ABSTRACT. Emotional reaction to negative academic feedback can be a barrier to students’ engagement with that feedback. One factor that may impact students’ emotional response is whether the marker addresses the feedback to the student (e.g., “Your writing”) or focuses on the content (e.g., “The writing”). This exploratory study investigated how form of address in feedback impacts emotional reaction. Student participants (N=106) read simulated feedback statements that varied according to reference type (pronominal “your”, neutral “the”) and feedback polarity (positive, negative) and provided ratings for emotional response, as well as attention paid to, and usefulness. An open response question queried participants’ perceptions regarding personal or neutral address from markers in assessment feedback. There was no significant effect of reference type on quantitative feedback ratings for emotion, attention, or usefulness, but qualitative content analysis revealed that half the sample preferred neutral address, largely to mitigate the emotional impact of negative feedback. Feedback polarity had a consistent significant effect where students perceived positive feedback as higher in happy emotion and higher in usefulness compared to negative feedback. There was a more nuanced pattern for attention, where there was only a small decrease in attention for positive compared to negative feedback for neutral references. Our results flag the role of individual differences in student preferences for feedback and inform practice for educators in terms of how written feedback can be framed to facilitate engagement.

ABSTRACT. Reflective writing is an important part of contemporary summative assessment in Higher Education which is practised across different disciplines. For example, it is common to find it across the Social Sciences (Van Beveren et al., 2018; Zuber-Skerritt and Cendon, 2014), and for some time, across the Health Sciences (Mann et al., 2009). This is also the case at the University of Glasgow where reflective writing as summative assessment is used in approximately 400 courses (across all Colleges) including a range of different genres e.g. reflective portfolio, journal or essay. Although reflective writing has become a commonly used form of assessment, there are many parts in the process that are unclear. These include the experiences of students undertaking it; staff and students' assessment literacies in relation to the reflective genre; and the reasons for setting such assessment on the part of staff. This gap in knowledge firstly became clear to us via our learning and teaching practice which motivated us to research it further.

This paper reports on an LTDF-supported research project that aimed to explore practices in, and experiences of, reflective writing for summative assessment at UofG in order to build a comprehensive learning resource for students. The building of this resource was informed by a literature review, a comprehensive mapping of university assessment practices and the gathering of empirical data, collected via questionnaires and focus group interviews. Questionnaire data (n=110) were collected from UofG staff members who employ different types of reflective writing assignments as a part of summative assessment. The questionnaires aimed to cast a light on the drivers behind setting such an assessment. The focus group interview data (n=12) were collected from students who undertook reflective writing for summative assessment in an effort to better understand their experiences, perceptions and learning needs.

The majority of staff strongly agreed that reflective writing enabled reflection on students’ practice, enhanced professional competencies, or helped conceptualise longitudinal development. Similarly, most of the student participants perceived reflective writing as a balancing act between theory, experience, and reflection or as a tool for personal growth and development. Nonetheless, several challenges associated with students’ reflective writing were identified, such as difficulties of finding their own voice, imposter syndrome, and facing a novel pedagogical approach, especially if students came from different educational backgrounds.

The paper will present such results and analysis from the project before introducing the new UofG Reflective Writing Resource for Students Moodle. We will briefly mention how the resource is structured, what it is based upon, and in which ways it can help students improve the quality of their reflective writing assignments, and eventually, develop their reflective writing skills.

ABSTRACT. Rationale A central pillar of the University’s Learning and Teaching Strategy is “an evidence-based inclusive approach to assessment and feedback that enables students to be lifelong, self-regulated learners who actively contribute to assessment and feedback processes”. In this study, we examine this pillar through the lens of having students write their own feedback comments by comparing their work against information in different kinds of resources rather than against the comments teachers usually provide. One aim of this study was to engage students as active partners in feedback processes. Another was to show that different resources lead students to generate different kinds of feedback comments. Still another was to explore how this approach can be used to enable students to produce feedback comments on their own critical thinking.

Methods Students produced a solution to a complex accounting problem then compared it against two different resources in sequence - a worked solution to the same problem and then a video of an expert talking through her thinking processes when tackling such problems. After each comparison, students wrote their own self-feedback comments and then formulated feedback questions for the teacher. The first comparison is typical in a teaching context whereas the second is typical in workplace settings, and hence more authentic to practice. Importantly, the teacher did not provide any feedback comments until after students had produced their own feedback.

Findings Results show that from the worked solution students produced self-feedback comments on the correctness and incorrectness of their answer. In contrast, the video explanation resulted in them producing self-feedback on their thinking processes and on why the answer was correct or incorrect. Also evident was that the video comparison helped students answer the feedback questions they formulated at the worked solution stage. Perception data show that students found this approach to generating feedback empowering, as feedback became a self-discovery process rather than a process where they relied on teacher comments to improve their understanding and work.

Implications In the recorded video we discuss the value of this approach in developing students’ critical thinking, their ability to self-regulate their performance and learning, how moving from a worked solution to video comparison (expert talking) better prepares students for professional practice and impacts positively on teacher workload. Putting students in the driving seat of feedback means they can generate some of it themselves, when they perceive a need, without waiting for teacher comments. This should be the goal of feedback in higher education.

ABSTRACT. The relevance gap within the field of management studies mirrors challenges seen across higher education. In his provocative work, "Management Studies in Crisis," Professor Tournish underscores an alarming disconnect between academic research and the practical realm of management (Tournish 2019). Increasingly, students feel estranged from the actual day-to-day workings of business, viewing their degrees as a path toward a vocation rather than a continuation of academic exploration. The advent of Covid-19 lockdowns and the rapid advancements in AI technology have only exacerbated this disconnection and even raised questions about traditional methods of teaching. One student, in a recent evaluation of a business school management course, succinctly remarked, "management is boring." Enter ecopedagogy, a fusion of Paulo Freire's 'pedagogy of the Earth,' critical pedagogy of place, and experiential learning theory. This approach champions learning by immersion in the world itself—an active learning philosophy that is gaining traction across all levels of education. In the realm of management education, students have the opportunity to engage with the untamed natural world and the intricacies of the built environment, both shaped by the forces of business and management. Here, they can reflect on the evolution of society and their role as future world changers, an experience that AI cannot replicate. In this presentation, I will share my experiments with ecopedagogy principles, ranging from grand outdoor adventures involving Everest summiteers to brief "campus field trips" within the urban landscape of Glasgow's West End and University Campus. The focus is not on extravagant outings but rather on de-familiarising students with the mundane environments we often take for granted, rekindling their imagination, and prompting essential questions that frame modern surroundings through the lenses of ethics, responsibility, and sustainability. I will delve into the "prototyping" approach I've implemented, seamlessly integrating ecopedagogy into existing courses and pursuing more ambitious projects over the past two years. Through student experiences, we uncover the "slow violence" inflicted on our natural and built environments by societal change, cultivating critical thinking over rote learning. This is achieved through multi-sensory exploration, consideration of various time scales, and an array of analytical levels. The cornerstone of this defamiliarization process is field journaling, a conduit for management students to reconnect theory with practice in a responsible, ethical and sustainable manner.

Tourish, D., 2019. Management studies in crisis: Fraud, deception and meaningless research. Cambridge University Press.

ABSTRACT. The School of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow (UofG) has been running Interactive Teaching Units (ITUs) as part of the 2nd year chemistry curriculum for 27 years (Lennon et al., 2002). The aims of the ITUs are to (1) give students the opportunity to apply chemistry knowledge gained through lectures to real world problems and (2) develop transferrable skills such as scientific writing, presentation skills and teamwork. Modifications in the last few years have included facilitating these activities online during the pandemic and modernisation of course material. In this talk, we report on the newest developments made over the last year through a partnership of students and staff, including new workshops on scientific writing, AI and communication skills, as well as a brand-new format and content specially adapted to the TEAL rooms (Technology-Enhanced Active Learning) at our university.

Approximately 150 second-year chemistry students encounter one 3-hour ITU each semester, working through a structured set of activities in groups of about 12, with a tutor, dividing into smaller sub-groups throughout the session. Our pre-pandemic research in 2019/20 found that many students did not like presenting nor working in groups, nor did they recognise the value of acquiring these transferrable skills (Docherty, MEd, 2021). The transition to an alternative delivery format for online ITUs during the pandemic gave the opportunity for a different style of teamwork using breakout rooms, but since then, using the online tools in person in traditional computer clusters (with one person per computer) were not conducive to teamwork.

The new implementations in session 2023/24, the subject of our talk, were developed and will be presented in collaboration between two 3rd year student partners, a final year project student and staff. The new implementations include:– Firstly, the length was doubled from one to two afternoons per student to allow the addition of a skills workshop. The first part thereof focussed on literature searching and referencing, using a rubric to improve essay scores, and discussion on the use of generative AI in scientific writing. The second half of the skills workshop was an interactive presentation, designed and delivered by the final year student, on public speaking techniques with a focus on promoting effective science communication. Secondly, the ITU session format was adapted for delivery in UofG TEAL rooms, which gather six groups of 5–7 students around a single computer, fostering teamwork. The new activity on solar energy –created by the student partners and staff– included students reading selected scientific papers with a structured set of questions explicitly linking students’ existing lecture knowledge to the real-world problems in the papers, and group presentations on different solar technologies from across the whole TEAL room. This gave students their first experience of reading scientific literature, as well as developing communication and groupwork skills.

By including our reflections on collaboration between students and staff in curriculum development, and by providing our example of active learning in TEAL rooms that fosters graduate attributes, we hope our talk will appeal to colleagues across disciplines.

ABSTRACT. The implementation of a flipped classroom approach in engineering education is gaining prominence, where lectures are delivered online, and in-class time is dedicated to active learning. The effectiveness of this model , however, is dependent on the quality and quantity provided by digital and teacher resources . This study presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of a flipped classroom model within an Engineering Mechanics module, involving 180 first-year students in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Programme jointly offered by the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) and the University of Glasgow (UofG). This initiative is a pilot delivery of a blended learning approach for the SIT-UofG programmes in Singapore, that involves a collaboration between the University of Glasgow Singapore (UGS), UofG and SIT.

The online learning materials include various learning resources, such as video lectures, online quizzes, readings, and discussion forum. The face-to-face (F2F) components take place in the classroom after students have completed the online learning contents. The F2F components aim to engage learners in the process of internalizing and building their knowledge through teacher facilitated team-based and project-based activities, while encouraging learner-learner and learner-instructor interactions.

The Flipped Engineering Mechanics Classroom will be taught in trimester 2 of AY2023/24 and various methods will be used to assess the effectiveness of the flipped classroom approach. To evaluate students’ perceptions of the learning environment, we will examine the digital and teacher support, which are anchored on the foundations of Self-Determination Theory (SDT). Assessment of outcomes involves evaluating student engagement and learner satisfaction, consisting of the four dimensions of behavioural, cognitive, emotional, and agentic engagement, and the four factors of learner-content, learner-instructor, learner-learner, and learner-technology satisfaction, respectively. This study aims to contribute valuable insights into the potential interactions between instructional design, support mechanisms, and student outcomes within the context of a flipped engineering mechanics classroom.

ABSTRACT. Assessment policies and practices are evolving and diversifying across UK universities due to increasing attention to social justice; the need for students to develop graduate attributes such as oral communication; and the challenges posed by AI. As part of these developments, oral assessments such as presentations are increasingly commonplace across disciplines as learning and assessment tools. However, diversifying assessment by including oral tasks does not equate to inclusive practice; what is valued in oral tasks and the implications for equity warrants close investigation (Heron et al., 2023).

The University of Glasgow Learning Through Assessment Framework (2023, p.15) states that inclusive assessment treats all students equitably “throughout the assessment and feedback process”. How an oral presentation is delivered, as well as its content, is reported by some HE practitioners to be fundamental to successful performance in assessed oral presentation tasks (Heron, 2019). When aspects of delivery (voice, body language, use of prompts) factor into score-reaching decision making, it is vital to ensure that “all students have the same opportunities to perform well”. Developing such inclusive approaches to formative and summative oral assessment enhances equity and students’ wellbeing by allaying student anxiety in regard to oral assessments (Grieve et al., 2021). Furthermore, students become equipped with an awareness of inclusive oral communication which can feed forward to the workplace and wider engagement in society.

This paper presents snapshots of diverse practices surrounding assessment through oral presentations. It poses a series of “provocations” in which audiences are invited to reflect on and share their own oral assessment practices in their disciplinary contexts. The evidence-based session forefronts the voices of students and lecturers using interview and fieldwork data to explore some key considerations in fostering inclusive oral assessment practices. We focus on the treatment of presentation style: body language, confidence, use of prompts and accommodating linguistic and cultural diversity in the internationalised university. In doing so, we highlight accessibility implications and reasonable adjustments in oral assessment, and their potential to enhance student well-being. We also recognise how increased oral assessment literacy has the power to improve staff well-being through increased confidence in the integrity of oral assessment.

ABSTRACT. Through this presentation, we want to expose the audience to a new and powerful way of creating teaching content and student assessments through a Generative AI tool called AutoGPT. Contrary to ChatGPT which is more of a conversational AI interface, AutoGPT is a more general-purpose tool suitable for content generation and creative writing.

The use of AutoGPT in higher education offers numerous benefits, including the ability to generate personalized content tailored to individual students' needs and learning styles. By leveraging the power of artificial intelligence, educators can create dynamic and adaptive learning materials that keep students engaged and motivated. Additionally, AutoGPT can be used to generate assessments that accurately measure students' understanding and progress, ensuring that educators have the data they need to make informed decisions about their teaching strategies.

However, there are certain challenges associated with the use of AutoGPT. One such challenge is to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the generated content. And therefore, we advise the educators to carefully review and edit the content produced through AutoGPT. Further, ethical considerations and potential biases in the learning models should also be considered.

As part of the presentation, we will demonstrate how we created a presentation on an engineering topic and its assessments with a few prompts to AutoGPT. Further, upon providing AutoGPT the call for papers link of this conference, we will demonstrate how AutoGPT helped to write the abstract and make the presentation for this conference using the below prompt.

1: Write a 500-word abstract for the conference to inform about how AutoGPT can be used to create the teaching content and assessments. Mention that the presentation will be a brief tutorial on how to use AutoGPT in higher education to create engaging content and authentic assessments. 2: Create a 10-minute presentation on how to use AutoGPT in higher education, the challenges and benefits of using AutoGPT for content creation and assessments. 3: Suggest a suitable theme for the conference submission.

ABSTRACT. How do we support the development of academic integrity amid recent and rapid changes in assessment practices? The University of Glasgow Learning and Teaching Strategy (2021) highlights the transformation of assessment, opening the door to a wider range of assessment types and increased group work. Online and open book exams have been used regularly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic while the availability of tools such as ChatGPT brings new opportunities and challenges.

These changes to the landscape of assessment suggest a need to update our understanding of students’ academic integrity concerns. This presentation reports on College of Social Sciences students’ perceptions and experiences of academic integrity. The research explored barriers to and enablers of academic integrity as we sought to inform the development of support provision in response to these changes in higher education practice.

Student views were explored through survey responses (n=626) and four focus groups. Qualitative data from both the survey and focus groups was analysed using a thematic analysis approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006). We also collected quantitative data from the survey. Participants identified whether academic misconduct was or was not demonstrated in a range of scenarios (following Curtis & Tremayne, 2021 and Parkinson et al., 2022), which focused on recent developments in assessment practices. We also explored the levels of guidance and support that students felt they had received.

The analysis identified concerns around referencing, the ‘line’ between collaboration and collusion, acceptable use of AI tools and online exams. Personal circumstances and the potential for exclusion were also highlighted as factors. Students viewed the guidance received through a variety of online and offline platforms positively but coverage was perceived to be patchy and feedback inconsistent.

These findings suggest that there is still a gap between the aims of the guidance offered to students and the ways in which this is understood and implemented in assessment practice. The presentation will discuss ways in which this gap can be bridged, arguing for collaborative student-staff initiatives and a reframing of academic integrity as part of broader academic literacies development.

ABSTRACT. Student learning and assessment should be reflective of the industry in question due to the constantly evolving digital environment (Cowley et al., 2021). In response to this demand, the number of third-party digital training certificates offered by industry leaders continues to grow (Spiller & Tuten, 2019; Vander Schee, 2007) in the digital marketing ecosystem. A significant number of higher education institutions across the globe now offer these programmes as part of the assessment method (Cowley et al., 2020) as educators seek to develop employability and prepare students for the digital landscape (Billups and Morris, 2019). Based on the practical experience with certificates in the marketing curriculum, we propose an instructional guide to address concerns and offer practical solutions to allow students, academics, and practitioners to gain the best out of third-party certifications.

Ensuring Success for Future Digital Marketers: • Identify the most appropriate third-party certification for your students by mapping the third-party certification learning outcomes against your programme or course learning outcomes. • Construct alignment between the certification and the course or programme is necessary for successful integration. • Embed the key learning outcomes from the certification into written and oral assessment ensures students absorb key insights. • Measure performance and conducting longitudinal observation we can explore student achievement and measure the success of certifications. • Maintaining strong alumni relationships can examine performance beyond the course and understand the lasting implications on graduate employability (Staton, 2016). • Avoid issues surrounding student exclusion and accessibility, certifications used within the curriculum should be free of fees and open to a global market. A useful student resource that outlines costs (if any) associated has been carefully compiled by Keith Quesenberry (2020). Student feedback suggests that this resource has been invaluable not only for students who have recently completed course but also for alumni students entering the workplace post-graduation. • Most importantly… Academics should fully outline the value of the certification to the student. By stating the importance to their future career and the value the knowledge shared in these training platforms should sidestep the need to cheat.

Combating student misconduct: A simple Google search of exam questions can garner insight into potential opportunities for students to cheat. Instructors must continuously monitor this to work with platform management to either lead to removal of compromising pages from search engine results or to make internal edits to the question repository. Additionally, membership of the Social Media Professors Community Group (located on Facebook) has been invaluable in recognition of sector-wide issues and often bursting with suitable solutions. Therefore, the authors recommend that prior to each semester commencement, the following points should be considered: • Continue close conversation with platform representatives can ensure the integrity of certification remains intact. • Acquire membership of appropriate social media groups e.g., Social Media Professors Community Group & Digital Marketing Academics on Facebook. • Academics should maintain ongoing engagement with student population to reveal any issues of collusion or cheating.

ABSTRACT. Much of the higher education curricula is aligned with academic post-career roles, however only a portion of graduates want to continue within this sector, leaving a gap in the skills and practice required by our graduates. Many students go on to work in discipline-related industries, however few receive any training in business principles prior to leaving university. To fill that gap, as well as better support development of transferable skills aligned with a wider range of career paths, we designed an interdisciplinary 20 credit final year undergraduate course for life science students centred around business and entrepreneurship. Open to students in most bioscience disciplines, from Anatomy to Microbiology to Zoology, this course aimed to provide an introduction to key business concepts in a career destination they may not have considered previously, while also embedding specific transferable skills, including resilience, creativity, negotiation, problem-solving and teamwork. The course format was also designed to simulate the true working environment as it was delivered in a compressed format, with sessions running from 10am to 4pm for 10 consecutive working days, and in order to ensure accurate interdisciplinary working and networking, content session were delivered by staff from a range of university and external contacts, including Adam Smith Business School, and MVLS Translational Research Initiative. All four pieces of continuous assessment were designed around implementing specific real-world employability skills, to bring their graduate identity, rather than student identity, to the forefront in this important final year of university.

With the help of student co-presenters involved in the course, this presentation will outline our experience in designing and delivering it, focusing on activities that accelerated employability skills development and the benefits of providing continuous real-time oral staff and peer feedback. Student responses on awareness of skills development and knowledge of business concepts were collected using a before-after online questionnaire administered over Qualtrics (11 before responses, 4 after) and an optional focus group held a few weeks after (2 responses). Open-ended responses were thematically analysed for benefits of this course and to determine engagement with transferable skills. Overall, students felt the course enhanced their learning and fostered collaboration. They also felt confident in their understanding of key business fundamentals, as well as improved transferable skills development.

Much of this work is highly transferable to other disciplines with the aim of improving alignment of university curricula with post-university careers as well as embedding skills development into coursework. We feel further examples of such interdisciplinary teaching helps students to engage with real-world career paths while also preparing them for a broad range of career destinations through the focus on transferable skills in addition to discipline-specific ones.

ABSTRACT. The Masters in Public Health (MPH) is an on campus, postgraduate Programme which has experienced a surge in student numbers over the last five years, with minimal growth in staffing levels. Upon becoming programme lead in Spring 2022, I undertook a review of the programme, seeking to remove all high-stake, tokenistic assessments, and replace with meaningful assessments, constructively aligned to the Course and Programme Intended Learning Outcomes, and devised in accordance with the University of Glasgow’s Teaching and Learning Strategy.

An integral part of a master’s degree is a student-led project worth 60 credits. Historically in the MPH, these credits were gained through a 15,000-20,000-word dissertation. For 2022-23, I updated the PIP specification to reduce the dissertation length (10,000-12,000, 80%) and include a presentation (8-10 minutes, 20%). However, it was important I sought a suitable way to assess students that enhanced the student experience, while avoiding a negative impact on staff workload. I decided to create the annual MPH Student Conference. The conference was designed to provide students with a space to undertake their assessment in a meaningful way, while providing space for Careers sessions, engaging with MPH alumni, and keynotes from academics at various stages of their career.

Student volunteers were involved in all aspects of the conference, participating in organisation, and chairing and timekeeping during sessions. For their assessment, students were required to give a 'work in progress' presentation on their project. Similar to typical conference formats, students were asked to prepare a short abstract, which served as the formative assessment for this task. A standardised conference format was adopted, with the aim of mirroring experience students may experience in their professional careers. It was anticipated that this would help them build confidence to discuss contemporary public health issues and to engage critically with the work of their peers.

A questionnaire was circulated following the June 2023 conference to evaluate students' experiences of attending and presenting, and staff's experiences of the new assessment process. This presentation will showcase analysed data from both surveys to provide an evidence-based justification for the following arguments: • Student conferences are a useful active learning and meaningful assessment strategy to manage growth within large programmes. • Student conferences are a means to nurture transferable skills – including the ability to condense complex information into clear and concise presentations and engaging with others in a professional and meaningful way.

Embedding skills development in this way equips our graduates with the with the skills and expertise necessary to thrive within an increasingly competitive job market.

ABSTRACT. Students and academics have long argued that academic programmes represent a distorted, Euro-American-centric view of the world, which is commonly presented as objective and race-neutral (Bhatia, 2017). However, in recent years, the colonial past of many universities has come into the forefront of teaching and learning because studies highlight that universities are unwittingly active in their exclusion of diverse, culturally and globally relevant content (Andrews, 2018). This is often referred to as the White curriculum (Peters, 2018). Thus, academic institutions themselves can sometimes also produce the knowledge that is the perpetuation of systemic racism itself. More recently, leading academic institutions have made attempts at addressing this. Many, including the University of Glasgow (UoG), have issued statements expressing their anti-racist stance and have tried to lead initiatives to decolonize education.

Decolonizing education in practice, however, has been difficult to do. Research has demonstrated that educators are unsure about how to actively facilitate this or are concerned about making mistakes. In order to address this, researchers have turned to the students themselves in an effort to understand how students from the global majority experience their curriculum, and gain insight into what an inclusive curriculum should look like.

The present study adapts work by Gilborn et al. (2020) and aimed to investigate the extent to which students of colour studying psychology at the University of Glasgow experience their curriculum to be inclusive, and what they consider to be the challenges and benefits of creating a more inclusive and equitable curriculum. Psychology at UoG in particular has been actively trying to decolonize their curriculum, by including reading materials from people of colour and lecturers from all over the world, critically reflecting on a lack of diversity in psychology research, documenting the opinions of students and establishing a Race Equality Champion for the School. However, the impact these efforts have had, if any, are unknown. This study asked students from minoritized ethnic groups their views about their teaching content in a qualitative study to address where issues in psychology curricula might lie, and how teaching staff may address them. Ten psychology students from minoritized ethnic groups were recruited in two focus groups to uncover how the psychology curriculum at the University of Glasgow is experienced. Thematic Analysis revealed two core themes: students' awareness of systemic issues that have historically prevented change and lowered their expectations for meaningful change, and second, students’ acknowledgement of staff efforts (positive or otherwise) to decolonize. This last theme also had two sub-themes which highlighted superficiality among some changes and lack of representation in the curriculum. We discuss the results in the context of teaching and learning strategies in relation to psychology and wider teaching practice.

ABSTRACT. The University’s Learning and Teaching strategy asks us to reflect on our values of inclusivity, wellbeing, integrity and respect in our learning and curriculum design through initiatives including decolonising the curriculum. Decolonising the curriculum is at the forefront of conversations within higher education to understand how colonialism shaped curricula, however, conversations within science based disciplines are divided.

Within the School of Mathematics and Statistics, we aimed to understand staff and student perspectives on equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives and decolonisation. Impactful change needs a collective approach. In addition to the student voice, academics need to reflect on curricula and their teaching practices. Here, we will detail the results of a staff survey. A total of 56 staff members (62% response rate) responded to an anonymous survey that comprised 22 Likert scale questions and open questions; In the context of higher education, how would you describe, inclusion, diversity, and equality? What pedagogical approaches have you used to encourage students from underrepresented backgrounds to participate in class, if at all?

When asked if they would describe their current curriculum and assessment as inclusive, 31% and 50% agreed respectively. When asked if they believe that students should learn and apply mathematics and statistics in various contexts, 62% agreed, and 74% of respondents agreed that students should learn about mathematicians and statisticians from various cultures and ethnicities. 9% of respondents agreed that they teach students about mathematicians or statisticians more than half of the time and only 3% agreed that they teach about mathematicians or statisticians from non-western backgrounds. 9% currently teach mathematics or statistics from a non-western context (case studies, real-world problems or applications) about half the time with the remaining responding 'sometimes' or 'never'. The most divisive questions asked if staff believe the curricula within the school would benefit from decolonisation, 35% agreed, 26% neither agreed nor disagreed and 38% disagreed and if staff would be interested in teaching students more history, 47% agreed, 18% neither agreed nor disagreed and 35% disagreed.

When describing inclusion and equality, opportunity emerged quite predominantly. It was clear staff wanted to support students to be successful with an understanding that students have different needs. Respecting “Plurality of thought and opinion” neatly summarises descriptions of diversity. When asked about pedagogical approaches, responses centred around efforts to ensure they engage with students, from anonymous in-class polls to small group tutorials and individual tutoring.

A range of views on representation and decolonising the curriculum were described, from providing diverse role models in lecturers and tutors, occasionally highlighting contributions from backgrounds other than white males to “students are students”. Some staff indicated that they use examples “set in the student life one might expect the entire cohort to experience” whereas others indicated that they were “very conscious of the fact that not everyone will come into the course with the same background knowledge or understanding”. So while staff want to support students through equality of opportunity and engagement, an enthusiasm for representation, disciplinary history and transforming curricula is unclear.

ABSTRACT. Inclusivity, where all patients feel welcome, is an important concept to be addressed within a clinical dental environment. Following his elective study, Scott Dorrian identified the need to develop and enhance current provision LGBTQ+ provision. The focus was on the following workstream: • A review of the BDS curriculum and a mapping for what is currently taught/needs to be strengthened re LGBTQ+ • Looking briefly at relevant underpinning literature in relation to dental education and LGBTQ+

Following a search of the literature, the W.O.R.D.D. tool which looks at how diversity is embedded within course content, was identified for use. This tool consists of 15 questions spread over 5 domains (outlined below) and information is collected on good practice, as well as issues for consideration/suggested improvements.

Writing with the audience in mind Opportunities for exchange in experience Representation through different lens Drawing on different experiences Diversity as a subject matter

Not all areas were relevant for every type of lecture in a dental course. However, all are of relevance in at least some of the subject material which constitutes a dental course, which covers a broad range of influencing disciplines.

Following mild modification of the tool, Scott systematically reviewed Years 1-4 of the BDS curriculum, in each of the 3 themes of Clinical Dentistry, Clinical/Biomedical Sciences and Patient Management Health Promotion. Lectures available on moodle, were scanned to see whether there were areas that needed to be modified or strengthened, and to identify areas of good practice. This resulted in over 400 lectures being assessed. From initial work, it was known that areas of particular interest would be subject matter within Biomedical and Clinical Medical Sciences, such as oral medicine, and Patient Management Health Promotion which includes relevant non-technical skills. Scott also reviewed and catalogued the relevant literature that can be used to help develop the new course content.

The review identified a gap in existing teaching material at Glasgow Dental School regarding LGBTQ+ health. The current curriculum does not fully address the unique oral health needs or disparities experienced by LGBTQ+ individuals. Two approaches were identified, either content strengthened within individual lectures across the curriculum, or freestanding, with a bespoke symposium covering a wide range of topics. It is suggested that the latter would be the most suitable.

By addressing this gap in the curriculum, the aim is for more equitable provision of healthcare that meets the diverse needs of all patients, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

This work is timely, as revised educational guidelines from the ‘General Dental Council’ have just been released, which has further emphasis on equality and diversity, than previously. The WORDD tool would also be of use for reviewing other protected characteristics.

This project addresses UoG Learning and Teaching 2021-2025, pillar 2, transforming curricula and assessment, ‘by reflecting UoG values of inclusivity, wellbeing, integrity and respect in curriculum design’ through decolonising [ in this case addressing protected characteristics ]….and engaging in SSPs.

ABSTRACT. This presentation will explore the International Students’ Starter Pack, a new tailored video suite for UofG students and staff which aims to realise a core value of the Learning and Teaching Strategy: ‘Ensuring that our learning and teaching is inclusive and supports a diverse student community’ (p.2). The presentation will discuss how this resource, through its development in meaningful staff-student collaboration, can enhance students’ understandings of Scottish Higher Education and help staff develop inclusive teaching practices.

This LTDF-funded project was created collaboratively by staff and students through semi-structured focus groups and video interviews. The resource foregrounds the voices and experiences of international postgraduate taught students from all four UofG colleges. The themes for the videos were defined by international students and centre around expectations of students, learning effectively, assignments and dissertations. Alongside the video for each theme, the Starter Pack provides resources and advice for students seeking to engage with the theme in more depth, and advice for staff seeking to develop and enhance their practice. The presentation aims to demonstrate how the resource goes beyond much of the past research and concepts of international students, many of which have been othering and problematic (Mittelmeier, Lomer, and Unkule, 2023), and highlight its usefulness and value to staff and students.

ABSTRACT. Learning through managing challenging situations in authentic workplace settings is crucial for degree programmes to prepare learners to face real-world challenges, yet busy workplaces are not always optimised to support student learning and negative experiences can occur, potentially compromising the psychological safety which is crucial for effective learning.

Although learners are often well-placed to identify areas where workplace practice could be enhanced to support learning, workplace hierarchy and course structures mean that they are not always able to influence the design and development of learning and teaching practices in the workplace setting.

This presentation describes the initial implementation of a ‘Learning environment champions’ initiative, facilitating staff and student conversations and collaboration with the aim of enhancing student experiences in the clinical learning environment.

The Learning Environment Champions comprise an inter-professional team from the Small Animal Hospital and Veterinary teaching teams of the School of Biodiversity, One Health & Veterinary medicine. The initiative was launched in March 2023 with the aim of enhancing the clinical learning environment within the Small Animal Hospital, an award-winning veterinary hospital and key teaching facility for the school hosting up to 2000 student placements each year.

The team of Learning Environment champions worked closely with staff teams, students and veterinary industry experts to understand the factors influencing student learning experiences, with a view to transforming workplace culture and teaching and learning practice, to optimise student learning while maintaining an excellent clinical service.

We reflect on the first year of the Learning environment champions initiative, and key aspects of the approach including:

Adaptation of the Healthcare Education Micro Learning Environment Measure (HEMLEM, Isba et al 2020) for evaluation of different learning environments across hospital teams.

Introduction of monthly student debrief sessions, providing an open forum and safe space for discussion of learning experiences.

Collaboration with staff teams to develop a social contract and identify priority areas for training and support.

The launch of a new staff training resources on civility in the workplace

Staff student partnerships to develop resources to support induction to the hospital setting.

Developing approaches for concerns to be raised and processes to consider safeguarding in the context of the clinical workplace.

This initiative demonstrates that in the ever-evolving landscape of higher education, the task of guiding students through the complexities of the professional workplace is both a paramount challenge and an essential mission. As we navigate this journey, it becomes clear that real power lies in our ability to foster open discussions, forge meaningful student/staff partnerships, and continually strive for innovative solutions. We must walk the fine line of providing challenges while maintaining psychological safety, recognizing that it is in these moments of challenge that growth truly flourishes.

ABSTRACT. An integral part of most PGT Masters programmes is an independent supervised research project. However, with the expansion of the Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship (LTS) promotion track in the College of MVLS in recent years, an increasing number of projects are being provided by staff who have no dedicated research group nor contracted research time. Additionally, in many MVLS fields it would be unsuitable for students to complete a project as part of the staff member’s scholarship focus, as the discipline-specific learning outcomes are not covered by those of scholarship. Hence, this requires the creation of bespoke resources and research projects by LTS staff specifically for MVLS PGT student supervision.

When selecting projects, students are perceived to have expectations and aspirations of entering a research group with existing infrastructure (personnel, ongoing projects, opportunities for future positions, networking, etc). With these expectations in mind, there is a large onus on the supervisor to compensate, as working on a project without these elements can negatively impact students’ motivation and wellbeing if these expectations are not met. The University’s L&T strategy prioritises student development and recognizes there is an interplay between this and the creation of a well-supported teaching environment; during projects this is usually a research group. Without a research group structure, there are impacts on both staff and students; students may experience isolation, enhancing negative impacts on their wellbeing, particularly if being supervised primarily or entirely remotely, while staff may also feel siloed and isolated if they feel they are struggling to sufficiently support supervisees.

The MVLS Graduate School is home to multiple LTS academic staff providing projects across most MVLS schools, including wet investigative (via teaching laboratories), dry investigative, and systematic-style review projects.  Within the community of MVLS graduate school staff we have created resources and internally shared practice to develop our hybrid methods of supervision to foster student-supervisor relationships, empower students to develop their independence, and/or build peer networks for resilience in the case of group projects. These resources aimed not only to support supervision practice amongst LTS staff but also to enhance the student research experience in keeping with the first pillar of the University’s Learning and Teaching strategy (University of Glasgow, 2021).  However, these resources were initially created by individual staff in response to challenges experienced instead of through evaluating the underlying needs for LTS staff supervision projects and proactively creating materials.  

In this piece, we (with experience supervising students from SoMB, SoHW, SoPN, and SoBOHVM), will reflect upon our experiences as L&T staff across the full workflow of a MVLS PGT project: inception, creation of support infrastructure and supervision. We aim to examine the LTS academic experience of MVLS PGT Masters supervision and our perception of the impact on student experience, with the intention of identifying unique and universal challenges and solutions to create more scaffolded support for LTS staff within MVLS and related disciplines that may encounter similar challenges.

ABSTRACT. This presentation reports on the process undertaken to develop a bespoke pre-sessional English for Academic Purpose (EAP) course for Widening Participation (WP) asylum seeker students enrolled in the Access to Higher Education Programme at the UofG.

Pre-sessional EAP courses develop skills, knowledge, and confidence in academic literacies, setting students up for success in their future academic studies, in this case, the Access to Higher Education Programme, a flexible, online pathway to undergraduate degrees at the UofG.

It is recognised that a comprehensive analysis of stakeholders’ needs and perceptions contributes to robust curriculum design (Basturkman, 2010; Bruce, 2015). In addition, academic English provision tailored to the needs of refugee background students can have highly valuable impact not only on their linguistic and academic skills development but also well-being, resilience and sense of belonging (Palanac et al., 2023). However, there are currently no pre-sessional courses at the university of Glasgow dedicated to the specific needs of refugee and asylum background students at the pathway level.

We will talk about a new collaboration between WP and the English for Academic Study (EAS) unit which saw 21 asylum seeker students successfully complete pre-sessional EAP course from May to June 2023, and progress to the Access Programme in September 2023.

While largely positive, staff and student feedback highlighted two areas to be addressed. Firstly, a deeper knowledge of the students’ future academic context (Access programme) was needed. Equally important was the need to shift from a writing-driven curriculum to a reading and discussion-driven curriculum as a way to facilitate the building of knowledge and academic literacies.

We will report on the curriculum redevelopment based on insights from two student focus groups, interviews with Access Programme staff and our reflections from teaching on the May-June 2023.

This presentation will be of interest to educators involved with students who are transitioning into Higher Education, and those who work with refugee and asylum seeker students.

ABSTRACT. Business school courses have often been criticised as being overly theoretical in which the delivery of learning that is relevant to practice has been seen as problematic (see, for example, Fleck, 2012; Starkey et al., 2004). At Glasgow, student and alumni feedback highlighted the need to increase practice-based learning opportunities for students, especially on the MBA and MSc in Financial Technologies. This feedback, coupled with the launch of a new university-wide Learning and Teaching Strategy in response to changing work patterns caused by Covid-19, led to the development of an innovative, practice-based elective course – Hacking for their Ministry of Defence (H4MoD) – which is delivered in a partnership approach. These partners include the Common Mission Project, Ministry of Defence, and a number of industry/alumni mentors. The goal of the course was to create an authentic learning environment which bridged the gap between theory and practice and provided students with a real-world learning experience.

The H4MoD course was offered to MBA/MSc-FinTech students from 2021 as a 20M-Level credit elective and it was constantly refined through the provision of feedback from partners’ feedback, as well as formal feedback and evaluations from students and course alumni. This evaluation went beyond the annual assessment process required by the University and was used as a means of systematically refining course delivery and design. As a result of these evaluative process, the course team embedded peer learning in the course which both enhanced student learning but also provided alumni with staff development opportunities around mentoring.

The design is fully aligned with the University’s Learning & Teaching Strategy and has a focus on student-centred active learning (Prince, 2004), curriculum transformation, and the development of students’ professional skills. Students learn in a high-quality and novel setting by using Silicon Valley Lean Start-Up methodologies to approach real-word challenges generated by the ‘client’ organisations within the MoD, and to triangulate evidence for problem validation and solutions development. The students engage with multiple partners to receive continuous formative feedback on their initial assessments of the problems and this serves to provided scaffolded support to their learning. The teaching team worked with the various partners to create a psychologically safe learning environment which encouraged students to engage in self-directed learning and use multi-disciplinary frameworks which extend those offered on the business school curriculum to address real-world challenges.

The H4MoD course has delivered positive learning outcomes over the last three years as evidenced by student and alumni feedback. This includes enhanced student confidence in communication, investigative and problem-solving skills, increased student satisfaction in leading practice engagement and experiential learning that set them up for success. The course also prepared students for their upcoming dissertation process and supported several students in developing their own start-ups. As result of the positive experience with the course, 30% of alumni returned as alumni mentors, well beyond the industry standard for alumni volunteering.

ABSTRACT. As the university increases its online and blended learning offerings, it presents new challenges and opportunities for staff in the area of course design, ensuring that the curricula are inclusive, relevant, flexible, and interdisciplinary. Using our 10 years of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) data as a lens to analyse successful course design and content sequencing, we present empirical evidence on how learning types can be successfully deployed in course design and course design sequencing. This has a fundamental impact on the learner's experience, skills, and professional development.

To substantiate these claims, we will present our research, part of a 2022-23 LTDF-funded project titled ‘Understanding how course design impacts online distance learners’ experiences’. Utilising the six learning types from Laurillard’s (2012) ABC Learning Design for online and blended courses, we examined eight MOOCs from both Coursera and FutureLearn. The six ‘learning types’, which are: Acquisition, Investigation, Practice, Discussion, Collaboration and Production, are derived from Laurillard’s theory-based Conversational Framework and provide a pedagogically informed approach that caters to the rapid development of online courses, such as MOOCs (Young & Perović 2016). The MOOCs we researched were selected because they represented a wide range of disciplines, assessment options, and course structures.

In this presentation, we will demonstrate how the application of various learning types has a significant effect on how learners engage with the material, progress through the course, and how it influences their commitment to continue learning (Martin and Bolliger, 2018). We will also show how the strategic frequency and sequencing of learning types create assessment opportunities for learners to engage with content in a sustainable and meaningful way, ‘meeting the present and future needs of learners’ (Boud and Soler, 2015).

By synthesising the data from various surveys, comment sections, and several other course metrics, including the watch-through rates and technical feedback of over 400 videos, course completion, assessment completion, and learner satisfaction, we have identified six key findings that are underpinned by online course design: (1) quality and duration of videos, (2) balance and distribution of acquisition learning types (3) structure of discussions, (4) effective guidance for exploration activities, (5) balance of assessment and feedback opportunities, and (6) Utilisation of e-learning tools and plug-ins.

In our presentation, we will discuss these key findings and show practical examples of how our guidance can make a difference in how the University develops and delivers online and blended courses.

Benefits of attending our session include:

• Recognising the importance of design mapping for flexible online courses.
• Identifying ways to apply learning types successfully.
• Demonstrating how design sequencing can have a significant impact on learners’ performance and engagement, and how to adjust this from a potentially negative experience to a positive one.
• Applying design mapping to your course to develop an inclusive and learner-centred mindset to course design.

We have decided to submit under ‘Transforming Curricula’ because the guidance produced by our research involves sharing good practices for online and blended course design.

ABSTRACT. The University’s Learning and Teaching strategy asks us to create in-class learning opportunities that focus students more fully on understanding and engagement with learning material and feedback.

Literature suggests that it can be difficult to engage students with feedback and this may have an impact on their learning. However, feedback is a process that requires engagement on the part of a student and teacher. Carless and Winstone (2020) provide a partnership framework that outlines the shared responsibility of both staff and students in the feedback process. While a feedback-literate lecturer can design opportunities, deliver supportive and constructive feedback, and navigate the multiple dimensions of the purpose of feedback. A feedback-literate student can appreciate, evaluate, and act on feedback and work with emotions productively. Student evaluations provide the opportunity for students to provide their feedback to a lecturer, they are a direct form of communication and may be a first point of contact early on in a teaching semester. Most importantly, they provide an opportunity for staff to illustrate how to appreciate, evaluate and act on feedback and for students to provide supportive and constructive feedback.

Honours level students and staff from the School of Mathematics and Statistics were asked to complete online anonymous surveys to understand their perceptions and engagement with course evaluations (17% and 70% response rates respectively). While students expressed that their feedback could improve content, quality and delivery and provide a learning opportunity for lecturers and while staff implement the feedback they receive, students currently do not see it, and their learning may not benefit from being part of this process.   20% of student respondents indicated that they didn’t know who their class representatives were, while only 17% said they would tell their class representative if they had an issue with a course, or a suggestion to improve it.

During a focus group, of around 20 level 3 students, a further emphasis was placed on students not knowing how their feedback was acted on and inconsistencies between courses led students to believe that their feedback had no impact. Class representatives indicated that they felt under-supported in their role and often found it difficult to contact students. In addition to more support for class representatives, students indicated a preference for informal forms of feedback, that lecturers could respond to and action in real-time, for example, feedback opportunities throughout the semester that lecturers could respond to in person. We believe this process would allow students more agency in learning.

ABSTRACT. Evaluation in education, whether from staff or from students, typically includes explicitly requesting the respondents’ views on their experiences. A well-known example is EvaSys for student experiences of education. My mixed-methods case study took place in the context of foreign language learning at University of Glasgow. The theory and the findings have major implications for how evaluation tools are communicated in almost any context, however. The literature review raised concerns about the use of satisfaction as a proxy for quality, while two major psychological frameworks were reviewed to understand more about perceptions of experiences in education: hedonistic bias and fundamental bias. Hedonistic bias is a tendency to blame external factors for negative experiences and credit personal and internal factors for positive experiences, while fundamental bias is a bias that overemphasises the personal in our experiences e.g. attributing a personal characteristic in others as the cause of a negative experience. There is some depth of research strongly distinguishing between Eastern (e.g. Japanese and Chinese) and Western (e.g. American) in the strength of these biases, with Easterners being far less likely to exhibit hedonistic bias, taking more causes into account, and are less likely to centre themselves in the experience, tending more to holistic perspectives. The study compared 38 Chinese and 56 UK students by employing linguistic relativity methods to examine how students associated the terms satisfied and engaged in education contexts. Results support a clear cultural difference between Chinese and UK students’ in terms of their focus on positive or negative experiences, to what they attribute these experiences, and to some extent on how much they centre themselves in the experience. There are three main implications for anyone collecting feedback through explicit request for respondents’ views. Firstly, to avoid using terms satisfied and engaged in feedback tools. Secondly, there is a major problem with comparing feedback where samples are largely Eastern with those that are largely Western. Thirdly, that to enhance autonomy and self-reflection, feedback prompts should be explicit about areas for respondents to focus on in terms of attribution and in terms of locus of effect.