In this episode Lis Parcell is joined by Matt Turner and Gabi Witthaus at the Higher Education Futures institute (HEFi), University of Birmingham to talk about a hybrid teaching project involving two universities.

Gabi and Matt were part of a research team made up of staff and students from University of Nottingham (project lead) and University of Birmingham (project partner) which investigated experiences of hybrid teaching and learning in academic year 2020/2021. The principal investigator was Cecilia Goria (University of Nottingham) and the project was supported and funded by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA).

"…the term 'hybrid teaching' is used to refer to lectures/seminars/classes in which some students are physically present in a classroom and others join online simultaneously from remote locations"

Lis begins by talking to Matt and Gabi about the origins of the project and their definition of hybrid teaching. They look at how hybrid teaching rooms were developed at the two participating universities to enable all students to continue studying as some returned to campus and some remained online as Covid restrictions were lifted. Importantly, the research involved collaboration between students and staff and they touch on how this was achieved.

The project gathered a fascinating array of quantitative and qualitative data from over 500 students and nearly 50 staff (teaching and audio-visual/IT) across the two universities. Gabi and Matt offer an overview of the main themes which emerged, interspersed with quotes from staff and students. Whilst the project's recommendations make particularly valuable reading for anyone contemplating hybrid teaching, we also hear how they might inform digital transformation of learning and teaching more generally.

Gabi and Matt finish with reflections on some potential areas for further investigation.

· Read the full report published on QAA website.

· Goria, C., Witthaus, G., Turner, M., Hanford, S., Bhend, M., Wray, A., Wahyudi, M., & Gibson, A. (2022). Hybrid teaching: a futurist model or a realist model for the future? QAA. (Accessed 2 June 2023)

· Find out more about the work of the Higher Education Futures Institute, University of Birmingham.

· Subscribe to our Headlines newsletter, which has all the latest edtech news, guidance and events tailored to you. Get in touch with us at [email protected] if you'd like to come on the show or know someone who might suit the series.

In this episode, Sarah Knight, Head of learning and teaching transformation in higher education at Jisc is joined by Mike Phillips, the executive dean at the School of Health Science and Wellbeing at Staffordshire University where he discusses how the use of immersive learning and simulation learning is transforming the student experience in health care.

Mike outlines the role that the School of Health Science and Wellbeing has in the immersive journey and shares the challenges of delivering health care education in the sector over the past 20 years. Mike then goes on to explore how technology has enabled the university to address some of the challenges they face including the pandemic accelerating plans and the use of simulation placements for students across health, social care and wellbeing disciplines.

Mike shares how he has brought staff along on the journey to 'simmersive' and the innovative approaches that they've used to create an authentic workplace setting for students. Mike highlights the 3 P's which are essential to embedding technology within the student experience: The people, the place and the pedagogy.

Mike talks about students and staff embracing the approach to simulation based learning post-pandemic and the welcoming of technological change at Staffordshire adopting a hybrid role across the academic and technical digital spaces.

Mike then goes on to share the five stage approach and the framework for the integration of skills and simulation when delivering an incremental exposure towards real world practice for the universities learners.

Finally, we focus on creating a simulation environment to develop an authentic assessment experience and enhance student learning and feedback.

In this episode, we are joined by Raheel Nawaz from Staffordshire University, where we learn about the exciting and innovative work Raheel is leading on in the digital transformation space.

Raheel Nawaz is a professor of artificial intelligence and a professor of digital education working at Staffordshire University as pro vice-chancellor for digital transformation.

Raheel explores his vision for digital transformation at Staffordshire University including the new digital at core strategy and the four main pillars that underpin this vision.

Raheel talks about the essential building blocks needed within a university to enable digital transformation to happen in the form of three main components : strategy, culture and governance of the strategy including the process Raheel and his team took when creating their digital transformation strategy.

He then goes on to explain the three projects the university are most excited about in the world of digital transformation. The first of the three being simplifying the student experience with the launch of the first ai assistant in any university with the aim of bringing course, community and career together in a single integrated student interface. Secondly, the self-coined 'simmersive', a support mantra of simulation and immersive and how Staffordshire is integrating this concept into the DNA of buildings and the student experience. And finally, a project around building minimum expectations around staff and student digital capabilities.

Raheel talks about what senior leaders can do to encourage a culture of digital transformation including what we can do for the culture of our university experience.

And finally we look to the future of the sector and where we see the university experience evolving since the pandemic and the rapid increase of ai. And finally posing the question to senior leaders 'how do we make the most of technology?'

Show notes

Check out the events happening within our digital transformation series: - Join us at University of Northampton for rethinking learning and curriculum design on 6 July. Book now. - Taking place 18 July, join us at University of Greenwich for developing and implementing a digital strategy. Join our waiting list.

Check out our framework guide for digital transformation in higher education, and explore a comprehensive perspective on how the digital environment can support positive work, research and learning experiences, and promote a sense of belonging and wellbeing.

Subscribe to our Headlines newsletter, which has all the latest edtech news, guidance and events tailored to you.

Get in touch with us at [email protected] if you'd like to come on the show or know someone who might suit the series.

This episode is the first in a series of podcasts focused on further education and skills, hosted by Andrew McFadyen and Louisa Stamatelopoulos. Throughout this series Andrew and Louisa will be joined by experts from further education colleges to shine a light on how they support digital development through the use of Jisc tools, such as the digital elevation tool, building digital capability service and digital experience insights surveys.

Phil Peatling, Head of Digital Learning at Boston College, firstly discusses the digital transformation of development and skills for both teachers and learners, to prepare them for digital advancements across industries.

Next, Phil talks about how Jisc's digital elevation tool gave the college a platform for development and brought the Digital team and the IT technicians closer together to assess their digital maturity levels.

Phil also shares advice for teachers on using digital technology and how he sees the role of the further education teacher changing over time.

See how our digital capability service can help you

Find out more about how the digital elevation tool can elevate FE and skills providers' digital ambitions

Discover how the digital experience insights service works

Explore our further education and skills hub

Subscribe to our Headlines newsletter, which has all the latest edtech news, guidance and events tailored to you

Get in touch with us at [email protected] if you'd like to come on the show or know someone who might suit the series

How Nigel Francis uses the Star Wars universe to explain complicated topics like immunology

We speak with Dr Nigel Francis, senior lecturer at Cardiff University, about his project, immunology wars, which is a series of videos and illustrations that describes the basic functions of the immune system through the Star Wars movies.

Simon explains how he first came up with the idea to explain immunology in this way and shares how he worked directly with the students to develop the concept.

By linking the cells of the immune system with the characters from Star Wars, Simon and his students have created a unique and creative way to help students remember these different cells and their roles in the immune response.

Visit the Immunology Wars website View the #DryLabsRealScience website Nigel mentions Subscribe to our Headlines newsletter, which has all the latest edtech news, guidance and events tailored to you. Get in touch with us at [email protected] if you'd like to come on the show or know someone who might suit the series.

Sarah Knight chats with consultants Helen Beetham and Sheila MacNeill about their recent review of learning and curriculum design in higher education.

We chat with Helen and Sheila about the findings from their review, which included a desk-based literature review, a survey of over 155 professionals and 20 interviews with staff from within higher education.

Alongside this, they also share examples of how universities are evolving their learning and curriculum design practices, and discuss how we can integrate things that worked well during the pandemic.

We're joined by Simon Walker, Director of programme development at University College London, to discuss how they have moved to digital assessment by default.

Simon starts by talking through the challenges they have been facing with assessment, including how they had previously recognised that it was out of kilter with the student's expectations for a modern education system. The pandemic enabled them to take a bold step toward adapting their practices, adopting an end-to-end digital assessment platform.

We then discuss how they have supported staff with their assessment and feedback practices, adopting a team of digital assessment advisers who help onboard faculties and share best practices.

In this episode, we are joined by Professor David Nicol, Suzanne McCallum, Lovleen Kushwah and Nick Quinn from The Adam Smith Business School at the University of Glasgow to chat about how they are using comparison based feedback to improve their assessment and feedback practices.

Professor David Nicol, Research Professor: Teaching Excellence Initiative, at The Adam Smith Business School, starts by taking us through the research they have undertaken into feedback, looking at what feedback students generate themselves when asked to compare their work against other types of information such as videos, textbooks or lecture notes, instead of a teacher's comments. David's research found that students generate significant feedback on their own whilst also reducing the need for teacher comments. He then explains the three concepts behind the work at the university:

• All feedback is inner feedback - students are the protagonist of feedback.
• All feedback is a result of a comparison process.
• What students compare their work against determines the type of feedback they generate - Different kinds of information results in different kinds of feedback.

Suzanne McCallum, Lovleen Kushwah and Dr Nick Quinn then speak about the methods they are using to bring this comparison based feedback approach to life, sharing how they have found it so far and the feedback they have had from students.

In this third episode of our mini-series on rethinking assessment and feedback, we are joined by Karen Barton, director of the learning and teaching innovation centre at the University of Hertfordshire.

Karen shares some of the feedback they have had from students on assessment including, providing authentic assessment, providing personalised assessment where possible and changes to the workloads/phasing of assessment.

We then discuss a recent consultation and review that the university has taken to help identify the changes needed to support their vision for teaching, learning, and assessment. The review helped develop the 'Herts learning principles', which were created to help address some areas that the university sees as important in the future, with one of these principles being around how they harness technology to support their strategy.

We also discuss how the university is supporting staff to take these new assessment practices forward, discussing how they created an assessment experts group within the university to provide policy outputs, direction, and guidance for staff.

Lastly, Karen shares what she thinks are the critical success factors that need to be in place within an institution to help realise affective assessment and feedback.

In this episode of our rethinking assessment and feedback mini-series, Sarah Knight chats with Danny Liu and Benjamin Miller about how they are adapting their assessment and feedback practices at The University of Sydney.

Danny and Benjamin start by sharing some of the issues and challenges that an institution-wide review into assessment picked up, including assessment weighting, group work and assessment feedback.

They then talk about how the development of the student relationship engagement system (SRES) has helped solve the problem of engaging a large number of students with personalised feedback and personal care.

Finally, they share their tips and advice on the steps UK universities could take to improve their assessment and feedback practices.