While integrating Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) into UK Higher Education teaching and learning has been, in recent years, an area of rapid expansion and experimentation, as we prepare courses and review modules for 26/27, this work is for many now a key strategic priority. Often-cited benefits of integrating GenAI into learning and teaching include increasing…
Assessment Design / Curriculum Design / Deep learning / Educational development / feedback / Inclusive Teaching and Learning / Scholarship of Teaching and Learning / SoTL methods / staff/student partnership / Student Engagement / Student performance / student voice / Student voice
UK HE has undergone significant changes in the past decade; austerity has affected the sector with financial pressures leading to reduced resources and increased workloads for staff, but also, and significantly, adding pressure on students to finance their studies through part-time work. Add to this the dramatic shift in how we provide education following the…
Action Research / learning and teaching in Higher Education / Learning Gain / SoTL methods / SoTL practitioners
academicpracticeyork / 6 days ago SoTL Journal club provides time and space for education-focussed colleagues to come together and talk about what works, what is and what might be within the field of UK HE, against a backdrop of continued challenges. One reason we meet is in order to take critical insights from the papers we read…
Use of GenAI such as Chat GPT, Google Gemini and other applications is widespread among students, including in relation to assessment. Until recently, the position of UK universities has largely been one of attempting to limit and control the use of GenAI for assessed work. This tension has lead to a lack of dialogue around…
As UK universities face ongoing financial pressures and the sector continues emphasise student-centred approaches, the question of how to make larger group teaching formats work for both students and educators is once again central to scholarship of teaching and learning. In our next journal club meeting, we’ll focus on a paper which explores the topic…
In our previous session ‘Feedback to improve student work‘ we looked at a paper in which authors Henderson et al. (2019) set out 12 conditions for effective feedback which they grouped under the themes ‘capacity for feedback‘, ‘designs for feedback‘ and ‘culture for feedback‘ (p. 1406). In our forthcoming meeting, we’ll zoom in on the…
Feedback is a high impact area of educational practice. Effective feedback processes enable learners to progress, providing them with timely and personal input on their work and clear direction about how to improve. Providing and responding to feedback takes time and committment on the part of both learners and educators. While feedback clearly matters, it…
Questions around the quality and value of evidence-based inquiries into teaching and learning are a regular feature of UoY SoTL journal club discussions, and in our forthcoming session we’ll zone in on the topic as we kick off the new academic year. In the paper we’ll discuss, Evans et al. (2020) present a framework for…
Set reading: Boud, D., & Dawson, P. (2021). What feedback literate teachers do: an empirically-derived competency framework. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 48(2), 158–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2021.1910928
The university of York has over 5000 postgraduate students, a substantial proportion of whom will undertake a thesis or dissertation as part of their Masters degree. As such, masters-level supervision represents a substantial part of many SoTL Network members’ teaching activity. As an assessed piece of work, masters theses/dissertations are a key turning point in…
Set reading: Dawson, P., Bearman, M., Dollinger, M., & Boud, D. (2024). Validity matters more than cheating. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 49(7), 1005–1016. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2024.2386662 Sign up: To sign up and receive a calendar invitation please complete the Google Form
Our first journal club for 2025 focuses on paper which explores differing student perspectives of how learning technologies are integrated within learning and teaching. It takes a qualitative case study approach involving interviews with first year students in the school Chemistry within a research-intensive UK HE institution to explore how students experience learning technologies both…
Set reading: Palmer, M.S., Giering, J.A. Characterizing Pedagogical Innovation in Higher Education. Innov High Educ 49, 453–473 (2024). https://doi-org.libproxy.york.ac.uk/10.1007/s10755-023-09681-6
In our previous SoTL journal club we explored the concept of ‘belonging’ and its significance for the student experience. Our discussion touched on various aspects of how belonging and identity are used as a means to frame work to improve student engagement, retention and to address award gaps. In turn, it also led us to…
In the wake of Covid-19 and the cost-of-living crisis, the concept of student belonging has been adopted by a number of UK HEIs as a means of framing and undertaking work to improve student engagement, retention and to address award gaps. Belonging, it is argued, matters because: “At the heart of the student experience is…
UoY Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Journal Club 