engagement. This can be achieved via through group tasks and assessments or asynchronous discussion boards where students are asked to comment on each other’s posts. Canvas allows students to be organised into groups and by labelling these groups by time zone, students have the option to join one that allows them to arrange synchronous online meetings with their peers.

Group work is easier for some than others, so we use scaffolds to encourage less confident students. For the Media, Ethics and Social Change MA will need to peer review each other’s work, this could potentially be stressful. We make this process easier by explaining the purpose of the peer review process and providing a clear structure with prompts for students to follow.

  • Self-regulation

Whilst we can support learners by creating an environment that maximises engagement, it’s important for students to develop intrinsic motivation – and it can’t be assumed all will develop it equally. We give them access to multiple ways of improving their ability to regulate their own emotions and cope with difficulty.

One key source of support with this is the Study Online Student Support Site. This is a space focussed on giving students the skills and resources they need throughout their study journey. This includes self-access materials such as guides to the digital tools they will need and post-graduate study tips, as well as a timetable of Zoom sessions on academic writing the ODL Librarian team.

Throughout the weekly pages of our online courses, there are multiple checkpoints for students to self-assess their own learning. These may be a to do checklist or a quiz for students to identify gaps in their knowledge. This type of activity promotes expectations of behaviour which help students to reflect on their own abilities and develop their own goals.

More in-depth reflection is embedded in other tasks and assessments to encourage learners to find out what motivates them personally and how they can best reach their goals.

This is just a small selection of the ways that ODL courses utilise UDL engagement to help students maintain their focus and we are continuously working on how we can make our learning more accessible to all.

Finally, it’s important to remember that because of the way our brains evolved, some distraction is inevitable. In fact, sometimes distractions can actually boost creativity and problem solving skills. Justification, in case I needed it, for a few minutes of sunshine in the garden.

This is just a few ways we use UDL to increase engagement online. Researching this blog sent me down several interesting rabbit holes which, while taking up time, also enlightened me. For example, I learnt about the social model of disability – designing online courses which ‘don’t disable people’

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/emotions-and-learning-what-role-do-emotions-play-how-and-why-students-learn

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/learning-challenge-and-difficulty-calm-seas-do-not-make-skilful-sailors

Posted in Educational Enhancement, Learning theory, Online Distance Learning (ODL)

Five things you can do right away to make your in person teaching more accessible and inclusive

Posted on by Daniel Axson
Photo by Joao Cruz on Unsplash

Accurate transcripts are important for people who need them, whether it be for deaf students, international students or perhaps where there is a lot of technical language. For each of these groups, inaccurate transcripts can be severely impactful when it comes to relying on them for assessment.  Accuracy is also important for the increasing number of AI enabled learning and assistive technologies. Many of them use pre-recorded content and rely on accurately captured transcriptions. Whether it be for summaries, flashcards, reviewing or searching – accuracy matters.

With a nod to Deaf Awareness Week last week and on today’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day, this short post will highlight a few ways in which we can make our teaching more accessible as well as being more useful for transcription based AI tools.  

1. Who and what is in the room? 

Knowing who in your classroom can go a long way to mitigating some of the accessibility challenges your students will face. Having awareness of their needs and any software or interventions being used can help you in planning and thinking about where you stand or where you focus your attention when speaking. Even better and more often than not, your students will tell you what works for them, or offer advice. 

2. Be seen 

Some with hearing impairments rely on lip reading, this can be challenging in dark rooms and impossible when the lips are facing away from them. Ensure you have lights on at the front of your lecture, speak clearly at a relaxed pace, focusing your attention to your deaf students as much as is practically possible. Also avoid covering your face with your hands or microphone when speaking.  

3. Be heard 

In most teaching spaces, microphones are available for use by teaching staff. It’s critical that these are used, whether they be desk mounted, lapel or wireless mics, there is a solution for most situations. Never assume you can be heard without them. People with hearing aids may use the Hearing Loops available in teaching spaces, using a mic is critical for this to work. When taking input from the students, either repeat what is said or pass the wireless mic around.  

4. Live captions 

Using Zoom or PowerPoint it is possible to display live captions on the screen during your session. Whilst this is not required, it can certainly be beneficial. 

5. Check in 

Finally, follow up with your students, is it working for them? You may not be able to meet all adjustments they want, but we should absolutely be meeting the adjustments they need. 

When it comes to the transcript, obviously a well-lit room isn’t going to have an impact, but clearly spoken dialogue at a reasonable volume will produce much better results. Whilst automatic captions may still fall short of 100% accuracy in most cases, if your students have been in the room and able to hear through Hearing Loops, or lip read during the session, they’ll be better able to fill the gaps or self correct any technical language inaccuracies.  

What have I missed? Are you a student who relies on good audio and transcripts, what helps you? Let me know in the comments. As ever if you need support for your teaching at Sussex, then get in touch with your Learning Technologist or Academic Developer for support.

Posted in Accessibility, AI, Inclusive teaching

Academic Developers: May round up

Posted on by Simona Connelly
A picture of a megaphone, a mobile phone, a lightbulb, a magnifying glass and the YouTube logo, to indicate announcing information

Guidance for students from the Library on use of AI

A new using generative AI in your assessments page has been added to the Skills Hub by the library team, created with colleagues from across campus who support academic skills and academic regulations. 

Learn how generative AI works and the issues with using it in assessments; discover what Sussex regulations do and don’t allow; and develop your AI literacy so that you can work with academic integrity. 

You’ll also find recommended alternatives to generative AI: academic tools and skills you may not be aware of that give better results for particular tasks e.g. dedicated reference management software like Zotero. 

Find out more about using generative AI in your assessments. 

Save the Date- Sussex Education Festival 2024 

Please save the date for the Sussex Education Festival 2024. We will have a day of in-person content on Wednesday 10 July and online content on Thursday 11 July.  

We were delighted with the response to the Call for Participation- we received three times more proposals than last year. We are busy putting the programme together- watch this space for registration! 

Learning Matters 

A number of new posts have recently been published on the Learning Matters blog. Learning Matters provides a space for multiple and diverse forms of writing about teaching and learning at Sussex. We welcome contributions from staff as well as external collaborators. All submissions are assigned to a reviewer who will get in touch to discuss next steps.  

Send all submissions to: educationalenhancement@sussex.ac.uk 

Encouraging attendance and engagement through portfolio assessment 

The Evidence-Informed-Teaching Infographics Project: a novel and engaging way to communicate scholarship 

Assessment in a world of Generative AI: What might we lose? 

Remember to update your Advance HE status 

Staff who have recently joined the University should update their Fellowship status with Advance HE to ensure that they have the correct details about you, and can continue to send you updates and information. 

Posted in Academic Development, Educational Enhancement, Monthly Round-ups

Imagining Education: Reflections from Digifest 2024

Posted on by Helen Morley

by Helen Morley, Learning Technologist, University of Sussex

In March 2024 I attended the Digifest conference hosted by JISC at the ICC in Birmingham. The focus for the two days was “Imagine the Future” and the programme included sessions on virtual reality class environments, how the learner experience can be improved by gamification and – unsurprisingly – AI.  Here are some reflections on my top 3 sessions:

Picture shows the pass and lanyard of the writer for the Digifest conference.

Imagine the Future

We began with a fascinating keynote talk by Tessa Cramer, professor of Designing the Future, Fontys Applied University (the Netherlands). Cramer explained her role as a futurologist and warned us of potential pitfalls when we try to imagine what is coming next. An amusing example was that when decades ago people were encouraged to imagine how the domestic sphere might change, there were plenty of gadgets and gizmos in the imagined home but the person in the kitchen was always “mum”! The talk was far from negative though as we were shown examples of how thinking differently about what might be really does give us the opportunities to think and imagine truly creatively. Cramer’s mantra is “things can be done differently, and that takes courage” which is a challenging position to hold, but we were left with valuable advice that we remember to include rest and play in our work if we are to realise this.

AI and Empathy

Scott Hayden, head of teaching, learning and digital at Basingstoke College of Technology spoke to a packed-out breakout group about how he and his colleagues are using AI across their college. I’ve chosen this talk as one of my top three because it was such a comprehensive account of how AI can be used for different purposes across an entire institution. Hayden skipped seamlessly between examples like producing AI videos of the college’s Principal welcoming international students in their home languages – and how this then informs lessons on critical thinking about the authenticity of digital media and the college’s policy about using real people’s images and voices to create false content, chatbots editing teaching materials to make them more accessible to learners with very focused interests (maths problems explained using the mechanics of a favourite classic car), and creating a bank of AI prompts for subject specialists to use when outsourcing administration tasks to assistive technology. Basingstoke College of Technology is a secondary school with sixth form and it’s so important that we in HE have an understanding of what our future students will be used to.

Generative AI – Student Panel

I think this session is the one I have to name as my most useful. Five students, from different disciplines at different universities at different points in their academic careers, with different experiences and challenges, discussed how they and their peers are (or are not) using generative AI in their studies. The students were candid and those who make frequent use of generative AI were convincing in their reasoning. The discussion was not adversarial and all students said that they use generative AI to some extent, but it was really reassuring to hear students talk about fairness, equal access to resources, the need to be able to evaluate and make good use of AI output, accessibility and how AI supports them to manage diverse needs, and integrity. Best of all, the panel spoke of how they value the input from their tutors more than that of the machines. I would be interested to hear from students at Sussex on the same topic.

Other sessions I found particularly interesting included:

  • Using student data to support a more personalised learning experience (Carmen Miles, De Montfort University; Richard Floyd and Ben Gill, Lancaster University).
  • Culture shock to digital shock: understanding international students’ digital experience (Sharon Perera, University of Greenwich; Tom Wright, University of Lincoln; Vartika Khandelwal, UKCISA student ambassador; Elizabeth Newall, Jisc).
  • AI 2030 (Michael Webb, director of technology and analytics, Jisc).

Jisc is sourcing content for Digifest 2025 – if there’s something you’re working on that you’d like to have considered, or you’d like to be kept up-to-date, complete the form here https://www.jisc.ac.uk/digifest or email the Educational Enhancement team on ee@sussex.ac.uk.

Posted in AI, Educational Enhancement, Learning Technologies

Teaching and Learning with Artificial Intelligence Community of Practice: April 2024 Update

Posted on by Sam Hemsley

 by Dr Sam Hemsley, Academic Developer, University of Sussex

This Teaching and Learning with AI Community of Practice (AI CoP) update starts with a look back at the 2nd AI CoP meeting in March. There’s also information about how to access a protected web version of Microsoft Copilot and a brief update on the AI tools currently being piloted at Sussex.

Also, keep reading (or jump to the end) to find out about events coming soon (this week) and for links to things we’ve found interesting, and suspect you will too.

Reflections on the 2nd AI CoP 

On Monday 18th March colleagues and students explored the topic of ‘Talking with Students about AI’ . We started with a few brief updates from Sussex and the sector (you can view the slides on Box) which included the February HEPI report on Student Attitudes to Generative AI in Assessment. See also the HEPI blog contribution posted on the day of our AI CoP: 18th March: Generative AI in Universities: What are Educators Thinking?

Next, Dr Andres Guadamuz talked about the demonstrably positive impacts on the quality of his students’ work of having mature conversations with them about AI. Andres didn’t use slides, but you see his May 2023 post to his enormously popular Technollama blog here: Using Language Models in Legal Higher Education.

We then asked colleagues to discuss how they might integrate/expand the conversations they already have with students around assessment to include discussion of generative AI, and to identify what they need to know about generative AI to inform such conversations.

Unsurprisingly, colleagues’ appetite for, and confidence in, having such conversations varied enormously. While some argued that talking with students could exacerbate or facilitate academic misconduct, others (including the students in the room) felt such conversations were necessary and a general consensus emerged that, where they do take place, such conversations need to foster discipline-specific critical engagement with such tools and their outputs.

Conversations need to foster discipline-specific critical engagement with AI tools and their outputs

For those who had already bitten the bullet and were having conversations with students about AI, we heard examples of academics who had set aside time in their classes to discuss and agree together how AI could be used and acknowledged and reflections on the challenges of doing so on a module-by-module basis.  In her recent article for Learning Matters on Assessment in a World of Generative AI: What Might we Lose?, Verona Ní Drisceoil, Reader in Legal Education, reflects further on insights and concerns discussed in the session and provides her insightful perspective on the implications of AI for teaching and assessment.

What’s next? 

The next AI CoP event will be folded into the University of Sussex Education Festival on 10th and 11th July. The festival programme and joining information is coming soon. In the interim, please let us know about events or resources of interest that we might share with the network.

Microsoft CoPilot is here! 

All our staff and students can now access a protected web version of Microsoft Copilot via their Sussex account. This means we now have institutional access to a GenAI chatbot that won’t ‘feed’ an AI beast or be accessible by all, thereby removing some of the barriers to incorporating GenAI into teaching and assessment, or just exploring such a tool in relative safety. We’re still in the ‘soft launch’ phase, so there will be more comms and guidance to come. For now, find out how to access the protected version of CoPilot in the Teaching Tools section of the Educational Enhancement website.

GenAI pilots at Sussex 

Sussex is now part of a JISC supported pilot of Jamworks, an AI-assisted study tool for students that can transform lecture recordings into well-organised notes and interactive study materials whilst also ensuring they aren’t being shared with wider world. It’s also really good at generating meeting minutes!

Following a successful Education Innovation Fund bid, MPS and Engineering and Informatics are trailing Graide, an AI-assisted marking tool which hopefully will make maths marking more efficient while also ensuring consistent and high-quality feedback to students.

AI in education events coming (very) soon 

29th April: The 6 Days of AI Online Course will get you accustomed to using a variety of different AI tools in just 10–20 minutes per day over 6 days.

The course was developed by Educational Enhancement’s own Chris O’Reilly, who reflects on the Promise and Peril of AI for Learning in last week’s EE Blog.

Wed 1 May: Gen AI in Assessment: Institution and Program Tactics Webinar. Brought to us by the Assessment in Higher Education Network, join online to hear speakers discuss what worked and what didn’t in providing AI acknowledgment templates for staff and students at Liverpool John Moores University (UK), and trialling a course-wide approach to developing staff and students’ generative AI critical literacy at Deakin University (Australia).

Wed 8 May: University of Sussex Business School is hosting the inaugural Festival of SustAInable Education. This groundbreaking event will explore the intersection of sustainability, artificial intelligence, and the future of education.

Wed 8 May: Alternatively, you can join the University of London webinar: Robot Wrestling: Learning Design in the Age of AI which features a distinguished panel of experts facilitated by CODE fellow Leonard Houx (Director of Learning Design, Cambridge Education Group).

Links we liked 

The panel discussion on Generative Artificial Intelligence and the Workplace  from February’s QAA Quality Insights conference is now available online. Contributors include Martin Compton of King’s College London, recruitment consultant Rebecca Feilding, Deloitte’s Lucia Lucchini and behavioural scientist Naeema Pasha.

Martin Compton (yes, again – we’re obsessed!) recently shared some of his ever-insightful reflections on Nuancing the Discussions around the GenAI in HE. This is highly recommended reading!

March’s Digitally Enhanced Teaching Webinar (University of Kent) included a short talk on Integrating Generative AI in Learning and Teaching in a Public Health Module, and on an AI Competence Framework and Task Evaluation Cards. 

Finally, hot of the virtual press, see the 26 April HEPI blog post by Priya Madina on discussions at the London Book Fair 2024 on How AI Impacts on Academic Publishing. It’s interesting to reflect on the benefits for academics of using AI responsibly in relation to how we enable or allow our students to do the same!

You’ll find all these links, and more, on the AI CoP Padlet.

Posted in Academic Development, AI, AI CoP, Educational Enhancement

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