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Judgement under pressure: generative AI and the emotional labour of learning

by Joanne Irving-Walton

What AI absorbs and why that matters

Most debates about generative AI in higher education fixate on what it produces: essays, summaries, answers, paraphrases. I find myself increasingly interested in something else – what it absorbs. Over the past year, as conversations about AI have threaded through seminars and tutorials, a pattern has gradually become visible. In those discussions, students rarely begin with content production; instead, they talk about how it helps them get started and steadies them enough to keep going. They use it when the blank page paralyses, when feedback stings and when uncertainty feels exposing. One student described asking AI to “make it feel possible”. Another spoke of feeding tutor comments into the system so they could be “explained more kindly”. A third reflected, almost apologetically, “I don’t want it to do my work… I just need something to push against before I say it out loud and risk looking stupid”.

In each case, AI is not replacing thinking. It is absorbing part of the emotional labour involved in it, and as that labour is redistributed, the texture of judgement shifts. Academic judgement does not tend to emerge from comfort. It develops in the stretch between knowing and not knowing, when confidence dips, stakes feel heightened, and your sense of competence is quietly tested (Barnett, 2007). Staying in that stretch long enough for thinking to clarify demands more than intellectual effort; it requires emotional steadiness, time, space and the capacity to tolerate uncertainty without rushing to resolution (Biesta, 2013). Traditionally, that steadying work has been shared across learning relationships: tutors reframing feedback, peers normalising confusion, supervisors encouraging persistence through doubt. Generative AI now occupies part of that terrain.

I do not think this is inherently a problem. For some students, it is transformative. It marks a shift in where the labour of learning takes place and that change deserves examination rather than alarm.

Four modes of engagement and emotional labour

When students talk about how they use AI, their practices tend to cluster into four overlapping orientations. These are not moral categories so much as shifts in where emotional and cognitive labour is undertaken.

Instrumental engagement appears when students use AI to summarise readings, refine phrasing or impose structure. Here the friction lies in form-making and shaping thought into something communicable. The judgement at stake is procedural: what is proportionate or efficient in this context?

Dialogic engagement emerges when students test interpretations or rehearse arguments. AI becomes a low-stakes sounding board, absorbing some of the vulnerability of articulating something half-formed. The question beneath it is interpretive: what does this mean, and how far do I trust my reading and myself?

Metacognitive engagement is evident when students ask AI to critique their reasoning or compare approaches. What is absorbed here is evaluative tension and the discomfort of examining one’s own argument. The judgement in play is comparative and strategic: which option is stronger, and why? And then there is affective-regulatory engagement. Here, AI absorbs the anxiety that precedes judgement itself. It breaks tasks into steps, softens feedback, lowers the threshold for beginning, offers reassurance before submission and quietens the internal ruminations and rehearsals of everything that might go wrong. This is not peripheral to learning. It is increasingly central.

Figure: Where the labour of learning now lives

Accessibility, safety and the risk of smoothing too much

For many students, particularly those navigating anxiety, executive dysfunction, neurodivergence or heavy external commitments, this emotional buffering is not indulgence but access (Rose & Meyer, 2002). Breaking tasks into steps or privately rehearsing ideas before speaking can widen participation rather than diminish it.

We should not romanticise struggle. Nor should we imagine that institutional structures have ever been able to hold every student perfectly. For some learners, AI offers another place to rehearse thinking, one that sits alongside, rather than replaces, human dialogue.

But there is a tension here. If AI consistently absorbs the strain of uncertainty before ideas encounter resistance, if feedback is softened before it unsettles, if structure replaces the slow work of wrestling thought into form, then something quieter begins to shift. Much of this work happens privately, in browser tabs and late-night prompts, in spaces students do not always feel comfortable admitting to. That makes it harder for us to see what is being strengthened and what may be thinning. The danger is not comfort, but the quiet disappearance of formative strain.

By formative strain, I do not mean suffering for its own sake, nor simply the “desirable difficulties” described in cognitive load theory (Bjork & Bjork, 2011) or the stretching associated with a Vygotskian zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978). I am referring to the lived experience of remaining with ambiguity, critique and partial understanding long enough for judgement to consolidate; the emotional as well as cognitive work of staying with a problem. If that work is always pre-processed, it may narrow the rehearsal space where judgement forms.

Scaffold or substitute

Much depends on whether AI remains a scaffold or begins to function as a substitute. Used as scaffold, it lowers the emotional threshold just enough for deeper engagement, absorbing anxiety without displacing judgement. Used as substitute, it reduces not only strain but evaluation itself; the work of deciding and committing shifts elsewhere. The distinction lies less in the tool than in how it is woven into the learning environment.

Individual awareness and institutional responsibility

It would be easy, and unfair, to frame this as a matter of individual discernment. Students already carry a great deal. But nor is this simply a matter of institutional correction. We are all navigating new terrain in real time, without a settled script.

If we are serious about judgement formation, then responsibility is shared — and it is evolving. This is less about detection or prohibition than about openness. AI engagement is happening whether we discuss it or not. The question is whether we bring it into the light. That might mean inviting students to reflect on how they used AI in a task, not as confession, but as analysis. It might mean modelling, in our own teaching, what it looks like to question or refine an AI response rather than accept it wholesale. It certainly means acknowledging the emotional labour of learning openly (Newton, 2014), recognising that starting can be harder than finishing and that this, too, is part of learning.

At a structural level, we also need some candour. Systems built on speed, metrics and visible output inevitably amplify the appeal of friction-reducing tools. If polish is rewarded more consistently than process, we should not be surprised when students bypass the stretch between uncertainty and articulation. Cultivating discernment, then, is not a matter of allocating blame. It is a collective project of making the shifting terrain of AI use visible, discussable and educative.

Where the emotional work now lives

Generative AI has not diminished the importance of human judgement. If anything, it has made visible how emotionally mediated that judgement has always been (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007). The interior work of learning – the hesitation, the rehearsal, the private negotiation of uncertainty – has never been fully observable. It has always unfolded, at least in part, elsewhere.

What AI changes is not the existence of that interior space, but its texture. Some of that labour now takes place in dialogue with a system that can stabilise, extend or subtly redirect thinking. That creates an opportunity: we are at a juncture where the emotional dimensions of learning can be surfaced and examined more deliberately than before.

It also carries risk. Students can disappear down an AI rabbit hole just as easily as they once disappeared into rumination. The question is not whether the interior work exists, but how it is shaped and whether it ultimately strengthens judgement or thins it.

References

Barnett, R (2007) A will to learn: Being a student in an age of uncertainty Open University Press

Biesta, GJJ (2013) The beautiful risk of education Paradigm Publishers

Bjork, EL & Bjork, RA (2011) ‘Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning’ in MA Gernsbacher, RW Pew, LM Hough & JR Pomerantz (eds), Psychology and the real world: Essays illustrating fundamental contributions to society (pp. 56–64) Worth Publishers

Newton, DP (2014) Thinking with feeling: Fostering productive thought in the classroom Routledge

Vygotsky, LS (1978) Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes Harvard University Press Rose, DH & Meyer, A (2002) Teaching every student in the digital age: universal design for learning ASCD

Joanne Irving-Walton is a Principal Lecturer at Teesside University, working across learning and teaching and international partnerships. She is particularly interested in how academic judgement and professional identity develop through the emotional realities of higher education.


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A new way of addressing the enigma of student engagement

by Caroline Jones and Leonie Sweeney

Psychosocial and Academic Trust Alienation (PATA) Theory as a Methodological Lens

Higher education is experiencing post-pandemic challenges which have increased pressure on students in multifaceted and interconnecting ways (Jones & Bell, 2024). Existing research suggests that post-pandemic, students’ mental health and wellbeing has been significantly impacted (Chen & Lubock, 2022; Defeyter et al, 2021; Jones & Bell, 2025; McGiven & Shepherd, 2022; Nunn et al, 2021). This indicates that research into the field of higher education is needed more pro-actively than ever before, especially given the diverse student market.

Currently there is considerable research in the form of critique of policy trends or evaluation of the effectiveness of changes in practice; however, the PATA theory lens suggests an approach to research centring on the educational psychologies and intricacies of the student and the enigma of student engagement (Buckley, 2018; Jones & Nangah, 2020: McFarlane & Thomas, 2017).

Our recent article presents the PATA theory as a methodological lens through which higher education student behaviours, characteristics, and demographics can be researched. Furthermore, it provides an explanation of the PATA theory with specific links to student engagement. The idea of the PATA theory was first explored by Jones in 2017 and developed further in 2020 and 2021 in response to recognised issues faced relating to student engagement in widening participation student demographics. This research establishes the theory which can be applied to investigating the complexities of student demographics, with the aim being to develop knowledge and understanding of issues affecting students such as post-pandemic engagement.

Guidelines from the QAA (2018) state that due to the demographic of the students who attend each institution, student engagement needs to be interpreted and encouraged in response to student/higher education institutional need. Therefore, student engagement can be interpreted in a variety of ways, examining the links between time, energy and other properties invested by HEIs and students with the aims of cultivating the student experience, strengthening educational outcomes, encouraging development and raising student achievement. Positive student engagement can lead to successful student outcomes, lower attrition rates and improved social mobility, demonstrating the importance of research for understanding and investing in student engagement practices.

The PATA theory sits under the umbrella of alienation theory: it considers the individual student’s psychosocial status (self-concept/self-esteem levels) and has identified links to academic trust levels (Jones, 2021), particularly for students from the widening participation demographics or those who have experienced socio-economic disadvantage, see figure 1.

Figure 1. PATA Theory (Jones, 2021)

The PATA theory fits as a methodology within the realms of phenomenology as it enables researchers to present a narrative to represent the phenomena studied to extract significant statements from the data to formulate meaning. Neubauer, Witkop and Varpio (2019, p91) believe it is imperative for the researcher engaging in phenomenological research to be familiar with the philosophical ‘interpretations of human experience’, whilst Morrow, Rodriguez and King (2015, p644) advise that ‘descriptive phenomenology is especially valuable in areas where there is little existing research’. An additional crucial aspect of phenomenology is understanding that social reality has to be grounded in an individual’s encounters in authentic social situations. The focal point of the PATA theory lens research is to understand how students’ psychosocial status affects the academic trust of their higher education experiences and the relationships that arise out of the social exchanges therein, permitting researchers to construe the associations that the participants make.

This article analyses the PATA theory potential range of research methods that can be employed and used in higher education practice and is supported by three case vignette examples with reflection points.  For example, we would usually see student disengagement relating to activities such as non-attendance, but the PATA theory shows us that the concept of student engagement is much more complex and encourages higher education institutions and professionals to view the issue in a more holistic student-centred way rather than homogenously.

Additionally, post-Covid there has been a significant rise in the number of students presenting with mental health issues, with students struggling to attend and engage with their programmes of study. Currently, the assessment strategies used by HEIs for capturing student engagement fail accurately to measure both student engagement and sense of belonging. However, using the PATA theory as the research lens would provide a deeper insight into the post pandemic issues faced, by focussing on student alienation and the strengthening of trust between the student and the institution. HEIs could then scrutinise their existing on-campus experiences to aid the re-engagement process, and practice could be adapted to increase the student experience, such as including more pastoral 1:1 support time within the timetable.

Some further practical illustrations of how the PATA theory might influence our understanding or make a difference in practice are:

  • To understand potential psychological barriers to student engagement based on demographics, behaviours and characteristics.
  • To identify success stories of positive engagement where good practice can be disseminated or shared to improve student outcomes.
  • To take a deep dive into higher education practices, course or programmes to find out if there are specific teaching and learning barriers affecting students.
  • Provides time and space to analyse intricate needs of specific demographics; behaviours and characteristics such as impact of low tariff on entry gaps or previous educational experiences.
  • Can lead to bespoke action to address potential equality and inclusion concerns.
  • Can be used as an early intervention tool to support students’ re-engagement potentially contributing to reduced attrition and improvements in social mobility.
  • Can be used to explore wider societal issues that affect engagement

The PATA theory has its limitations, being a new and emerging theoretical perspective, and is very much open to academic critique. However, this concept does bring new insight to the complexities of the student community, the higher education institutional and political landscapes and could be used as a methodological lens to develop deeper knowledge and understanding of student engagement challenges. Whilst the PATA theory is a complex idea applied to a range of complex student issues, when the phenomenon is understood well, there is the potential to really make a difference to the educational outcomes for students. Furthermore, existing theories do not make connections between psychosocial status and academic trust which is where the PATA theory can contribute to a stronger understanding of the student phenomena.

The article on which this blog is based is

Jones, C. S., and Sweeney, L (2025) ‘The Psychosocial and Academic Trust Alienation (PATA) Theory: A new lens to research higher education student phenomena: behaviours, characteristics, and demographics’ Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal, 6(1), 79–110 https://sehej.raise-network.com/raise/article/view/1240.

Caroline Jones is an applied social sciences teaching professional with extensive experience working in the children and young people field and lecturing/programme leading in Higher Education. Currently employed as a Tutor based within the Health and Education Faculty at Manchester Metropolitan University, having previously been a Lecturer at the University Campus Oldham and at Stockport University Centre. Also an External Examiner for Derby University/Middlesex University and a Peer Reviewer for IETI. Research interests include; leadership and management, social mobility and social policy, risk, resilience and adolescent mental health, young care leavers, widening participation and disadvantage, originator of the ‘psychosocial and academic trust alienation’ (PATA) theory.

Email: c.jones@mmu.ac.uk. LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/caroline-jones-1bab40b3. Twitter/X: @c_JonesSFHEA. Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Caroline-Jones-39?ev=hdr_xprf.

Leonie Sweeney is a teaching professional within the Applied Social Sciences faculty at Manchester Metropolitan University, with many years of experience working within the children and young people sector. Currently employed as a Higher Education Course Leader and Lecturer, delivering Children and Young People and Early Years degree courses. Additionally, is an External Examiner for University of Chichester and University of Sunderland. Research interests include: student engagement, social mobility, widening participation.

Email: leonie.sweeney@oldham.ac.uk


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Talking the talk: language for learning in higher education

by Estefania Gamarra, Marion Heron, Lewis Baker and Harriet Tenenbaum

Do you remember when you started university, and you were expected to use a whole new language? We don’t just mean new nomenclature such as ‘seminars’ or ‘tutorials’, but language that can help you make a clear argument or disagree politely with a classmate. This language, or educational dialogue, and in particular disagreeing politely, is critical to be an engaged citizen in a healthy democracy, without otherwise descending into unhealthy practices such as ‘cancel culture’ as recently highlighted in the media. In this blog post, we argue that universities have a responsibility not only to teach students how to talk in an academic context, but also for this teaching to be discipline-specific and embedded in the disciplinary study where possible.

There is a long-held misperception that all students who start university are able to talk the talk of the university, that is, they have the language skills, the terminology, and the confidence to articulate their opinions from their first day. This is just simply not true for many undergraduate students. Having English as a first language is also not necessarily an advantage. Bourdieu et al (1994, p8) said, “academic language… is no one’s mother tongue, not even that of children of the cultivated classes”.

What do we mean by language here? We have drawn on the pedagogy and research from compulsory school education, namely the work of scholars at Cambridge University. Their work on educational dialogue has been successfully incorporated into school teaching with impressive results. Educational dialogue here refers to communicative acts such as agreeing, disagreeing, reasoning and expressing ideas. Research in school settings has shown that encouraging such dialogue can boost academic attainment. One study highlighted the relationship between elaborating on ideas and attainment in reading, spelling, punctuation and grammar. Despite this compelling evidence, similar strategies have been underexplored in higher education.

In our university classrooms, we hear students say things such as: ‘I know the answer, but don’t know how to phrase it’ and ‘I need to learn how to express my answer like that’. So, if students are themselves noticing a need for academic language, why are we so behind in the higher education context? And more importantly, what language do these students need? Do they all need the same academic language to confidently talk the talk? This is exemplified by the dialogue below between two engineering students working on answering multiple-choice questions together, an excerpt from our forthcoming research:

Student A:  Yeah, listen, we need to be able when we say “force”, to say why.  

Student B:  Yeah, to flip it.  

Student A:  Because we were right, like, C is incorrect, but we don’t say why it is not incorrect.  

Student B:  I don’t know how to word it, you know.

In our current research project, supported by a Nuffield Foundation grant, we explore whether pairs of Foundation Year students across Engineering, Psychology and Bioscience, engaging in discipline-specific multiple-choice questions, can learn to develop these academic language skills and the extent to which they can do this in an academic year-long intervention programme.

Our early findings indicate that while students are capable of using academic language, the forms they adopt vary by discipline. For example, consider one of the most basic interactions in academic discussions – giving and asking for reasons. Typically, the default marker for requesting justification is “why?”. The following extract from a psychology discussion illustrates this:

Student A:  Why do you think that is?

Student B:  Because, uh, if you got negative emotion, you know, so that is not called positive psychology. Yep, yeah, so I’m thinking about understanding like how to prevent negative emotions.

In contrast, in science courses such as biology or engineering, it was more common to use “how?” rather than “why?” when asking for reasoning. Consider this extract from an engineering discussion:

Student A:  Yes. Then the same as D.

Student B:  D? How?

Student A:  And then it’s…

Student B:  Oh.

Student A:  And this is…

Student B:  So the arrow goes this way…

Student A:  So then P goes this way…

Here, Student B not only asks for the reasoning by using “how?”, but the response unfolds as a sequence of steps outlining the reasoning process. This example also highlights another subject-specific difference: while psychology students typically expand on each other’s arguments or examples, engineering students more frequently build on each other’s equations, often with the assistance of pen and paper.

So, based on these snippets of authentic student dialogues, let’s return to the question posed at the beginning. Yes, all students can and do need to learn academic language to talk to each other and develop understanding, but the type of language depends on the discipline. Disciplinary differences can be seen in the way students build on each other’s ideas (eg long turns, short turns) as well as the words and phrases used. The evidence from our project shows this.

We argue that learning to talk the language of higher education should not be considered a prerequisite but instead, should be an essential feature of the higher education curriculum embedded within disciplinary studies.

Why is this important? Integrating academic language training into the curriculum can enhance students’ academic confidence, foster a stronger sense of belonging, and ultimately improve retention rates. In a post‐COVID world, where student engagement is waning, this conversation‐based approach may also help rebuild the social and collaborative fabric of university life.

Moreover, the skills developed through such training are highly transferable beyond academia. Students acquire essential discussion and teamwork abilities that prove invaluable in their future careers. It is important to emphasise that developing these skills requires deliberate training; we must not assume that students will acquire them without practice and guidance.

Although students may already use discipline‐specific language, targeted training helps them become accustomed to engaging in – and, more importantly, listening to – disagreement. These conversational practices become part of their repertoires, enabling them to generalize these skills across various contexts. As noted earlier, we must all learn to engage in constructive disagreement to counteract cancel culture. While the manner of such discourse may vary by discipline, developing these skills is essential for active participation in a healthy, thriving democracy.

Estefania Gamarra Burga is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Surrey. Her research interests include educational dialogue, discourse analysis, gender, and spatial cognition in STEM and higher education.

Marion Heron is Associate Professor of Educational Linguistics in the Surrey Institute of Education, University of Surrey. She supervises doctoral students on topics in the field of applied linguistics and higher education. She researches in the areas of language and education, with a particular interest in classroom discourse, genre and doctoral education.

Lewis Baker is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences and a Chartered Science Teacher. His research interests include teaching pedagogy and science education, often within a foundation year context.

Harriet Tenenbaum is Professor of Social and Developmental Psychology. Her research focuses on social justice in young people, everyday conversations, and teaching and learning across the lifespan.


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Promoting students’ interest through culturally sensitive curricula in higher education

by Kathleen M Quinlan

Around the world, there is a move toward making curricula more culturally sensitive, diversified, or decolonized. However, the impact of such curricula on students is not yet well understood. My colleagues and I sought to research effects of cultural sensitivity on students’ interest in their subjects, focusing primarily on students in professional education programs across 7 participating institutions. We presented this research at the 2023 SRHE conference. The full paper was published this month in Higher Education. We report briefly on the findings and significance of that study. 

This new presentation and publication builds on Dave SP Thomas’ PhD thesis, which we presented at the 2021 SRHE conference and later published in Studies in Higher Education. The initial study conceived and tested a ground-breaking survey instrument, the Culturally Sensitive Curricula Scales (CSCS), that enables students to rate the cultural sensitivity of their curricula. By cultural sensitivity of curricula, we mean curricula in which attitudes, teaching methods and practice, teaching materials, curriculum, and theories relate to, affirm and respect diverse cultures, identities, histories, and contexts. The CSCS survey has paved the way for understanding the extent to which students perceive their curricula as representing diversity, whether people of diverse ethnicities are portrayed in stereotyped or negative ways, the extent to which students are encouraged to challenge power and their experience of inclusivity in classroom interactions.  

In the original study, we found that Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students in a single English university tended to see their curriculum as less culturally sensitive than their White peers. We also found that more culturally sensitive curricula may help boost Black, Asian and minority ethnic students’ interest in the subject. Colleagues in NERUPI, the Network for Evaluating and Researching University Participation Interventions, were intrigued by the initial study as many of them were seeking to create more diversified, decolonised or culturally sensitive curricula.  

Seven NERUPI member universities took part in the current, follow-up study on which we reported at the 2023 SRHE conference. In this project, we revised the CSCS survey, expanded the participant pool to a wider range of institutions and programmes of study, and controlled a key potential confounding variable.  

Revising the Culturally Sensitive Curricula Scales (CSCS-R) clearly enhanced them, making them more definitive, thorough and reliable. Thus, the CSCS-R is a stronger instrument for use in researching and evaluating students’ experiences of the cultural sensitivity of their curricula.  

After surveying nearly 300 second year students in this NERUPI study, we again found that minoritised students perceived the curriculum as less culturally sensitive than White peers. This finding was robust across programmes and universities, suggesting that it is a widespread issue across the higher education sector in England, not a feature of a single university. Most of the participating universities were still in the early stages of curricular reform. The CSCS study was intended to raise staff awareness of these experience gaps amongst their students to support the creation of more culturally sensitive curricula.  

We also found Black students tended to rate their curricula as less sensitive than Asian students. These wider ‘experience gaps’ for Black students than Asian students are consistent with wider achievement gaps (‘degree awarding gaps’) for Black students.  

Finally, we found that when students rate their curricula as more culturally sensitive, they also tend to have higher interest in their programme, even when controlling for ethnicity and quality of teaching overall. Thus, culturally sensitive curricula appear to be good for all students, not just minoritised students. Surveyed students were primarily studying pro-social professions (eg psychology, education, nursing, social work) where they are preparing for professional roles that serve a diverse clientele and society. These students may be particularly interested by curricula that positively reflect the plurality of the professions to which they aspire and a more just society.  

In sum, this study contributes to understanding how teachers can design instruction that both supports students’ interest and reflects an increasingly diverse society. The study​,​ then, may help educators create more interesting and engaging curricula, while also addressing issues of diversity, equality, and inclusivity within HE. 

Kathleen M Quinlan PhD PFHEA is Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Kent, UK. She researches learning, teaching, assessment, and student engagement in higher education, specialising in understanding how curriculum and instruction can be designed to support students’ interest.  


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In search of the perfect blend – debunking some myths

by Ling Xiao and Lucy Gill-Simmen

A blended learning approach has been adopted by most UK universities in response to the Covid pandemic. Institutions and higher education educators have become fully committed to and invested enormous resources in delivering such an approach. This has helped to maintain a high quality education and to some extent, to mitigate the potential dire impact of the pandemic on the students’ learning experience. This approach has no doubt accelerated a reshaping of pedagogic approaches, facilitating deep learning, autonomy, personalised learning and more. With the rapid pace of the UK’s vaccine rollout, and the semi promise by the UK Government that we’ll be back to some kind of normal by the end of June, there is hope for a possible return to campus in September, 2021.  As a result, this now marks a time when we need to reflect on what we have learned from the blended learning approach and figure out what to take forward in designing teaching and learning post-pandemic, be it hybrid or hyflex or both.

The Management Education Research Group (MERG) in the School of Business and Management at Royal Holloway, University of London recently held a symposium on ‘Reflecting on Blended Learning, What’s Next?’. It showcased blended learning examples from various universities across the UK and was followed by a panel discussion where we posed the question: what worked and what didn’t work? We found that some of our previous assumptions were brought into question and a number of myths were debunked.

Myth 1: Pre-Recorded videos should be formal and flawless

Overnight, and without any training, educators took on the role of film creators, film editors and videographers. Spending hours, days, weeks and even months developing lecture recordings from the confines of our home working spaces we were stopping, starting, re-starting, editing out the slightest imperfection. It has to be perfect, right? Not so fast.

For many institutions, recorded video is the primary delivery vehicle for blended learning content, with academics pre-recording short presentations, lectures and informal videos to complement text-based information and communication. Many of us postulated that a formal and meticulous delivery style for pre-recorded videos is required to help to maintain high quality educational materials and for students to perceive us as professionals. Academics’ personal experiences however suggest it is vital to keep the human elements, as students enjoy and engage better with a personalised delivery. A personalised style helps to build relationships with students which then provide foundations of learning. Mayer (2009) describes it as a personalisation principle of learning through video and recommends that a conversation style is preferential to a formal style for learning. This also resonates with recent insights from Harvard Business School Professor, Francesca Gino, who reflects in her webinar on the power of teaching with vulnerability in COVID-19. She explains the importance of being open, honest and transparent with students and sharing one’s own human side in order to strengthen the educator-learner bond.

Myth 2: Students enjoy learning from the comfort of their homes

Blended learning empowers students to become autonomous learners, since they can engage with their courses when real-time contact with lecturers is not possible. However, such autonomy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and turns out to be a lonely road for many students. Instead of relishing staying at home and learning when they want, some students declare they miss the structure, the sense of community and the feeling of belonging they associate with attending university in person.

Universities are more than places for learning, they serve as the centre of their communities for students. Students not only learn directly from the education but also, just as much, from interaction and collaboration with lecturers or their fellow classmates. It emerged in conversation between students and faculty that students felt it generally took longer to establish a sense of community in an online class than in a traditional face-to-face classroom but that it could be achieved. So, it’s up to us as educators to foster a sense of community amongst online learners.

Central to learning community is the concept of cooperative learning, which has been shown to promote productivity, expose students to interdisciplinary teams, foster idea generation, and to promote social interaction (Machemer, 2007). One such technique is to introduce collaborative learning opportunities, and those that reach beyond online group work and assessment – which in itself may prove problematic for learners. Instead, educators should look to develop co-creation projects such as wikis or blogs where students can come together to cocreate content together. Social annotation platforms such as Google Docs and Padlet enable students to share knowledge, develop the understanding of learning objects through collaborating on notes, commenting specific parts of materials, etc (Novak et al, 2012; Miller et al, 2018). Padlet for example has proved to be particularly popular with students for collaborative learning given its ease of use.

Myth 3 :  It makes sense to measure student engagement merely by participation metrics

After months of preparation and instructional design and preparing the perfect learning journey for students, we tend to expect students to learn and to engage in a way that we as educators perceive to be optimal for fulfilment of learning outcomes.

We all know that students learn and engage in many different ways, but we often find ourselves trawling the data and metrics to see whether students watched the videos, engaged in the readings we provided, posted on the fora we clearly labelled and participated in the mini quizzes and reflection exercises we created. However, as our hearts sink at what appears to be at times a relatively low uptake, we jump to the conclusion that students aren’t engaging. Here’s the thing:  they are, we just don’t see it. Engagement as a construct is something far more complex and multi-faceted which we can’t necessarily measure using the report logs on the VLE.

Student engagement is often labelled the “holy grail of learning” (Sinatra, Heddy and Lombardi, 2015: 1) since it correlates strongly with educational outcomes, including academic achievement and satisfaction. This can therefore lead to a level of frustration on the part of educators when engagement appears low. However, engagement comes in many forms, and in forms which are often not directly visible and/or measurable. For example, cognitive, behavioural and emotional engagement all have very different indicators which are not immediately apparent. Hence new ways of evaluating of student engagement in the blended learning environment are needed. Halverson and Graham (2019) propose a possible conceptual framework for engagement that includes cognitive and emotional indicators, offering examples of research measuring these engagement indicators in technology mediated learning contexts.

Myth 4: Technology is the make or break for blended learning

The more learning technologies we can add to our learning design, the better, right? Wrong. Some students declared the VLE has too much going on; they couldn’t keep up with all the apps and technologies they are required to work with to achieve their learning.

Although technology clearly plays a key role in the provision of education (Gibson, 2001; Watson, 2001; Gordon, 2014), it is widely acknowledged that technology should not determine but instead complement theories and practices of teaching. The onset of Covid-19 has shifted our focus to technology rather than pedagogy. For example, educators felt an immediate need for breakout room functionality: although this can be a significant function for discussion, this is not necessarily the case for disciplines such as accounting, which requires students continuously to apply techniques in order to excel at applied tasks. Pedagogy should determine technology. The chosen technology must serve a purpose and facilitate the aim of the pedagogy and should not be used as bells and whistles to make the learning environment appear more engaging. In our recent research, we provide empirical evidence for the effective pedagogical employment of Padlet to support learning and engagement (Gill-Simmen, 2021). Technology has an impact on pedagogy but should not be the driver in a blended or hybrid learning environment. Learning technologies are only applicable and of value when the right content is presented in right format and right time.

In summary, we learned these lessons for our future approach to hybrid learning:

  1. Aim for ‘human’ not perfection in instructional design
  2. Students don’t want to learn alone – create opportunities for collaborative learning
  3. Student engagement may not always be measurable – consider tools for assessing emotional, cognitive and behavioural engagement
  4. Technology should support pedagogy, not vice versa – implement only those technologies which facilitate student learning

SRHE member Dr Ling Xiao is the Director of MERG and a Senior Lecturer in Financial Management at Royal Holloway, University of London.  Follow Ling via @DrLingXiao on Twitter.

SRHE member Dr Lucy Gill-Simmen is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Royal Holloway, University of London and Program Director for Kaplan, Singapore. Follow Lucy via @lgsimmen on Twitter.

References

Gill-Simmen, L. (2021). Using ‘Padlet’ in Instructional Design to Promote Cognitive Engagement: A Case Study of UG Marketing Students, (In Press) Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education.

Machemer, P.L. (2007). Student perceptions of active learning in a large cross-disciplinary classroom, Active Learning in Higher Education, 8(1): 9-29.

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press (2nd edn).


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E-learning in the face of a pandemic through the eyes of students

by Thomas J Hiscox

This is one of a series of position statements developed following a conference on ‘Building the Post-Pandemic University’, organised on 15 September 2020 by SRHE member Mark Carrigan (Cambridge) and colleagues. The position statements are being posted as blogs by SRHE but can also be found on The Post-Pandemic University’s excellent and ever-expanding website. The statement by Tom Hiscox can be found here.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to present unique challenges for the higher education sector around the world.  The reduction in funding, rapid redevelopment of learning resources to suit online delivery and rapid upskilling of academics to teach using new platforms have all contributed to the stress on Australian academics, but what effect has this change had on our students?

When COVID-19 reached Australia, strict measures were rapidly implemented at a Federal level to suppress the spread of the virus. Strict bans on gatherings of greater than 50 people were imposed, essentially putting an end to any face-to-face class delivery in 2020. The transition from a face-to-face delivery to a completely online delivery was rapid, but like all academics we were presented with two choices: asynchronous delivery (where the learning content is pre-recorded, allowing students to progress at their own pace) or synchronous delivery (where the content is delivered in line with the student progression through the unit).

The scramble to convert face-to-face classes to online

We had been using a flipped classroom format for a few years prior to COVID-19, so we were in a slightly better position than other units, however face-to-face workshops and practical laboratory classes, which relied on students working on problems in small groups, had to be transitioned to online equivalents.  The burden of pre-recording these face-to-face sessions was too great, so we opted for the synchronous delivery, where classes would be delivered live. This decision gave us the benefit of having extra time to redesign content to suit an online delivery, but consequently meant we only had one chance to get it right.

We quickly transitioned weekly workshops to live-streamed sessions delivered via Zoom. Laboratory classes were conducted live, with a facilitator in the lab completing the various procedures while students watched at home on their devices.  This entirely online mode of teaching was vastly different to what the students were expecting when they enrolled in their degree. We became interested in how the transition to online teaching affected the student experience.  Based on attendance numbers in our online sessions during the first few weeks of delivery, we were aware a significant proportion of the cohort were not engaged. This posed a few key questions. Why did so many students choose not to participate? Did the transition to online learning influence their decision and cause a reduction in motivation?

The student perceptions of online learning

We employed a mixed methods approach involving voluntary student surveys to explore student perceptions of how COVID-19 has influenced their study1.  The study, which is still in progress, consists of two anonymous online surveys.  The first survey (delivered midway through the March semester) identified a number of problems in our delivery, which directed some interventions that were implemented for the start of the July semester, the effects of which will be measured in our follow up survey (the data from which is yet to be analysed).  The surveys consist of a series of both closed and open-ended questions on their perceptions of the first year biology course.

In the first survey we found that 63.3% of respondents chose not to attend the live-streamed workshop, despite the majority (72.1%) of the respondents identifying the value of these sessions. When questioned why they choose not to attend, 31.6% of respondents cited “Lack of motivation” as their primary reason, other reasons included , “Connection issues” (26.5%), “Prefer to watch recordings” (18.4%) and “Clashes with other units” (17.5%). 

We conducted a thematic analysis of the qualitative data collected from the survey. This analysis mirrored similar themes in the quantitative survey. Amongst the qualitative data, 35% of responses aligned with the “Lack of motivation” theme, many of these responses (15.7%) further highlighted themes of anxiety and stress amongst the cohort. In some cases, this stress was associated with a lack of guidance in the degree of depth various topics will be examined at. A student reported:

“I honestly just really hope that I’m teaching myself everything that I need to know, I get really anxious and stressed that I’m not performing to the best standard that I can … From, a very stressed and anxious first year.”

In other cases, the level of anxiety and stress was attributed to a feeling of isolation, which can be summarised by the student comment below:

“I felt disconnected from other students and teachers. More support and social inclusion would be helpful”

Our conclusion from the initial survey was that isolation could potentially be having a significant impact on the performance of our students. The lack of social interactivity appeared to have broken an important component of the educational process – communication. Some of the problems were at the institutional end; we had underestimated how much we rely on simple face-to-face communication to answer student questions. In the fully online environment, simple questions that could easily be resolved at the conclusion of a classroom session, now had to be postponed and asked via email or by forum post. This does not only include communication between staff and students, but also between the students themselves. However when we surveyed students that did attend the online sessions live, it appeared these sessions may have another valuable benefit. They promote a sense of community.

When we surveyed the students who did attend online workshops live, 66.2% reported as being highly engaged during the session. When questioned “What did you enjoy most about the online workshops when attended live?”, 25% of respondents reported that they “Provided a sense of community”, while 24% stated that the workshops “Were more engaging when presented live”; the ability to ask questions in real-time was also highly reported at 28% (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Factors that students enjoyed while attending online live workshops (n=372).

The outlook for 2021

At the time of writing this post, Melbourne (the capital city of Victoria) is still under lockdown.  University campuses across metropolitan Melbourne remain closed for all students, except those that must satisfy key qualification requirements.  There are strong indications that strict social distancing policies will remain into 2021 across Australia. What does that mean for the university campus, where hundreds of students move in and out of a single lecture theatre or teaching laboratories at the conclusion of the session? The solution could be running more sessions, with classes running late into the night. Or is the writing on the wall for the end of face-to-face classes?  I believe online education will remain the primary offering of many Australian universities, potentially only allowing students to attend an on-campus class two or three times a semester. If this were to happen, serious consideration needs to be made into fostering a community spirit and engagement amongst students, for both their mental wellbeing, but also to maximise their performance and learning.

1 Our research was conducted as approved by the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee (MUHREC) as per project 2020-25523-49505.

Dr Thomas Hiscox is an education-focussed lecturer within the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University, where he teaches in units across first, second and third years. Tom is also the coordinator of the first year biology program, which has an enrollment of  approximately 1600 students annually. His research is focused on the development and recognition of key employability skills by students during their undergraduate degrees.


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New research on student engagement: partnership approaches in the disciplines

By Abbi Flint

Engaging students as co-researchers, co-designers and co-creators of their learning experiences is an idea that, over the past few years, has captured the attention and imagination of many staff and students. The rationales for engaging students as partners in their learning are diverse and complex, including political and pedagogic perspectives. From a desire to engage and empower all students to take responsibility for their learning, an ethical responsibility to ensure students have a say in their education, to offering a constructive alternative to consumerist models of higher education.

At the HEA, our rationale is pedagogic. We are interested in how approaches which foreground partnership with students are powerful ways of transforming teaching and inspiring learning. As a sector we need evidence of their effectiveness in fostering deeper engagement with learning, particularly how impacts play out across different national, institutional and discipline contexts. Recent HEA research makes a much needed contribution to this debate.

Engagement through partnership is a popular idea, but what does this actually look like in practice and what difference does it make to the student learning experience? Continue reading →