Author: Sheri Djafer

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…)