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Tag: Quality

Sunderland Education Conference 2025

Published 8th October 2025
Photo of the conference venue state
Education Conference 2025

We’ve had a rebrand. Now that we have a new Deputy Vice Chancellor who has changed the title to DVC Education, our annual Teaching and Learning Conference has been renamed to the Education Conference to match.

The day began with welcome messages from the DVC, and our VC, David Bell, who talked about the challenges of identifying truths and falsehoods in our increasingly siloed and partisan culture, and the importance of ensuring students develop critical thinking skills to cope in both education and employment.

The keynote talk was delivered by James Coe, Associate Editor (Research & Innovation), at WonkHE, and a local lad from the North East. The key message of his talk was about the challenges and pressures students now face as a result of cultural changes since his own time at university, back in ye olden days of 2011, before the start of £9k student fees and a time when he received a £4k bursary. Now that students face far harsher financial challenges and graduating into a stagnant labour market, James talked about how pressures have flipped, with students now having to fit in lectures and study around work, rather than the other way round as it was in the recent past and, I would argue, how it should be. This leaves them a lack of space and time to study and benefit from the formative experience of being a student.

The name of the day may have changed, but something that stayed the same was the always excellent student panel discussion. I have always found this very useful and insightful. This year a lot of the discussion was about the real world use of generative AI tools, as might be expected. The panel talked about how they are using these tools to help structure their work and adjust their writing voice, and were well aware of the dangers of overuse and offloading their thinking to these tools. Specifically, they commented about a fear that they would reduce their writing skills. I was also pleased, if that’s the right word, that the panel echoed my concern that the University does not provide sufficient and clear guidance for students on what they are and aren’t allowed to use exactly, and how they are allowed to use them.

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To Infinity and B-yound!

Published 29th May 2024

This webinar was presented as part of the ongoing HeLF development series, and this time around we had Stephanie DeMarco and Alex Rey from Birmingham City University leading a discussion on the Office for Students Conditions of Registration, specifically the ‘B’ metrics on quality, standards, and outcomes.

Even more specifically, we were looking at B3 which is about delivering positive outcomes for students, and is the metric most directly under our sphere of influence as learning technologists and academic developers.

B3 has three measures underneath it, related to continuation, completion and progression, which here means that students have gone into graduate level employment. These measures are not open to any kind of interpretation, and HEIs must meet the set targets of 80% continuation, 75% completion and 60% progression.

B3 also contains within if four aims, which are open to some level of interpretation and debate. These are participation, experience, outcomes, and value for money. The last being particularly contentious in the climate surrounding HE in the United Kingdom of late. (Has my undergraduate degree in philosophy provided value for money? Absolutely.)

Stephanie and Alex then presented a case study of activity which they had undertaken to help academics better meet these outcomes, concentrating on areas such as authentic assessment, project-based learning, how to write programme validation documentation, etc.

And finally, there was a shared Padlet board in which we could all share thoughts and best practice. From this I have picked up the Curriculum Scan model, development by Alexandra Mihai, which can be used for auditing modules. This reminded me of storyboarding process done as part of instructional design before a module goes live, but for auditing and checking a module which is ongoing.

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Resuscitation Quality Improvement System

Published 7th November 2019


Demonstration of the RQI System

I had a meeting this morning with our paramedic programme team about how to integrate various distinct systems they have into a new digital Practice Assessment Document to replace the multiple binders full of paper which trainee paramedics have to assemble at the moment. I have some thoughts on this which I’m sure I’ll write about in future as this comes together, but for today I just wanted to share the Resuscitation Quality Improvement system I saw, which is another one of those quite fabulous, albeit niche, technologies we have scattered around the university.

RQI is a mannequin made by Laerdal Medical that is used for training people to perform CPR, but this one has over 40 sensors inside it hooked up to a computer that gives you realtime feedback on things like how regular and deep your chest compressions are. It’s great! Watch the attached video to see it in action.

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PG Cert AP: Day 1

Published 13th October 2016

The first full session of the course introduced us to the UK Professional Standards Framework, or UKPSF, not to be confused with the UK Paintball Sports Federation. This framework is published by the HEA and defines 15 criteria in three sections – Activity, Core Knowledge and Professional Values, against which professional practice can be mapped. To gain Fellowship of the HEA you have to demonstrate ‘a broad understanding of effective approaches to teaching and learning support as key contributions to high quality student learning’ across all of the criteria.

Guidance given to complete the Fellowship application was to provide two examples, backed with evidence, for each of the 15 criteria. So 30 points in total, and for each one you need to answer the questions: ‘What do I do?’, ‘Why do I do it?’, and ‘What impact does it have?’ Helpfully, the mere act of being on this course demonstrates that you have met A5 on engaging in relevant CPD. One down, 29 to go.

In the afternoon we started to discuss how to design courses, and the QAA Quality Code was cited as the starting point if you ever have the problem of having to start from scratch. This was followed by a discussion on how to write good, relevant learning outcomes and how to design the course so that students are guided towards meeting those outcomes. This discussion will be picked up again at the next session.

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