Author: Sheri Djafer

Active emotions, active engagement: Interactive presentation for the Global Festival of Active Learning, 26th April 2023

By Nikki Boyd and Kate Ippolito, Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship

We were delighted to facilitate a one-hour interactive, online presentation entitled ‘Active emotions, active engagement’ for the 3rd Festival of Active Learning: hosted by The Active Learning Network and held from 23rd-27th April 2023. The ALN represents “a group of people from around the world who share an interest in active approaches to learning” and the annual (now ‘Global’) Festival of Active Learning provides an opportunity for those within and beyond the network to share and celebrate ideas and research relevant to active approaches to learning.

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Combining worlds: a mixed method for understanding learning spaces

By Luke McCrone, Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship

This blog reports on a mixed method approach combining qualitative methods with space occupancy datasets recently published in a research article in the International Journal for Qualitative Methods. The mixed method was developed in my doctoral research (supervised by Professor Martyn Kingsbury) which explored how undergraduate students perceive and engage with different learning spaces and the transitions between them. (more…)

Festival of Learning and Teaching 2023

By Sheri Djafer, Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship

The in-person three day event which took place on the South Kensington Campus, brought over 150 people together discussing ‘Transition and Transformation’. With many external keynote speakers invited to present, the event gathered the attention of many members of the Imperial community from across College.

This years theme for the event ‘Transition and Transformation: Thinking, Experiencing and Being in STEMMB’ was inclusive of perspectives College wide as it invited many speakers from different Faculties to participate and share practice. (more…)

Reflections on the first “Landscapes of Learning for Unknown Futures: Prospects for Space in Higher Education” Symposium

Dr Julianne K. Viola, Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship

The origin of the symposia series

Last summer, I was contacted by Professor Sam Elkington (Teesside University) and Dr Jill Dickinson (University of Leeds), in partnership with Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE), to be a panel speaker for their new 2023 symposia series entitled “Landscapes of Learning for Unknown Futures: Prospects for Space in Higher Education.” Yesterday, I participated in this symposium as a speaker, and enjoyed the thought-provoking, day-long discussion with colleagues. (more…)

Intercultural Feedback Literacy – A new concept in the context of diverse and internationalised higher education

Dr Richard Bale, Senior Teaching Fellow in Educational Development, CHERS

How can we make our feedback practices more inclusive? What does it mean to be feedback literate from student and educator perspectives? What does it mean to be interculturally competent? How do culture and language affect how feedback practices are conceptualised and enacted? These are some of the questions that Dr Monika Pazio Rossiter and I grapple with in our recent paper: Cultural and linguistic dimensions of feedback: a model of intercultural feedback literacy, published in Innovations in Education and Teaching International. (more…)

Engaging students as partners: an approach for reimagining our campus spaces

Dr Luke McCrone and Dr Mike Streule

This blog reports on two ‘transitional space’ redesign projects recently published in a research article in the International Journal for Students as Partners. Both projects concerned spaces in the Blackett Building of Imperial’s South Kensington campus and help to demonstrate the power of a research-based, student-centred approach to education-space redesign. The first pilot project was completed just prior to COVID-19 and the second project carried out during the pandemic.

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Student Shapers Project Summer 2022 – Scaling practices: the impact on student competition, belonging and fairness

Evie Brass, Muqing Xue, Madhur Varadpande, Anushika Raheja, Nusrat Kamal and Camille Kandiko Howson 

Scaling Practices  

This is a student shapers project with the Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship (CHERS). The project focuses on scaling practices, looking at how they affect student competition, belonging and fairness. Scaling practices essentially means ‘grading on a curve’, such that the marks achieved by students are adjusted to match a desired distribution. With this in place, there is an unofficial quota for each degree class. The end-goal of this project is to improve the current systems in place to aid in increasing student belonging. This is primarily focused on attempting to reduce competition between peers.   (more…)

CHERSNet: A model for student emotions in tutorials, accounting for online or in-person contexts and a diversity of student dispositions and experiences

After one too many years of offering solely online events, CHERSNet was happy to announce the return of in person events. On 29 September 2022, we welcomed Dr Peter Johnson, Department of Mechanical Engineering and a recent graduate of our MEd in University Learning and Teaching to present his research on “A model for student emotions in tutorials, accounting for online or in-person contexts and a diversity of student dispositions and experiences“. (more…)