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Monthly Archives: August 2024


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When research becomes an intervention: Insights from the Student 2025 project

by Ria Bluck

Within higher education, targeted interventions are used to improve the student experience, engagement, and academic outcomes. These initiatives tend to focus on increasing a sense of belonging, students’ confidence in their learning activities, and enhancing attainment. In some instances, these interventions are specifically tailored to support student groups which are underrepresented in higher education or are more likely to face challenges within their academic experience.

The Student 2025 project is an innovative four-year longitudinal project which follows the undergraduate journey of 100 students at Nottingham Trent University (NTU). Designed to capture the intricacies of the student experience, the project gathers data through conducting interviews and surveys with each participant three times a year.

Interestingly, the Student 2025 project itself appears to mirror qualities of an intervention in its own right. In the most recent data collection, where many of our students were due to graduate, the research team explored whether their participation in Student 2025 had affected their experience at NTU in any way. Students told us that they thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the project and that their involvement had positively affected both their university experience and their personal development. While the positive effects of taking part in research are widely recognised, the extent of the benefits reported by Student 2025 participants was particularly noteworthy.

Development of self-reflection skills

Most students in the sample found that Student 2025 had given them a space to reflect on their time at NTU in a way that they would not have done without the project. Having dedicated time to reflect helped them to understand their skills development, progress, and achievement over the course of their undergraduate degree – encouraging them to take note and be proud of their work.

Students also shared that reflecting on their experience each term enabled them to identify areas where they were struggling or that could use improvement. This regular reflection allowed them to be critical about what they could do better and what support they would need to get there. Having consistent interviews, often with the same interviewer, also created a sense of accountability. It encouraged some students to make changes as a result of their reflections, leading them to take proactive steps to improve their university experience. Not only did Student 2025 give students the opportunity to self-reflect, it also facilitated the development of self-reflection skills, helping them to do this more effectively.

Developing confidence

Several students shared that Student 2025 had considerably boosted their confidence. For some, this sense of confidence related to their overall experience at NTU, while for others, it centred on their social engagement and future prospects.

One student explained that they had joined Student 2025 to actively develop their public speaking skills. By their final term at university, they reported feeling much more comfortable speaking with others than when they first started at NTU. As well as this, a few students had gained confidence in using Microsoft Teams to communicate with others. One student highlighted that taking part in regular online interviews for Student 2025 had helped them to get used to this type of environment, boosting their confidence in their post-university job search.

An increased sense of belonging

A large focus of Student 2025 was to gain a deeper understanding of how students experience a sense of belonging at university and how this affects their undergraduate journey. It was therefore particularly interesting that students felt they had gained a greater sense of belonging at NTU as a result of their engagement with the project.

Participants told us that the project had made them feel more connected to the university, that they were a part of something meaningful, and were valued by NTU. A significant factor in this was how the project facilitated students in feeling heard and provided them with the opportunity to share impactful feedback. The team also worked hard to keep participants in the loop with the progress and impact of the project for this reason.

“Student 2025 has also added to my feelings of belonging and being valued at NTU, all in all a positive experience, I’m grateful to have taken part”.

An enhanced level of support

Many students in this project highlighted the therapeutic benefits of talking to someone who had no connection to their course or personal circumstances. Having an unbiased contact at the university provided a non-judgemental space where students could freely discuss their personal challenges in great detail.

Despite being experienced researchers, we participated in additional training, such as meeting with Student Support Services staff to learn how to best support students in distress. We guided students to think deeply about their experiences, signposting them to support where we felt it was necessary. Some students told us that, because of Student 2025, they had been able to reach out to services that they were previously unaware of – actively improving their access to NTU services, with the Student 2025 project acting as an extra layer of support.

How can the sector learn from Student 2025?

We anticipated that this project would produce a great number of impactful findings that would enhance our understanding of the undergraduate experience at NTU. What we did not anticipate was that the methodology itself would have such an impact on the students’ university journey.

The impact of Student 2025 on participants has exceeded expectations, with some sharing how it has been the highlight of their university experience and feeling extremely proud of their involvement. They have also developed a strong sense of care for the project and its potential impact, feeling that they have taken the time to advocate for students at NTU and have helped in enacting positive change for students like them.

“This has been a highlight of my university experience. It has helped me in becoming more reflective as an individual and recognise how much I have progressed. Taking part in this has made me proud of myself and I am grateful for the opportunity.”

The higher education sector could learn a great deal from the Student 2025 project, and the way it has enhanced the university experience for these students.

Longitudinal research is resource-intensive, but using elements of its methodology within interventions could replicate its benefits without the need for further extensive research. For instance, this could serve as an opportunity to reconsider how personal tutoring is used on courses, prioritising reflective activities that foster both a space for personal development and course feedback. Or how mentorship programmes could be introduced to enhance the experience of specific student groups.

It is clear that students value consistent and personalised interactions with staff members throughout their university journey. Finding ways to embed this could enhance student confidence, a sense of belonging, and self-reflection – as has been reported within the Student 2025 project.

Ria Bluck is an Educational Research and Evaluation Specialist at Nottingham Trent University with a breadth of experience exploring disparities in student experience. Her work has primarily focused on researching topics of wellbeing and inclusion in higher education, using student voice to enhance the experiences of students from diverse backgrounds.


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Restraining the uncanny guest: AI ethics and university practice

by David Webster

If GAI is the ‘uncanniest of guests’ in the University what can we do about any misbehaviour? What do we do with this uninvited guest who behaves badly, won’t leave and seems intent on asserting that it’s their house now anyway?  They won’t stay in their room and seem to have their fingers in everything.

Nihilism stands at the door: whence comes this uncanniest of all guests?[1]

Nietzsche saw the emergence of nihilistic worldviews as presaging a century of turmoil and destruction, only after which might more creative responses to the sweeping away of older systems of thought be possible. Generative Artificial Intelligence, uncanny in its own discomforting ways, might be argued as threatening the world of higher education with an upending of the existing conventions and practices that have long been the norm in the sector. Some might welcome this guest, in that there is much wrong in the way universities have created knowledge, taught students, served communities and reproduced social practice. The concern must surely be though that GAI is not a creative force, but a repackaging and re-presenting of existing human understanding and belief. We need to think carefully about the way this guest’s behaviour might exert influence in our house.

After decades of seeking to eliminate prejudices and bias, GAI threatens to reinscribe misogyny, racism, homophobia and other unethical discrimination back into the academy. Since  the majority of content used to train large language models has been generated by the most prominent and privileged groups in human culture, might not we see a recolonisation, just as universities are starting to push for a more decolonised, inclusive and equitable learning experience?

After centuries of citation tradition and careful attribution of sources, GAI seems intent on shuffling the work of human scholars and presenting it without any clarity as to whence it came. Some news organisations and  authors are even threatening to sue OpenAI as they believe their content has been used, without permission, to train the company’s ChatGPT tool.

Furthermore, this seems to be a guest inclined to hallucinate and recount their visions as the earnest truth. The guest has also imbibed substantive propaganda, taken satirical articles as serious factual account (hence the glue pizza and rock AI diet), and is targeted by pseudo-science dressed in linguistic frames of respectability. How can we deal with this confident, ambitious, and ill-informed guest who keeps offering to save us time and money?

While there isn’t a simple answer (if I had that, I’d be busy monetising it!), an adaptation of this guest metaphor might help. This is to view GAI rather like an unregulated child prodigy: awash with talent but with a lacuna of discernment. It can do so much, but often doesn’t have the capacity to know what it shouldn’t do, what is appropriate or helpful and what is frankly dangerous.

GAI systems are capable of almost magical-seeming feats, but also lack basic understanding of how the world operates and are blind to all kinds of contextual appreciation. Most adults would take days trying to draw what a GAI system can generate in seconds, and would struggle to match its ‘skills’, but even an artistically-challenged adult likely myself with barely any artistic talent at all would know how many fingers, noses or arms, were appropriate in a picture – no matter how clumsily I rendered them. The idea of GAI as a child prodigy, in need of moral guidance and requiring tutoring and careful curation of the content they are exposed to, can help us better understand just how limited these systems are. This orientation to GAI also helps us see that what are witnessing is not a finished solution to various tasks currently undertaken by people, but rather a surplus of potential. The child prodigy is capable of so much, but is still a child and critically, still requires prodigious supervision.

So as universities look to use student-facing chatbots for support and answering queries, to automate their arcane and lengthy internal processes, to sift through huge datasets and to analyse and repackage existing learning content, we need to be mindful of GAI’S immaturity. It offers phenomenal potential in all these areas and despite the overdone hype  it will drive a range of huge changes to how we work in higher education, but it is far from ready to work unsupervised. GAI needs moral instruction, it needs to be reshaped as it develops and we might do this through assuming the mindset of a watchful, if also proud, parent.

Professor Dave Webster is Director of Education, Quality & Enhancement at the University of Liverpool. He has a background in teaching philosophy, and the study of religion, with ongoing interests in Buddhist thought, and the intersections of new religious movements and conspiracy theory.  He is also concerned about pedagogy, GAI and the future of Higher Education.

[1] The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed., with commentary, Walter Kaufmann, Vintage, 1968.               


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Teaching and research? Yes, but universities have another important job

by Paul Temple

The easy way to tell authoritarian (or worse) states from ones that are, broadly speaking, liberal democracies is that in the latter you will find a range of public institutions that are significantly independent of the central state: this is what creates a plural society. It is, when you consider it, pretty surprising that we can have institutions largely funded, one way or another, by taxation, yet not controlled by the state. Take the example of Britain’s national cultural institutions: these are mainly state-funded yet guard their independence fiercely. However, we have seen in recent years how government has tried to drag them – the BBC, several major museums – into ludicrous “culture wars” and seeking to appoint to their governing bodies individuals thought to be sympathetic to certain government agendas. It is a sign that we live in a functioning liberal democracy that government does not routinely get its own way in these struggles: under an authoritarian regime, it would not even be a matter for discussion. Liberal-minded people know, almost instinctively, that independent institutions matter.

Perhaps the most important non-state public institution, everywhere, is the judiciary. The outcomes of legal cases where the state is involved in Russia or China, say, are invariably foregone conclusions. A judge’s task in these situations requires presentational skills rather than forensic ones: to frame the predetermined outcome so that it seems as if legal norms were applied, thus allowing the government to claim that the decision was made by an independent judiciary. That show trials continue in Putin’s Russia and elsewhere (why not just throw dissidents into jail, or indeed execute them?) is an implicit recognition that the moral standing of liberal institutions is too high to be simply ignored.

But those of us fortunate enough to live in liberal societies – being, as the poet Douglas Dunn puts it, “on the pleasant side of history” – cannot be complacent: the institutional structures that we all-too-readily take for granted and which underpin pluralism and support our freedoms are, we have seen recently, desperately fragile. The “enemies of the people” assault on the judiciary by the tabloid press in November 2016 over, bizarrely, a legal determination that parliament needed to vote to trigger the process of leaving the EU, showed how a populist frenzy might be worked up. That the attack was not countered immediately and vigorously by the government, because it suited the government’s political purposes at the time, was deeply shameful and worrying.

In most authoritarian states, universities and colleges do not seem to carry the same weight as the judiciary: they are apparently mostly left to get on with their work in peace, providing, naturally, that they don’t cause trouble for the regime. Academics in the former Soviet bloc countries became expert in knowing how far they could push matters (normally, not very far) and still keep their jobs and privileges. The state was a constant – if to outsiders, hidden – presence in university affairs, and university rectors usually saw their jobs in terms of keeping their academics quiet and the secret police out. The Soviet academic observation that the most dangerous university subject was history – because while we could be certain that the future would be a socialist nirvana, the past was full of traps for the unwary – neatly delineated the scope of university work under authoritarian rule. A recent detailed account of governance in Chinese universities today (Liu, 2023) explains that each university has a Communist Party committee which is “the highest authority within the university”, a point not made, in my experience, when western visitors meet the university president. He or she is accountable to a political structure that outsiders do not usually see (and if they do, its role is glossed-over), and which determines how decisions made in Beijing will be applied within the university.

In Britain, by contrast, the state/university divide was once maintained with almost religious fervour. In the days of the University Grants Committee (UGC) – peak liberalism for higher education – I once found myself chatting over coffee in a conference break to an Education Department civil servant. When he learned that I worked in a university, he almost dropped his coffee cup in shock when he realised that he’d sinned against the arms-length principle that meant that the UGC was supposed to be the only means of contact between universities and government departments. Universities, like local authorities, were seen then as autonomous parts of the public realm, each with their own goals and methods, rather than as agencies delivering central government policies. “The department [for Education and Science] dispensed cheques to the University Grants Committee for the universities and to the local authorities for schools and polytechnics with guidelines sometimes attached but virtually nil powers of enforcement…In the 1980s [under the Thatcher government] all that changed” (Hennessey, 1989: 428).

That change meant that the sharp state/university divide has now largely vanished: the role of the OFS is of course utterly different to that of the UGC. The proposal put forward by the then government in the recent general election campaign (have we heard the last of it?), that there would be central direction on which degree courses universities would be allowed to offer – or, in the measured tones of the Department for Education press release, “Crackdown on rip-off university degrees” – would mean that universities should be considered for all practical purposes as central government agencies, just as in China.

Why does this matter? One not-insignificant reason is about effectiveness: largely autonomous institutions – self-governing universities, locally-elected councils, free trade unions, the Whitehaven Harbour Commissioners – responding variously to the needs of the groups they are aiming to serve will almost certainly lead to better outcomes than would be produced by a remote, centrally-directed operation. But the larger reason is that pluralism underpins the freedoms we value in liberal societies, creating the distributed decision-making which you and I might have a chance of influencing. When those decisions are not ones that central government finds to its taste, it is even more important that independent thinking might prevail. The regular attacks on universities by Ministers in the last government, as regularly chronicled in SRHE News, surely had the purpose of undermining autonomous institutions with a commitment to disinterested knowledge production, and so weakening a core element of a liberal society. If this isn’t a fight worth having, I don’t know what is.

Dr Paul Temple is Honorary Associate Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Studies, UCL Institute of Education.

References

Hennessy, P (1989) Whitehall London: Secker and Warburg

Liu, X (2023) The Development and Governance of Private Universities in China Singapore: Springer Nature


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Reflecting on five years of feedback research and practice: progress and prospects

by Naomi Winstone and David Carless

Over the past few years, feedback research and practice in higher education have experienced sustained research interest and significant advancements. These developments have been propelled by a deeper understanding of student responses to feedback, the impact of cultural and sociomaterial factors, and the affordances and challenges posed by digital assessment and feedback methods. In 2019, we published a book in the SRHE series titled Designing Effective Feedback Processes in Higher Education: A Learning-Focused Approach. Five years later, we find it pertinent to reflect on the changes in research, practice, and discourse surrounding feedback processes in higher education since the book’s release.

Shifting paradigms in feedback processes

The book aimed to achieve two primary objectives: to present findings from the SRHE-funded ‘feedback cultures’ project and to synthesise evidence on feedback processes that prioritise student learning – what we called learning-focused feedback. This evidence was then translated into practical guidance and stimulus for reflection. A core distinction made in the book was between an ‘old paradigm’, characterized by the one-way transmission of feedback comments from educators to students, and a ‘new paradigm’, which emphasises student learning through active engagement with feedback processes of different forms, including peer feedback, self-feedback and automated feedback.

The impact of recent developments

The past five years have seen seismic shifts affecting feedback processes. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the feasibility of alternative approaches to assessment and feedback, debunking many myths about insurmountable constraints. It brought issues of relationality and social presence to the forefront. Additionally, the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 sparked debates on the distinct value of human involvement in feedback processes. Concurrently, higher education has grappled with sector-wide challenges, such as the devaluation of tuition fees in the UK and the intensification of the consumer-provider relationship.

Significant developments in feedback research and practice

Since 2019, feedback research and practice have evolved significantly. Two developments stand out to us as particularly impactful:

1. The ongoing boom of interest in feedback literacy

Feedback literacy research has become a fast-growing trend within research into feedback in higher education. The basis of feedback literacy is that students need a set of competencies which enable them to make the most of feedback opportunities of different kinds. And for students to develop these competencies, teachers need to design opportunities for students to generate, make sense of and use a variety of feedback inputs from peers, the self, teachers, or automated systems.

Student feedback literacy includes the ability to appreciate and judge the value of feedback inputs of different forms. This attribute remains relevant to both human and non-human feedback exchanges. Sometimes feedback inputs are off-target or inaccurate, so responsibility lies with the learner in using information prudently to move work forward. This is particularly pertinent in terms of inputs or feedback from generative AI (GenAI) to which we turn next. Judging the value and accuracy of GenAI inputs, and deciding what further probing or verifying is needed become important learning strategies.

2. Challenges and affordances of GenAI

The potential impact of technological disruption is often overestimated. However, the advent of ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) has undeniably generated both excitement and anxiety. In higher education, while assessment design has been the primary concern, discussions around feedback have also intensified.

Given the escalating and unsustainable costs of teaching in higher education, AI is sometimes seen as a panacea. Providing feedback comments – a time-consuming task for academics – could be outsourced to GenAI, theoretically freeing up time for other activities such as teaching, administration, or research. However, we caution against this approach. The mere provision of feedback comments, regardless of their origin, epitomises an old paradigm practice. As argued in our book, a process-oriented approach to feedback means that comments alone do not constitute feedback; they are merely inputs into a feedback process. Feedback occurs only when students engage with and act upon these comments.

Nevertheless, AI offers potential benefits for new paradigm feedback practices. A potential benefit of GenAI feedback is that it can be provided at a time when students need it. And if GenAI can assist educators in drafting feedback comments, it could free up time for more meaningful engagement with students, such as facilitating the implementation of feedback, supporting peer dialogue, and enhancing evaluative expertise. GenAI can also help students generate feedback on their own work, thereby developing their own evaluative judgement. In short, GenAI may not be harmful to feedback processes if we hold true to the principles of new paradigm learning-focused approaches we presented in our book.

Looking ahead: future directions in feedback research and practice

What might the next five years hold for feedback research and practice? Feedback literacy is likely to remain a key research theme because without feedback literacy it is difficult for both teachers and students to derive benefits and satisfaction from feedback processes. The potential and pitfalls of GenAI as a feedback source is likely to be a heavily populated research field. Methodologically, we anticipate a shift towards more longitudinal studies and a greater focus on behavioural outcomes, acknowledging the complexity of feedback impacts. These can be investigated over long-term durations as well as short-term ones because the benefits of complex, higher-order feedback often take time to accrue. As researchers, we are privileged to be part of a dynamic international community, working within a rapidly evolving policy and practice landscape. The field abounds with questions, challenges, and opportunities for exploration. We are excited to see what developments the future holds.

Naomi Winstone is a cognitive psychologist specialising in the processing and impact of instructional feedback, and the influence of dominant discourses of assessment and feedback in policy and practice on the positioning of educators and students in feedback processes. Naomi is Professor of Educational Psychology and Director of the Surrey Institute of Education at the University of Surrey, UK. She is also an Honorary Professor in the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University, Australia. Naomi is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a UK National Teaching Fellow.

David Carless works as a Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, and is Head of the Academic Unit SCAPE (Social Contexts and Policies in Education). He is one of the pioneers of feedback literacy research and is listed as a top 0.1% cited researcher in the Stanford top 2% list for social sciences. His books include Designing effective feedback processes in higher education: A learning-focused approach, by Winstone and Carless, 2019 published by Routledge. He was the winner of a University Outstanding Teaching Award in 2016. The latest details of his work are on his website: https://davidcarless.edu.hku.hk/.


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Promoting equity and employability using live briefs

by Lucy Cokes

‘Live briefs’ are used in Higher Education programmes, and I suggest that they can help promote equity and employability if they are used in very specific ways. The use of live briefs takes place not only in the creative industries, but also across more practical or core subjects in HE. and has many parallels with a wide range of other teaching tools.

Live Briefs have been part of my teaching to students on the Creative Advertising degrees at Falmouth University for the past 10 years, with the last four years using live paid briefs as part of assessment. Done right I passionately believe that live briefs, with their ability to test students through an authentic task, develop creative problem-solving skills, and in turn, enhancing student satisfaction, are a valuable tool.

How live briefs are usually used

A live brief is defined as “a type of design project that is distinct from a typical studio project in its engagement of real clients or users, in real-time settings” (Sara, 2006, p. 1). Often, lecturers believe they are assigning ‘live briefs’, but frequently these are merely ‘simulations’ or ‘mock briefs’ using either outdated, or fictional client briefs which lack a genuine and immediate client need. Distant cousins of live briefs include the use of case studies in teaching, or the use of authentic tasks. However, I believe that the use of a live brief should be the unrivalled method to enhancing students’ employability skills and prospects at university in comparison to these other approaches. Typically, live briefs are sourced through lecturers’ professional networks and are presented to students most frequently as an extracurricular opportunity. These opportunities have often resulted in students securing paid or unpaid placements at agencies or being offered full-time positions post-graduation. By not fully embedding these live opportunities into assessments, there is an inadvertent disadvantage to those already disadvantaged.

How live briefs could be used

Live briefs can be, with effort, integrated into the students’ assessment brief for their modules. Students are often asked to deliver a pitch to the client as part of their assessment with one of the ideas chosen by the client. The winning students should ideally be paid for their time, with full guidance from tutors acting to provide feedback and project manage the process. Course leaders need to use caution when explicitly stating a particular module will contain live paid briefs, as they are often hard to come by. Instead, it is suggested that modules be designed in such a way they can be ‘plugged in’ when accessible.

There are many challenges in using live briefs, these include:

  • Planning in good time prior to start of a module.
  • The need to fit timings with pre-established assessment deadlines.
  • Additional time required for lectures to source the live briefs and manage the ‘clients’.
  • Potential administration constraints with invoicing ‘clients’, paying students and suppliers.

Live briefs seem particularly well-suited to non-profits, small businesses, or government agencies.  Experience has shown that these types of organisations tend so see the partnership with a university and students to be more cost effective, providing social benefits, whilst also being able to be more flexible around the module deadlines.

Organisations benefit from bringing their projects to the university, as they gain a dedicated fresh set of minds working on their problem. The same clients often come back year after year. Chris Thompson of Safer Futures shared that he “…thought the standard, confidence and professionalism of the student pitches and research was exceptional.”

The hierarchy of live briefs has been produced to assist lecturers in deciding how best to use live briefs in their teaching and push for the gold star of having paid opportunities embedded into assessment.  This is a call for a shift in culture and attitudes toward the use of live briefs, so we are not inadvertently decreasing social mobility in the UK through their use.

Live Brief Hierarchy

The hierarchy has been designed to help lecturers navigate the options whilst considering the ever-increasing demand for improved employability equity.

Figure 1: Hierarchy of the use of Live Briefs in University Teaching.
Ranked based on perceived equity and employability status.

Working on live briefs enhances the students’ employability by improving general employability skills, and providing the ability to include this work in their portfolios and CVs. The approach of using live briefs outside of assessment does not provide equal opportunities to students from diverse backgrounds. Less privileged students often work nearly full-time during evenings and weekends to support themselves financially while studying. Indeed, 55% of UK students now work an average of 13.5 hours a week meaning they have less availability to participate in extracurricular assignments  (BBC, 2023). The Social Mobility Commission has noted that “unpaid internships are damaging for social mobility”  (Milburn, 2017). I see a parallel between the use of extracurricular briefs and unpaid internships, so I advocate that we discourage the use of unpaid extracurricular briefs, as they reduce our chances of ‘levelling up’ in the UK.

The Gold Star of Live Briefs

Justyna, BA Creative Advertising graduate, shared her thoughts on working on a paid live brief. “It gave me more motivation to produce the best possible work. But it was mainly because I was excited about the opportunity to actually make a campaign, still as a student. It was a great way of getting work experience and seeing how the industry works. I believe that the campaign I made is one of the most valuable experiences on my CV”.

Embedding live briefs into briefs assessment, producing work for clients, and compensating students for their contributions present significant challenges. However, I believe incremental improvements to the existing practice of utilising live briefs outside of formal assessment without remuneration should be pursued. The deliberate consideration of these options and the effort to implement such changes will gradually shift the culture and attitudes toward the use of live briefs among both university academic staff and external organisations. This progressive adaptation will enhance the integration of live briefs into the curriculum, ultimately benefiting the student experience, learning and employability whilst simultaneously resulting in clear knowledge exchange advantages for the external organisations.

Lucy Cokes is a senior lecturer at Falmouth University, School of Communications. She has been working in higher education for the past ten years and is a Fellow of Advance HE. She leads the Behaviour Change for Good modules on the Advertising courses and started the inhouse agency ‘BE good’ to manage the live projects which have included a number of government funded campaigns around VAWG and Healthy Relationships. Prior to this she ran a highly successful digital marketing agency with 80 staff in the UK across 3 offices.

References

BBC (2023) Most university students working paid jobs, survey shows. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-65964375 [Accessed 23 August 2023]

Milburn, A. (2017) Unpaid internships are damaging to social mobility. [Online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/unpaid-internships-are-damaging-to-social-mobility [Accessed 22 August 2023].

Sara, R. (2006) Live Project Good Practice: A Guide for the Implementation of Live Projects, s.l.: Centre for Education in the Built Environment


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The hidden layers of transparency in UK HE assessment practices

by Chahna Gonsalves and Zhongan Lin

Transparency in assessment practices is a critical component of the UK’s higher education sector, but it is a term that carries many layers of meaning. This blog post explores a study that examined how transparency is framed in assessment policies across 151 UK higher education institutions (HEIs). The findings reveal that while institutions strive for transparency, they often overlook the complexities and multidimensional nature of the concept.

Understanding transparency: more than just clear documentation

Transparency in assessment is often associated with clear documentation of criteria, grading practices, and feedback mechanisms. However, this techno-rational approach, which emphasizes explicit documentation and information dissemination, is just one facet of transparency. Our study highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding that includes socio-cultural practices and socio-material enactments.

Techno-rational approaches: the dominant paradigm

The study found that techno-rational approaches dominate the transparency discourse in HEI policies. These approaches focus on ensuring that assessment criteria, learning outcomes, and grading standards are clearly articulated and accessible. For example, many policies mandate the use of detailed assessment briefs, rubrics, and grade descriptors. While this approach aims to make evaluative processes clear and consistent, it often falls short in addressing the dynamic and interpretive nature of academic standards.

One of the most compelling findings was the over-reliance on explicit standards documents, which presume that written criteria can universally ensure fairness and consistency. This static view overlooks the reality that academic standards are co-constructed within specific social and cultural contexts. Without acknowledging this, policies may fail to convey the nuanced, tacit knowledge necessary for fully understanding and applying assessment criteria.

The limitations of techno-rational transparency

Simply providing clear documentation does not guarantee that all stakeholders will understand or effectively use the information. For instance, non-native English speakers and students with varying levels of academic literacy may struggle with the language used in assessment criteria. Moreover, policies often fail to specify effective methods for disseminating this information, relying heavily on static documents rather than interactive or diverse formats that could enhance understanding.

Socio-cultural practices: engaging stakeholders in meaningful dialogue

Beyond documentation, transparency also involves socio-cultural practices that engage stakeholders in ongoing dialogue and clarification of assessment criteria. Policies that promote discussion between educators and students, co-creation of assessment criteria, and collaborative marking processes can foster a deeper understanding and shared meaning of what is expected. For instance, involving students in the creation of rubrics and providing opportunities for mock marking can enhance their evaluative judgment and assessment literacy.

One interesting insight from the study was the importance of dialogue in building a shared understanding of assessment standards. Policies that encourage discussion about assessment criteria not only help students grasp what is expected but also allow educators to refine and clarify their expectations. This dynamic, interactive process contrasts sharply with the static dissemination of information typical of techno-rational approaches.

Socio-material enactments: the role of tools and artefacts

The study also highlights the importance of socio-material enactments, where transparency is realized through the interaction between social practices and material artifacts. This includes the use of digital platforms, rubrics, exemplars, and other assessment tools that facilitate a tangible understanding of assessment criteria. Effective use of these tools can bridge the gap between educators’ tacit knowledge and students’ understanding, fostering a more comprehensive view of transparency.

For example, the use of digital platforms to share assessment criteria and feedback can significantly enhance transparency. These platforms allow for continuous access and interaction with assessment materials, making it easier for students to understand and engage with the criteria. However, the study found that detailed guidance on such platforms is often scant in policies, pointing to a significant area for improvement.

Who benefits from transparency? A multifaceted audience

Transparency in assessment is not solely for students. It also encompasses other stakeholders, including markers, external examiners, tutors, and even employers. The study found that while most policies address the need for transparency for students and markers, they often neglect other crucial stakeholders. This oversight can lead to inconsistencies in how assessments are interpreted and applied, potentially undermining the fairness and effectiveness of the evaluation process.

A particularly intriguing aspect of the study was the identification of specific roles and responsibilities for promoting transparency. By clearly defining who is responsible for ensuring transparency – whether it be module leaders, programme teams, or tutors – institutions can better align their policies with the needs of various stakeholders. This clarity can help avoid the pitfalls of ambiguous roles and ensure a more consistent application of assessment criteria.

Methodology: building the framework

To develop a comprehensive framework we conducted a detailed content analysis of assessment policy documents from 151 UK HEIs. The data collection process involved systematically retrieving and examining these publicly accessible documents, which included academic manuals, assessment policies, feedback strategies, and codes of practice. We excluded documents that were outdated or inaccessible, resulting in a final corpus of 264 documents. Through both deductive and inductive coding methods, we analysed the texts to identify recurring themes and patterns related to transparency. This process involved categorising the data into three main discourses – techno-rational, socio-cultural, and socio-material – guided by Ajjawi, Bearman, and Boud’s (2021) framework. The iterative coding and categorization helped us build a nuanced understanding of how transparency is conceptualized and communicated in HEI assessment policies.

Towards a holistic framework for transparency

Our study proposes a holistic framework that integrates techno-rational, socio-cultural, and socio-material approaches to transparency. This framework emphasizes the need for clear, accessible documentation, active engagement with stakeholders, and effective use of assessment tools and artifacts. By recognizing the diverse needs of all stakeholders, HEIs can develop more inclusive and effective assessment policies.

One of the key contributions of this study is its challenge to the notion of transparency as a static attribute. Instead, transparency is presented as a dynamic, contextually situated practice that requires continuous negotiation and interaction among stakeholders. This perspective shifts the focus from merely providing information to actively engaging stakeholders in the assessment process.

Figure 1. Framework of assessment transparency in Higher Education

Implications for policy and practice

To improve transparency in assessment, HEIs must move beyond merely publishing information to actively engaging with stakeholders through dialogue and interaction. Policies should be clear about the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders in ensuring transparency. Furthermore, the use of diverse and interactive dissemination methods can enhance understanding and support students’ academic success.

For policymakers, the study suggests that transparency should be explicitly defined within institutional contexts, with guidelines that emphasize both the dissemination of information and the engagement of stakeholders. Educational practitioners are encouraged to adopt participatory practices in assessment design, involving students in creating and understanding assessment criteria, which is pivotal in promoting transparency.

Conclusion: enhancing transparency for a fairer education system

Transparency in assessment is a complex, multifaceted concept that goes beyond clear documentation. By integrating techno-rational, socio-cultural, and socio-material approaches, HEIs can foster a more inclusive and effective assessment environment. This study underscores the importance of comprehensive policies that not only provide clear information but also engage stakeholders in meaningful ways, ultimately contributing to a fairer and more equitable higher education system.

Reflecting on our roles as stakeholders

As readers, it is crucial to reflect on our roles within the higher education assessment ecosystem. Whether we are students, educators, policymakers, or external examiners, we each play a part in fostering transparency. Understanding the nuances of transparency and actively engaging in dialogue and interaction can help us contribute to more equitable and effective assessment practices. By recognizing and fulfilling our roles, we can collectively enhance the transparency and quality of education in our institutions.

Reference

Gonsalves, C and Lin, Z (2024) ‘Clear in advance to whom? Exploring ‘transparency’ of assessment practices in UK higher education institution assessment policy’ Studies in Higher Education, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2024.2381124

Chahna Gonsalves is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing (Education) at King’s College London. She is Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Association and Associate Fellow of the Staff Educational Development Association. Her interest in rubrics and the language of assessment is an extension of her role as Department Education Lead.

Zhonghan Lin is a Doctoral Researcher based at the Center for Language, Discourse and Communication, the School of Education, Communication and Society, King’s College London. Her research interests include urban multilingualism, education in ethnically and linguistically diverse societies, and family language policy.


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Ethicality in academic knowledge production

by Dina Zoe Belluigi

‘Research cultures’, and their problematics, have received sufficient attention to have been delineated various definitions by authoritative groups within the university/ research ecology in the United Kingdom, and amongst scholars in our field of enquiry. Raising questions about ethicality within research cultures, in a recent paper I explored dys/consciousness and its effects on research production and the formation of academic researchers. The focus of the empirical component was on one part which falls within the United Kingdom – Northern Ireland (NI).

How to conceptualise thinking and seeing for the study of UK universities?

The paper begins with a mapping of conceptualisations of consciousness. It does so through their application, by those who have studied dynamics of racism in universities and educational institutions in the United Kingdom and the USA. The mapping includes scholars’ arguments about the persistence of not unconscious but dysconscious racism, the limits of critical consciousness, the necessity for anti-racism, and the constraints to realising decolonisation, when faced with janiform approaches to structural, institutional and scientific racism in academia.

Methodological approach

The conceptual mapping served as a sensitisation device through which to explore academic research cultures, about enquiry on social groups who were and are marginalised due to perceptions of their ‘otherness’ to dominantly-placed Northern Irish groups. Difference is indexed through constructions of ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘migration’, underpinned by whiteness.

A Critical Discourse Analysis, undergirded by Critical Race Theory, was undertaken of 200 published research items that related to this area of enquiry, which were found to extend from 1994 to 2022, and were spread across disciplines. These were sourced from the repositories of the research-intensive universities in Northern Ireland. Qualitative reflections enriched the analysis. These included the participation of the related academic-authors, and report-and-respond insights from institutional research officers, and non-academic partners of such studies (n=37). Combining these sources was to probe more deeply the ways in which such outlier practices of knowledge production reinforced, evaded or resisted dominant frames and norms of conduct.

Signs of dysconsciousness

The paper’s analysis unpacks 5 signs of what was interpreted as dysconscious racism and xenophobia-ism in the context. The first sign was the under-study and under-funding of local research enquiry on/ about/ and by so-called ‘ethnic minorities’ and ‘migrants’. Secondly, were the skewed dynamics within the politics of participation and of authorship, wherein those studied were rarely positioned as authorities of knowledge produced. Thirdly, the ethicality of authors’ interests and motivations in undertaking such research were found to be complicated and undermined by strategic, and often self-serving, goals imposed by the academic research ecology. Problematics in the data collected and held by public authorities, was the fourth sign. The article culminates in the fifth sign: that the threats of risk, social sanction and double-speak related to such research, were not only exogenous to universities, but endogenous too.

Insights for further explorations

In the current neoliberal milieu, the enablers of research – such as funding, social validation or career rewards – were of such a techno-rational nature that the depth of theorisation, complexity and intellectual debate necessary to challenge the existing dysconscious racism and xenophobia-ism remained under-supported. Moreover, the article confirms observations that – rather than enrich or catalyse criticality and plurality within the dominant formations of academic knowledge and of scholars – risk-avoidance of (perceived) controversial issues is compounded when institutions are situated within complicated local socio-political conditions. This places limits on, and indeed de-idealises, promotional social responsibility imaging of ‘anchor’ universities.

Participants’ counter-narratives provided insights about the production of enquiry despite, and in some cases because of, such dominant dynamics. Of interest is that many of the authors were women (in far higher proportions than the staff composition of those institutions); and many of the authors self-identified as migrant academics. In addition to external migrants to the British Isles, this included those from the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, providing a sense of how alienated ‘outsiders’ were often made to feel within that academic ‘community’. Avoiding hero narratives, the article points to the politics of authorial agency within academic practices when individuals negotiate insider-outsider, minority-majority dynamics of academic research cultures hostile to such enquiry.

The article concludes by raising questions about the mantle of ethical responsibility to justice, truth, and dissent within such constraining, homogenising conditions. While it is tempting to read this as an exceptional or peculiar case, references to related studies are included throughout the article to demonstrate that similar problematic dynamics within research cultures have been observed across university spaces in the Global North, and warrant further enquiry.

Professor Belluigi is a Council member of SRHE; Professor of Authorship, Representation and Transformation at Queen’s University Belfast; and a Visiting Professor at Nelson Mandela University.

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After the election: the end of season awards

by Rob Cuthbert

Within days of the UK’s General Election on 4 July the new Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, had acknowledged that university finances need to be ‘stabilised’ as an immediate priority, saying – without further explanation – that there are some measures she could take, but not holding out much hope for a cash injection. London Economics analysed manifesto commitments on 25 June 2024, as did UUK, but, as anticipated, HE did not feature strongly. Universities UK, under the smart stewardship of Vivienne Stern, is focusing on what universities can do for government, launching a ‘blueprint’ on “the role universities can play in powering the new government’s growth strategy and in creating opportunities for millions all over the UK” – much more sensible than another ‘what we’d like the new government to do for higher education’ message. Meanwhile, at the end of every season, win or lose, must come the end of season awards, and SRHE News is happy to play its part in recognising the outstanding HE events of the last 14 years of the previous government.

The most washed-up former politician

There was strong competition in this category, with honourable mentions for Gavin Williamson, Michele Donelan and Gillian Keegan, but the clear winner was Lord Wharton, the chair of the Office for Students. He was ennobled in Boris Johnson’s 2020 Dissolution Honours, an honour said to be for running Johnson’s campaign to become Conservative Party leader. Having been Britain’s youngest MP at 26 when elected in 2010, he lost his very marginal seat in 2017, becoming at 36 the youngest male member of the House of Lords. Without any discernible experience of or interest in HE, except as a student at Durham and UCL, he was appointed OfS chair in 2021, and maintained the tradition of appointments based on connections by making Rachel Houchen, wife of his friend and colleague Teesside Mayor Lord Ben, a member of the OfS Board. Despite, for a time, being the Northern Powerhouse minister he rarely left London, a habit he maintained as OfS chair in visiting surprisingly few HE institutions. Beached when the tide of Johnsonism rushed out.

The most unsuccessful warrior in the culture wars

The clear winner was Michele Donelan, even though her prizewinning performance came after she had left the DfE, where she was HE minister and then, for a day, Secretary of State amid the chaos of ministerial desertions of Boris Johnson. She then not only became Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport under Liz Truss, but Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology under Rishi Sunak. No doubt emboldened by holding three different Cabinet positions in such a short time, she unwisely used a Policy Exchange report as the basis for attacking UKRI’s advisory group on equality, diversity and inclusion, in particular members Dr Kate Sang (Heriot Watt) and Dr Kamna Patel (UCL). Some thought UKRI was pusillanimous in response, suspending the group and mounting an investigation, which found no evidence that either Prof Sang or Dr Patel had breached their roles’ terms of reference or the Nolan principles. Sang sued the Secretary of State and won £15000 damages  – paid not by Donelan but by the government.

The Good Lord Award for the best HE Minister not ennobled by his brother

David Willetts.

The Good Lord! Award for the HE Minister ennobled by his brother

Jo Johnson.

The least successful attempt to give money to the electorate

The HE electorate has rarely been courted by any party, but Prime Minister Theresa May made an exception in 2017 when she raised the repayment threshold for student loans in an ill-conceived attempt at “putting money back into the pockets of graduates with high levels of debt”. The changes made the loan scheme much more expensive than before, and May got no political credit or benefit for it whatsoever; the changes were later reversed.

The most misguided belief in market forces

The Award goes to David Willetts, possibly the only person who thought that, when HE fees rose to £9000, universities would set fees in a range from £6000 to £9000 depending on their competitiveness, demonstrating a comprehensive misunderstanding of how the fierce competition in HE actually works. In the event a handful of universities did set some fees slightly below £9000, but those reductions soon evaporated. This also showed the absence of organisational memory in government (but not in universities): when fees were first introduced at £1000 some HEIs did indeed charge less than £1000, but quickly realised their error. When fees rose to £3000 it was possibly only Leeds Metropolitan University which set fees at £2000, linking this to their sponsorship of Leeds Rhinos Rugby League team with the slogan ‘low charging, high impact’ – a mistake which must have cost the university many £millions.

The least likeable HE Minister

A good number of HE ministers have in fact been fairly likeable; the startlingly unpleasant exception was Andrea Jenkyns, Minister for Skills for a mercifully brief period (just over three months) in 2022, notorious for this gesture.

The least likeable Secretary of State for Education

This Award has now been retired and is held in perpetuity by Sir Gavin Williamson.

The least successful research investment

Bolton VC George Holmes paid Andrea Jenkyns MP £55000 for two years’ work as director of the university-funded Research Institute for Social Mobility and Education, during which period it produced just two papers.

The least successful teaching investment

Buoyed by his experience with Andrea Jenkyns MP, Bolton VC George Holmes went on to pay John Hayes MP about £40000pa for two years helping to develop an online postgraduate politics course for the university, the MA Government, Opposition and Parliamentary Studies, launched in September 2023. Student numbers are unknown.

The most shameless U-turn

Now held in perpetuity by Nick Clegg and Vince Cable for their stance on the pledge by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg before the 2010 general election to abolish student tuition fees.

Rob Cuthbert is editor of SRHE News and the SRHE Blog, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management, University of the West of England and Joint Managing Partner, Practical Academics. Email rob.cuthbert@uwe.ac.uk. Twitter @RobCuthbert.

This editorial in the July 2024 issue of SRHE News was written before it was announced that Lord Wharton had resigned as chair of the OfS Board.