Y’all I was only away for two days, and yet as soon as I came back all I heard was “oh I saw from your automatic reply that you’ve been in London!” – from the mail room to other SU staff and beyond, its been a bit of round chorus, but what HAVE I been doing in London?
In a nutshell – the WonkHE Festival of Higher Education. Absolutely basking in the pedagogy and learning of it all and also speaking (!!!) on a panel in the coolest wooden panelled room you’ve seen. So – what have I learnt in the first day?
“Practical innovation and educational change”
This session was a workshop style session (absolute fave and crowd pleaser by the way), which focused on how we can try to get student into new opportunities in a way that is accessible, inclusive, engaging, and “allows students to bring their full selves”.
An idea I so wanna steal is that of a map with student recommendations – I already have a big ol’ map of all the independent cafes I could muster, but imagine this on a scale of anything and everything – stuff you can get in for free with your library card, student friendly pubs, the lot.
“Whole provider approach”
An absolute gem of a session for a widening participation nerd like me – this talked all about creating an inclusive student experience in combination with an enabling environment, and that it has to:
- Contain the entire student lifecycle – from fresher to finalist
- Cover everything a student might need – this means stuff outside of their studies too
- Be available across the whole institution – both on and off campus and across discipliens
- Cause institutional change rather than expecting the student to
- Be embedded throughout the curriculum
- Acknowledge that we still need targeted change
- Students feed in throughout !
They specifically used the example of supporting students who had longer commutes, and named some quick wins like carpooling schemes, audio recordings of lectures, making a forum for commuting students, and raising staff awareness.
“Radical pasts and reimagined futures – University in a post-truth world”
Y’all this was about libraries. LIBRARIES. Have you heard that I love the library? The Uni library, the central library, the tiny small library back in my hometown, the one you can sleep in, LIBRARIES!
Four different librarians (including honorary ones!) debated on what libraries would look like in the future – covering being values-led, questioning the role of librarians, Needing to be attentive of the changing needs and attitudes of the public, and moving from the traditional model of libraries.
We broke off into groups to talk about how libraries function in our institutions and fed back in to the group and there was some stuff that really got my brain ticking – but what really got me was the psychology of it all.
Libraries are such keen spaces for students to feel like students – to engage with their studies, to feel the camaraderie of it all, just to really get in with the semiotics of being a student. (Side note – this totally reminds me of a recent article I want to merge into my commonplace book by M L Rio on all academia being dark academia)
In short, I love the library. I love the books, the vibe, the “yeah I will keep an eye on your stuff while you go to the loo”, the sneaking pick me up study packages into the shelves, hearing someone gently snore in a quiet area and go “huh same” – it’s a joy to have one that is such a hub for students on campus. After all, you can learn more from your subject librarian than you can from AI… right?
The pedagogy of AI
(insert “you know I had to do it to ‘em” meme here about sneaking in a segue to AI)
Y’all when will AI stop being a Hot Topic? Its been at the top of the shuffle for at least a year right – and yet here we are, still debating who is using it and when and why and we had a big ol breakdown of it all from Janice Kay (Exeter) and Emma McCoy (LSE)
There were some things that as a recent student seem obvious – but to see them backed up with stats is so incredibly validating (and a great thing to bring to University boards!). The fact of the matter is that compared to lecturers, students are faster to adopt AI, more of them are using it, and many more are using paid AI – how can we expect teaching staff to keep up when they aren’t as embroiled as we are? As well as this, there are three main, named threats to the ever increasing grip of our AI overlords – quality of learning, ethical behaviours, and equity.
Now, I am at over 800 words so I am happy to write about this in another post – but if you wanna learn more, the LSE study GENIAL is an absolute treasure trove!