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Tag: Research

TEL Researchers Talk

Published 30th May 2025
Screenshot of a Miro board with a timeline of technologies on it
Miro Tech Timeline

I don’t know how I found out about this event, but it was very good! It was a talk by Louise Drumm (Edinburgh Napier), facilitated by John Brindle (Lancaster), examining some of the issues that arise in the intersection between digital technology and educational research. Among the points discussed were how the former is a fast moving, external, source of pressure and change, swimming in venture capital cash, while the latter is often slow, ponderous, and impoverished. Louise talked about agency, and how we, as learning technologists and educators, are expected to be users, often knowledgeable and enthusiastic ones, of technologies and practices regardless of how we may feel about them personally.

Louise created a Miro board for the session in which she had created a timeline of digital technology innovations and events which have emerged throughout her career, grouped into different phases. She opened the board up to the group for us to collaboratively edit, move, change, and add new items, which was chaos, but good, creative chaos! Which was a theme of her talk and of her research practice. Creativity that is, not chaos. Just to be clear.

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Should I Be Researching?

Published 19th May 2025

An excellent question, posed by the HeLF folks, to which the only possible answer is a resounding ‘yes’. But that would make for a very short webinar, so we discussed the issues around this too. Obviously a very interesting session for me, as I have been trying to push my career in this direction over the past few years, as you can probably tell, and the work I’ve been doing on Studiosity has afforded me an excellent opportunity to do so.

We had a good discussion on the nature of research and the differences between research and evaluation. The latter, generally, being something which is done for internal purposes and audiences only, while research is likely of wider interest and therefore there is value in sharing via relevant publications. Within our community, however, there may be barriers which prevent, or make it difficult for professional services staff to publish. One colleague mentioned a publication, not named to protect the guilty, which charged for publication, but gave steep discounts to academic contracted staff, but none if you happened to have ‘professional services’ on your contract.

We also talked a lot about ethics committees, which again can be hard to access, with another colleague reporting that they weren’t even allowed to submit something to an ethics panel, while at another institution professional service staff were kicked out of their ethics board because it was felt to be having a negative impact on their REF submission.

That all sounds rather bleak, but there are solutions to these problems. Some people reported having nominal 0.2 academic contracts to get over institutional barriers, while others are running their own internal ethics boards. It was a very good discussion this morning, and something which is going to become a series, so I will be learning and writing more on this.

Relevant related reading: Defining the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, by Ann M. Gansemer-Topf, Laila I. McCloud, and John M. Braxton.

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Studiosity Research Outcomes

Published 28th March 2023

Screenshot showing improved attainment for Studiosity users
Screenshot showing improved student attainment where Studiosity was used

In this presentation Professor Liz Thomas, who has previously done impact analysis for Studiosity, presented her latest research on the experience of UK institutions using the service since it launched here in 2016/17, and now includes 22 UK HEIs.

The screenshot I’ve included above shows improved attainment rates of students who have used Studiosity versus those who did not, and looks very similar to the charts we produced here after our pilot year. Caveats abound of course. I’ve said “correlation ≠ causation” more times that I can count of late, and it is perfectly possibly that the students who engage with Studiosity would have been high achievers in any case, or would have engaged with other interventions to improve their work. But it certainly seems like there is something there, and the research also showed that in the groups of students who engaged with Studiosity, the attainment gap between white and BME students was reduced, and for one institution completely eliminated.

Other findings from the research included that 54% of usage takes place outside of conventional office hours, usage peaks in April (and on Wednesdays), and both professional and academic staff reported a benefit of the service as being able to refer students to a specialist service which freed up time for them to concentrate on other areas.

One point of discussion was around low engagement and how this can be improved. It was noted that students need the opportunity to be able to include a draft submission to Studiosity in good time, and it was suggested that use of Studiosity be built into assessments to allow for this. This very much echoes the findings of my colleague in our Faculty of Health, Science and Wellbeing, Jon Rees, who wrote about his experience on the University’s Practice Hub.

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