Professor Ruth Pickford

Over 20 years, 25 books have been published to date in the SEDA series, and this review article aims to analyse the ways in which books within the series have contributed to thinking in higher education pedagogy over this time. We have approached the texts through three lenses, analysing them chronologically, thematically and by the orientation of the authors towards educational development. We demonstrate that the coverage of topics and the syntheses of ideas that the texts represent have holistically provided invaluable coverage of the key thinking in the field. Not only have the texts contributed to knowledge but also they have asserted the importance of the underpinning SEDA values which they represent in practice, helping to build the community of practice that is educational development. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

The University's Assessment, Learning and Teaching strategy commits us to publishing a journal showcasing staff activities in relation to Assessment, Learning and Teaching. The Assessment, Learning and Teaching Journal is practice-based, reflective and pragmatic, and comprises papers of up to 1,500 words and book reviews of up to 200 words. The journal is refereed, all submissions being reviewed by two reviewers. It is normally published three times a year both in hard copy and electronically.

This paper considers student engagement in the context of a diverse higher education population and explores what institutions can do to impact positively on student engagement. The paper takes as its starting point the goals of higher education and the purposes of student engagement and reflects on the politicisation of student engagement, and the relative positioning of the student and the higher education institution in relation to student engagement. The paper suggests conditions for and dimensions of student engagement, and identifies how opportunities for student engagement may be embedded through the curriculum and through learning and teaching. An innovative and original pragmatic framework exploring academic, emotional and transactional dimensions of student engagement that can be used by higher education institutions to implement holistic, targeted engagement strategies is presented.

Making Teaching Work provides a down-to-earth, jargon-free book for teaching staff in universities and colleges, and includes reference to some of the best modern literature on assessment, teaching and feedback. By focusing on the learner in a variety of situations and contexts, the book explores how teachers can help learners to make learning happen. The authors emphasise 'teaching smarter' - helping busy, hard-pressed teachers to increase the efficiency as well as effectiveness of their work. Written with both full-time and part-time staff in mind, this book allows teaching staff to balance the various tasks which make up their workload, including the increasing paperwork and administration they encounter whilst carrying out assessment, teaching and providing feedback to students. The book addresses a wide range of aspects of assessment, learning and teaching in post-compulsory education including:How to provide a supportive learning environment - including online learningHow to design and manage formative assessment and feedbackHow to support diverse students - including addressing and achieving student satisfactionDeveloping teaching - including lecturing, small-group teaching, supporting individual learning and dealing with disruptive studentsHow to use research to improve teachingCreatively designing curriculumPromoting student employabilityBroadening horizons - including widening and deepening participationAddressing and achieving student satisfactionIt is a self-sufficient and thought-provoking resource about teaching and learning for all practitioners in post-compulsory education.

This article outlines an original and practical framework that synoptically integrates the factors underpinning a strategic approach to developing excellent academic practice (DEAP) within an institution. It considers recent developments driving development of ‘excellence’ in academic practice and describes a practical model – based on the requirements of the sector, the needs of institutions and the perspectives and goals of staff – that can be used to meet the desires of the various stakeholders. The framework’s philosophy is that outcomes depend upon three factors: individual colleagues’ attributes at different stages of their career; the opportunities provided at each career stage to develop academic practice; and the agency of the colleague and the institution to engage with one another behaviourally, emotionally and/or cognitively to align these attributes and opportunities. The framework is likely to be of practical use to all staff engaged in developing their own or others’ academic practice, while at the same time offering a theoretical framework for scholarship.

The popularity of computer science H.E. courses has resulted in the challenge of delivering lectures to large cohorts of computing undergraduates. In some cases there has been limited success in student engagement. There is little scope for interaction and feedback may be inhibited. It is generally accepted that where students actively engage with feedback, this may promote learning. This paper explains a technique, Colourcard, that is being used successfully in two U.K. universities to support the strategic goal to use feedback as part of teaching to promote learning. The basis of the technique is that lecturers use student feedback to control the pace and direction of the lecture, and to support the development of a relationship between lecturer and students. Findings from two case studies are briefly presented. The cases involve delivery of first year undergraduate systems analysis and data modelling lectures to large student groups in 2002/03.

Active participation and partnership are different; active participation neither always leads to partnership nor evidences it. However, a student’s active participation in classes, in her/his course and in university life is a highly desirable undergraduate attribute and is a prerequisite for any staff-student partnership. As students may rationally choose not to participate in particular ways deemed compulsory by an institution if these do not align with their personal goals, any requirements designed to influence directly a student’s active participation thus need to be thoughtfully considered and carefully implemented. Rather than enforcing a series of requirements, the institutional responsibility is both to facilitate opportunities for students to engage and to support all new students to participate actively in their course. This paper explores the different approaches taken across one large UK university in supporting new students to become active participants in their own learning. The range of approaches adopted highlighted the importance of contextual and disciplinary factors in shaping effective orientation processes. Subsequent analysis was used to produce a model of the relationship between the underpinning conditions and activities that support students to develop as active participants in their institutions. It is suggested that this model and the method used to collect data and to implement outcomes is transferable to other universities.

This article outlines an innovative and highly practical model that holistically and synoptically integrates the factors that underpin strategic approaches to developing teaching excellence within a course, an institution or more widely. It combines and articulates the various drivers towards excellence widely discussed currently, from the perspectives of students, institutions and those who teach them. Integral to the model are the elements of progression, satisfaction and graduate outcomes that align fully with current imperatives around teaching excellence. Drawing upon extant elements of Higher Education pedagogy, this article adopts a Boyerian approach to scholarship integrating original research that has been applied in diverse contexts in an innovative way (Boyer, 1990), to provide a route-map or blueprint for the design and delivery of curriculum, teaching and learning environments. The model will be of use to individuals, course directors, learning and teaching directorates, institutional leaders working in higher education.

UK National Student Surveys indicate that assessment and feedback across the HE sector are perceived as significantly less satisfactory than all other areas of the student experience. Student experiences of assessment and feedback in their first year are also critical for retention. A HEFCE funded £200,000 First Level Assessment Project (FLAP) was launched in 2008 to improve assessment for first-year students at Leeds Metropolitan University. The project aims to close the gap between students’ preentry expectations and their perceptions of assessment and feedback during their first year and raise student and staff awareness of the purposes of assessment and feedback; disseminate techniques to help staff achieve better student engagement with assessment and feedback; and elicit student and staff perceptions of assessment and feedback before, during and after the first year to inform the redesign of practice.

Assessing Skills and Practice outlines how to ensure fair, consistent and reliable assessment of practical activities. With a particular focus on formative feedback and its role in helping students to understand what is required of them, this guide is packed with advice, examples and case studies covering the key areas, including: assessing across the arts, humanities and sciences - from labwork and clinical practice to dance assessing oral work using feedback ensuring inclusive and fair assessment. This volume is an ideal introduction for new or part-time lecturers and will also be valued by experienced teachers who are new to this area of assessment or who want to improve their current practice.

Internationally many nations are seeking to recognise and reward excellent teaching at an institutional, subject and individual level, acknowledging the importance of outstanding teaching as a contribution to positive student learning experiences through students’ academic, emotional and transactional engagement. This paper explores the ways in which higher education teaching excellence can be recognised and rewarded, using a case study from the UK, and considers the relationship between institutional, course-level and individual teaching excellence. We conclude by proposing that HEIs can develop a competitive advantage through leveraging the expertise of excellent university teachers to the benefit of learners.

In the summer of 2020, academic and professional service managers at Leeds Beckett University (LBU), were mindful that the upcoming academic year was going to be challenging in terms of teaching and tailored support delivery, due to the grave uncertainty created by Covid-19. We knew that many of our incoming students had experienced disruption in their learning at school or college, and we wanted to support and maximise their potential for success at university in these uncertain times. The prospect of future lockdowns and even more online learning were the only certainties, as students were still, quite rightly, not encouraged to come onto the physical campus. At Leeds Beckett University (LBU), we believe that the way a student studies (their learning pathway) is as important as what they study. Our strategic focus is on ensuring each student’s learning pathway is supported through a high-quality curriculum, learning activities, and learning environment. Pickford’s (2018) Blueprint for Teaching Excellence frames LBU’s approach to inclusively supporting and empowering students to succeed. This innovative, research-informed, and practical model holistically integrates the factors that underpin strategic approaches to maximising a student’s success. The model identifies six transition-related areas upon which course teams need to focus – students’ practical and course orientation, personal and social integration, and academic and disciplinary preparation. Institutionally, we have focused our L&T research on developing expertise in these six areas and have developed resources aligned with these six requirements. It was in the context of this robust research- informed approach to supporting new students to transition into higher education that we approached the challenges of students beginning their studies with us in 2020. We were conscious that we needed a greater, more precise, understanding of the prior learning experiences of our incoming students, especially those school or college students in study in 2019/20 who were affected by the March 2020 lockdown. Through previous work relating to the need to support student transitions, presented at our LBU annual Learning & Teaching Conference in June 2020 by Dr.Michelle Morgan, we already understood the importance of this pre- arrival data in helping to create a seamless bridging of the gap between secondary and tertiary education. We knew it would become even more critical in Autumn 2020, due to the impact of the pandemic on student learning in schools and colleges. We were aware that the prior learning experience and challenges of our diverse incoming student body would need to shape our response, strategy, and policy in 2020/21 and beyond. As a result, we decided to pilot a pre-arrival academic questionnaire across a small number of courses that included questions on the impact of Covid-19 on our incoming students’ prior learning (Morgan, 2020b).This short piece offers broad headline findings from the data on two key questions: (1) How can we understand incoming students’ levels of anxiety after studying at school or college in lockdown? (2) Are students experienced in learning digitally at school or college before they come to university, and did Covid19 affect this? We will outline the use of Morgan’s (2020b) pre-arrival questionnaire, how the courses and university responded to the findings, and our ongoing approach. We specifically highlight some of the differences between the A-Level and BTEC/Level 3 respondents. At LBU we have a large intake of BTEC/Level 3 students and are aware that their prior learning experience and background may be different to that of traditional ‘A’-Level entry students (e.g. Kelly, 2017), and that their retention, progression and attainment levels are significantly lower. In addition, their resilience and continuation appear to be dependent on the support provided to them by their institution (e.g. Pokorny et al., 2016; Kelly, 2017).

This paper describes a programme of innovative changes in enterprise education and a subsequent evaluation, brought about by the introduction in 2005 of the Centre of Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CETL): Institute for Enterprise at Leeds Metropolitan University. This paper discusses that programme, namely: the Innovation North Foundation and Progression Project, which was one of the first significant developments following its inception. The project was designed to embed enterprise skills into the core curriculum in level one of Computing and Information Management studies, based on the belief that these skills will form not only a part of students’ whole University education, but also play an important role in the support for, and performance in, students’ subsequent careers. The paper, which expands on the practical paper presented at the ISBE 2006 conference in Cardiff in November, includes evaluation data collected from students and staff from two consecutive years that the module has been delivered. This paper suggests that the project, now in its second year, is going some way to being embedded within the curriculum, is subtly introducing students to enterprise and enabling them to reflect on how they apply their skills in a project based scenario. Results from the evaluation show a positive acceptance of the innovative changes from both students and lecturers with only minimal improvements suggested to design and delivery.

Inclusivity is fundamental to higher education, its course design, its assessment and its delivery. The principles of inclusivity offer all students the opportunities to achieve to the best of their ability. The purpose of this case-study based paper is to outline the context, process and development and initial evaluation of a newly generated tool designed for academic colleagues. The Inclusive Course Design Tool (ICDT) offers a series of reflective questions and supporting guidance rooted in theory and research on inclusion, pedagogy, multiculturalism, universal design for learning and implicit and unconscious bias. This first version of the Tool encourages course teams to reflect on and interrogate the nature of inclusive academic practice in their courses, in their course curricula, their classrooms (virtual or physical) and their approaches to student learning and support. The contextualised rationale for the Tool, its design, the consultation process, its early evaluation and future considerations as an institutional tool are explored. Its use to try to reduce the Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) student attainment gap and enhance success and graduate outcomes, and enhance academic practice and reflection are specifically explored.

This paper outlines ongoing work undertaken by a university educational development team to strengthen and share colleagues’ academic practice in relation to inclusive learning and teaching activities interventions. The paper outlines our institutional “Fora” structure (coordinated by The Centre for Learning and Teaching) and, taking one of the three Forum events as a modelled example, shows how consideration of the research literature informed colleagues’ discussion and catalysed the sharing of written and oral best practice through participatory action research (PAR) to ultimately build a resource guide. This paper specifically focuses on exploring the different approaches that colleagues adopted to build their students’ “sense of belonging” (both for the face to face and online experiences). A student’s perceived strong sense of belonging to their university can be a core factor in enhancing student satisfaction, engagement and retention (Pickford, 2016; Thomas, 2014). Critique and consideration of Ahn & Davis’ s (2019) four domains of belonging formed the starting point for the discussion. Digital tools and pedagogic approaches sourced from colleagues who have found them valuable in developing student engagement and belonging during the Covid-19 crisis are also explored.