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Studiosity Partner Forum 2026

Published 18th March 2026

It must be that time of year again! Except that ‘that time of year’ gets earlier and earlier. I liked it better when Studiosity timed their forum to coincide with Star Wars day, but that might just be me.

Nick Hillman from the Higher Education Policy Institute must have been a hit last year, because he was first up this year with a new ‘State of the Nation’ report which was, once again, excellent. Some highlights:

  • The 2026 HEPI Generative AI Survey (my first photo), shows near universal use of Gen AI tools among students at 95%, with 94% using it in some capacity related to completing their assessments. And yet, only 48% reported that staff were supporting their development of AI skills. Also of concern is the stat that 15% of students are using AI for companionship.
  • The slide on relative earnings by education level (second photo) clearly shows that there is still a great deal of value in getting a tertiary education, but that little red dot showing the relative earnings level for people without upper secondary level of education is terrifying in its implications, and demonstrates the massive problems we have with inequality in the UK.
  • The net benefit of international students on the UK economy is huge, and has grown to £37.4 billion.
  • The public massively overestimates rates of student regret – they guess 40%, when in reality it is 8%.
  • And to end on a positive note, everyone across the political spectrum (yes, even Reform voters), feel more generally positive towards universities than negative.

Next, Vivienne Stern from Universities UK gave a talk on the immediate issues facing the sector, cautioning that we are in danger of getting caught up in near-term issues and debates, instead of looking at the wider systemic issues, which ultimately all go back to chronic underfunding. She shared the fact that 24 universities in England were currently in ‘intensive care’, meaning they are close to insolvency, and expects this to double in the next 2-3 years.

That was a lot on the sector in general, but the morning was capped off with Studiosity’s main briefing which was delivered by Garnet Berry who presented on Validate and where Studiosity are taking the company next. I won’t say too much about this, having had a preview of the service a few weeks ago, but I did get to see more detail and screenshots of the Validate interface working inside Studiosity.

After we reconvened after lunch, the afternoon was handed over to a series of presentations and talks from Studiosity’s UK partners. I was struck by how similar the experiences of UWE Bristol and Greenwich University were to Sunderland’s. UWE reported the same issues with an attainment gap between white and BAME students that we have, and their high levels of uptake in Health matches our own experience. Similarly, Greenwich reported that they have found getting their Business School onboard has also been a challenge. On Studiosity+, UWE reported that since switching over to Studiosity’s AI powered service they have seen 4 times as much usage, though noted a slightly lower student level of satisfaction. However, coinciding with this was the inclusion of Studiosity in their new module templates, which will inevitably have helped drive use.

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Studiosity Partner Forum 2025

Published 25th March 2025

Today saw me visiting London once again for Studiosity’s fourth annual UK Partner Forum. In the keynote service update from CEO, Mike Larson, it was all AI, all the time. Their pivot to AI powered feedback continues at a rapid pace, and the messaging has changed from personalised feedback provided by actual human beings a few years ago, to, this isn’t fast enough for students who often work in a ‘just in time’ frame, therefore they need feedback in minutes, not hours. They seem to be doing alright from it, as a substantial number of partners have now switched to Studiosity+, and they are working on a new tool for academics to help with course content creation. Previously announced human-powered services, like Study Assist, are still in development, but didn’t warrant a mention in the slides, someone had to ask the question of what was happening with them.

Rebecca Mace, an independent researcher, presented on their work reviewing early real-world usage of Studiosity+, which our pilot on Study Online Canvas has contributed to (I have writing about this forthcoming). Next, Andy Jaffrey from Ulster University presented about their experience in winning the Times Higher University of the Year Award. This was largely tangential, but there was some discussion about values and their emphasis on human-to-human contact, which is why, like Sunderland, they are staying with the Studiosity Classic service.

After lunch we had Sharon Perera and Nathaniel Pickering from the University of Greenwich presenting on their ‘Write With Confidence’ initiative, inspired by our Write it Right. That’s going very well for them, with enough data now to show improved continuation and progression rates, and a 20% uptake across the university. All very similar to our findings. One difference is that they have gone for the AI powered service.

Finally, Nick Hillman from the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) gave the afternoon keynote on the state of UK Higher Education. I feel like Studiosity always has someone offering this kind of perspective at these events, and I always find them fascinating. Some highlights I noted included that 90% of students report using generative AI, but believe that if used for direct cheating they would be caught by institutional policies and technology. Shown in the third photo, above, HEPI surveyed students on institutions going bust and found that 31% were quite or very worried about this possibility. Finally, and related to this, Nick offered a prediction that there would be mergers of HEIs in the next few years to prevent worst case scenarios, but that, like the crisis in FE a few years ago, the sector would leave it too late and wait for a precipitating event to happen instead of getting ahead of the situation. I don’t think there was anything in his analysis that I would disagree with.

Slides from the day and other supporting documentation are available on Studiosity’s website, so you don’t have to squint at the scance few photos I took.

AI Disclaimer: There is no ethical use of generative artificial intelligence. The environmental cost is devastating and the technology is built on plagiarised content and stolen art, for the purpose of deskilling, disempowering and replacing the work of real people.
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Studiosity Partner Forum 2024

Published 24th April 2024

I attended my third Studiosity Partner Forum today, which kind of began last night with a dinner and discussion about generative artificial intelligence led by Henry Aider. Generative AI and Studiosity’s new GAI powered Writing Feedback+ service was of course the main topic of conversation throughout the event. Writing Feedback+ launched in February, and they have reported that uptake is around 40% of eligible students, which compares with 15-20% for the classic Writing Feedback service. The model has been built and trained internally, using only writing feedback provided by Studiosity’s subject specialists, no student data. The output of WF+ is being closely quality assured by those agents, and they estimate that quality is around 95-97% as good as human provided feedback.

David Pike, from the University of Bedfordshire presented on their experience with the service in the afternoon. They made it available to all of their students in February, around 20,000, and usage has already exceeded usage of the classic Writing Feedback service since September last year. The average return time from WF+ is around one and a half minutes, and student feedback on the service is very positive at 88.5%. However, he did also note that a number of students who have used both versions of the service stated that they preferred the human provided feedback.

On the flip side of AI, last year Studiosity were exploring a tool to detect submissions which had been written by generative AI. That’s gone. Nothing has come of it as they found that the reliability wasn’t good enough to roll out, especially so for students who have English as a second language. No surprises for me there, detection is a lie.

The keynote address was delivered by Nick Hillman from the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), who talked about their most recent report on the benefits and costs associated with the graduate visa route. It’s overwhelmingly positive for us as a country, and it would be madness to limit this.

Other things which I picked up included learning more about Crossref, a service for checking the validity of academic references; a course on Generative AI in Higher Education from Future Learn was recommended; and Integrity Matters, a new course developed by the University of Greenwich and Bloom to teach new students about academic integrity.

Finally I was there presenting myself, doing my Studiosity talk about our implementation at Sunderland and the data we now have showing a strong positive correlation between engagement with Studiosity and student outcomes and continuation.

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Studiosity Partner Forum 2022

Published 4th May 2022

My first in-person conference in two years at the University of Roehampton’s gorgeous campus was a chance to learn about Studiosity’s plans for the future, to network with colleagues at other UK HEIs using Studiosity and compare notes, and pretty randomly, I was able to get a tour of Roehampton’s new library building during lunchtime (it’s lovely).

On those future plans, we’re going to see an enhanced version of the student feedback view in the next couple of months which is going to allow their subject specialists to insert short videos and infographics explaining particular grammatical concepts, issues with spelling, and so on. They are also introducing a new ‘Student Connect’ tool which will help to facilitate peer-to-peer student support. This is currently in beta testing, and two UK universities are part of this evaluation.

The keynote address was by Sir Eric Thomas, who sits on Studiosity’s Academic Advisory Board, and he made a great point that, looking at historical precedents from past plagues, people at the time always think, “this is going to change everything, we can’t go back to how things used to be”, but invariably things do go back to exactly how they were once the threat is over. He speculated that this was because plagues and pandemics leave physical infrastructure unchanged, in contrast to wars, where the physical act of rebuilding allows for societal changes to be literally built in. However, what may be different as we ‘re-build’ after Covid, is that new communication technologies such as Teams and Zoom have come into their own and already effected change in how we live and work. The permanence of these changes is something that lingers in my mind as I contemplate my future.

Good opportunities for informal chats with colleagues at more advanced stages of Studiosity use, and no easy answers to be had in terms of managing use and expectations, and showing causal links between use of the service and student retention and attainment, something I’m in the midst of grappling with now as we approach the end of our pilot.

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ArtWorks Scotland Forum for Practice Development

Published 6th March 2017

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Following on from the Interface Symposium held here at Sunderland last September, I was asked to attend the ArtWorks Scotland Forum for Practice Development at the National Theatre of Scotland to raise awareness of the pending launch of our MOOC, by networking and delivering a session on the MOOC, showing the development that has been made to date.

With the materials still being built out on the MOOC platform itself, Canvas Network, I ran my demonstration from the SunSpace development site again, after updating it with some of the latest materials, and devising an interactive activity for the attendees of the forum. Lacking time and resources to have people complete an activity within the sample MOOC itself, I embedded an automatically updating word cloud using Tagul and then, during the networking lunch before my session, I interviewed all of the participants asking them to define what participatory arts means to them in three words – this mimicked the assessment we ran at the Interface Symposium. As they gave me their answers I was inputting them into Tagul on my tablet, then during my demonstration, when I came to this page the word cloud was complete with their responses which you can see in the image above. I’m pleased to be able to note that this all went without a hitch, and there was a lot of interest in the MOOC in terms of both providing content (which was one of the aims of attending the forum), and in participating when it goes live later this year.

The rest of the forum was, for me, an opportunity to learn more about the field of participatory arts which, as someone made a point of in their presentation, is possibly the majority of art produced, in contrast to the perception of art as something produced by talented individuals for the enjoyment or consumption of others. Particularly interesting was Simon Sharkey of the National Theatre of Scotland’s presentation about their involvement with the Gulbenkian Foundation to produce Sharing the Stage and Home Away.

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