Blog posts

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…)

Learning Connections 2019: Spaces, People, Practice

Luke McCrone, PhD student

I attended the Learning Connections 2019: Spaces, People, Practice conference held on 5-6 December 2019 in University College Cork (UCC), Ireland.

The conference set out to answer two central questions:

  1. How can we connect across disciplinary boundaries, and break down barriers between academia, administration, community and industry to strive for optimal student learning in Third Level Institutions?
  2. How can learning in different spaces– physical, active, virtual, off campus, enable all students, as global citizens, to think through and solve big problems?

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Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Conference: Reclaiming Study Practices

Luke McCrone, PhD student, Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship

I attended the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society conference held on 18-20 September 2019 in Leuven, Belgium. The conference focused on ‘Reclaiming study practices’ and followed an alternative format to usual.

The idea of the conference was to provoke thought about the present state and future modalities of those study practices that define university life for both staff and students: academic writing, lectures, academic research, seminars etc. (more…)

Developing Pedagogical Expertise Across Institutions: event report

Camille Kandiko Howson, Associate Professor of Education, Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship

The Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship hosted a one-day event on ‘Developing Pedagogical Expertise Across Institutions’ on Friday 27 September 2019. Leaders of teaching and learning from across the country debated and discussed a national framework for developing pedagogical research. The day featured a presentation on the Office for Students (OfS)-funded project “Maximising Student Success through the Development of Self-Regulation”, by Professor Carol Evans from the University of Birmingham. Carol identified ways to support students’ ability to become independent learners, which is challenged by regulatory pressures to treat education as a service, and how to develop research-informed integrated assessment. (more…)

European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning, Delft

Vily Papageorgiou, PhD student, Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship

On 16-19 September 2019, I attended the 14th annual European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL) which took place at the University of Technology in Delft, The Netherlands. This year’s theme was ‘Transforming Learning with Meaningful Technologies’. The aim of this conference was to engage researchers, practitioners, educational designers and developers, university leaders, entrepreneurs and policy makers to address current challenges and advances in the field of educational technology. (more…)

StudentShapers and the annual RAISE 2019 conference

Dr Mike Streule, Director, StudentShapers

Early September sees the annual RAISE (Researching, Advancing and Inspiring Student Engagement) conference, this time held at the Newcastle University. Two interesting keynotes provided further food for thought and debate, especially as StudentShapers at Imperial develops beyond its initial stages, and our new curricula are implemented. (more…)

Imperial’s contribution to international discussion about developing medical education

Dr Jo Horsburgh, Principal Teaching Fellow in Medical Education

Last week colleagues from department of Primary Care and Public Health and I attended the Association of Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) conference in Vienna.

Attendees from across the world meet to share and discuss the latest innovations, thinking, and research in medical education. This year’s themes included Threshold Concepts and Activity theory with keynote talks from Professor Ray Land (University of Durham) and Prof Yrjö Engeström (University of Helsinki). In addition to a wide range of workshops and symposia, the conference also provided us with an excellent opportunity to meet with our collaborators from Australia, South Africa and the Netherlands to discuss shared projects. (more…)

Making transatlantic HE connections at Imperial

Dr Camille Kandiko Howson, Associate Professor of Education

On 11 July 2019 the Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship hosted a group of 24 Executive Doctoral students studying higher education management from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. The students are mid-career professionals who have full-time roles ranging from Assistant Provost & Director of University of Florida Online at the University of Florida to Senior Associate Dean of Technology-Intensive Education at Georgetown University and Legislative Director, Council of the District of Columbia, and undertake their doctoral studies at the same time. (more…)