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.