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Dr Sonja Erikainen and Dr Paul Bermingham

School of Social Science

AI is transforming how we learn and teach as well as how workplaces are organised and the skills that are needed in employment. In the AI era, conventional assessments no longer adequately capture students’ individual capabilities, giving rise to a pressing need to rethink how we assess. This includes ensuring that assessments remain pedagogically meaningful and develop the capabilities students will need in an increasingly AI-mediated world of work, including critical, creative, and socially and ethically aware AI literacy and competency. This project will enable staff and students in sociology and criminology to co-design assessment approaches that are fit for the AI era and use assessment as means to develop students’ critical AI skills for future employment. The key aims are to understand what AI competencies sociology and criminology students need for future employment, and to build new assessment approaches that are AI resilient while actively developing employability-enhancing attributes. Exploratory qualitative interviews with sociology and criminology students and key staff working in employability will be conducted by a student intern who will explore students’ AI skill and competency needs, supported by a scoping literature review on existing evidence on AI competency and graduate employability. Secondly, a participatory co-design workshop involving sociology and criminology students and staff will be used to collaboratively co-design and prototype alternative assessment methods that enhance AI capabilities while being ‘authentic’ in the sense of reflecting the future of AI-mediated workplaces. This will provide a framework for moving beyond simply preventing students from using AI towards more future-oriented questions around how assessments help students learn to critically engage with AI to prepare them for future professional life. 

Dr Jacqui Hutchison, Dr Zeshu Shao, Dr Sandie Cleland - School of Psychology

Dr Morgiane Richard - Centre for Academic Development

This project aims to better understand the support preferences of students in maths and stats support which will help us ensure the support offered continues to be relevant to students’ needs and preferences. Importantly the support from LTEP will allow us to employ a student intern which supports the student voice across the project ensuring we not only ask the right questions but incorporate the student voice in the interpretation of our findings. During our project we will examine a range of student cohorts (e.g., on campus undergraduate, on campus postgraduate, online postgraduate, international, learning differences). Findings will be used to inform the support offered in maths and stats but we anticipate the findings will also be useful to other forms of support offered across the institution.

Dr Zeshu Shao, Professor Jason Bohan, Dr Margaret C. Jackson - School of Psychology

Dr Shannon Babbie - School of Education

This project aims to explore neurodivergent students’ experiences of different learning and teaching settings in higher education, including lectures, small-group teaching, group work and practical sessions. It will examine both positive and challenging aspects of these settings, with particular attention to factors that may affect students’ participation, engagement, learning and overall experience. The project will also explore what teaching practices, learning environments and forms of support students perceive as helpful. Data will be collected through an online survey and follow-up interviews, providing both a broader overview of students’ experiences and more detailed accounts of individual perspectives. The findings will be used to identify common barriers and supportive practices across different learning settings, as well as areas where teaching and learning environments could be made more inclusive and accessible. 

Dr Peidong Mei and Dr Heather Branigan - School of Psychology

Dr Mingjun Zhong - School of Natural & Computing Science

Dr Claudio Lombardi - School of Law

By gathering initial empirical evidence on how GenAI-related cognitive boundaries are understood in practice across disciplines and stakeholder groups, this project will: 1) Identify areas of convergence and divergence between staff and student expectations across disciplines, particularly where differences may contribute to inconsistent or unclear practice;  2) generate initial cognitive-based pedagogical principles for assessment (re)design and marking criteria that make legitimate AI use more explicit, specifically which cognitive aspects of assessment should remain student-generated across disciplines; 3) complement existing task-based guidance to provide an additional layer of support to adapt their guidance as assessment practices and GenAI capabilities continue to evolve.

Dr Sara Preston - Centre for Academic Development

Professor John Barrow - School of Medicine, Medical Sciences & Nutrition

Members of the Educational Technologies Advisory Group (ETAG)

Tracey Innes and Andrew Mackie

Careers and Employability Service

This funded LTEP research project seeks to develop our understanding of students’ approach to finding, navigating and using online careers information, with a particular focus on job search.  The project will utilise a survey and a live observation exercise to ask questions about how and where students look for careers information to understand the barriers to finding careers information and to consider opportunities to enhance the careers information provided by the Careers Team.