Students working in notebooks
Six more innovative projects have been awarded up to £5,000 in the third round of awards from the Education and Innovation Fund.
Launched in October 2022, the fund is part of our Learn to Transform strategy. The initiative aims to drive positive changes in how we deliver our teaching and learning experience by stimulating student and staff co-creation and rewarding innovation and teaching excellence.
Meet the winners
Student Researchers in the BLDS Legacy Collection: Tricontinental, Mujeres, and the Worlds they Invite us to Imagine
Project lead: Paul Gilbert, Global Studies
The British Library for Development Studies (BLDS) Legacy Collection maps the landscape of global health and development policies, ideas and actions that emerged in a post-independence period at regional, national and transnational levels. It includes many items not held elsewhere, including in their countries of origin.
This project aims to engage students with the BDLS Legacy Collection at the University of Sussex Library, and co-produce a ‘learning toolkit’ for engaging with rare periodicals in the collection.
We will work with students from Global Studies preparing for dissertation research on the runs of two periodicals: Tricontinental (1966-2019) and Mujeres, launched in the early 1960s. We will co-produce with these students a reusable and extensible ‘toolkit’ of pedagogical approaches, teaching ideas and discussion points reflecting the needs and experiences of advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Perceptions of Feedback and Self Reflection
Lead: Susan Sullivan, Psychology
Findings from our pilot work suggest that when students engage in a brief self-reflective exercise prior to reading feedback for an assessed piece of work, this can lead to significantly higher satisfaction with that feedback and better recall of it when compared to when no self-reflection is undertaken.
These findings suggest that the act of self-reflecting on one’s own engagement with module materials, resources and available support leads students to later rate their feedback as more motivating and useful, as well as it being better remembered. The aim of this project is to replicate and extend the findings from our pilot work to students from a variety of disciplines across campus.
Neurodiversity Affirming Pedagogies: An Educators Toolkit
Lead: Emma Harrison, Media, Arts and Humanities
This project will research and develop an Educators Toolkit for staff working within Media, Arts and Humanities, to establish neurodiversity affirming pedagogies across the school. The project is essential for addressing under-researched challenges faced by neurodivergent students and staff in Higher Education, where existing practices such as requesting reasonable adjustments can contribute to feelings of stress and inadequacy.
This project will not only develop an Educators Toolkit and staff development workshops around neurodiversity awareness, but also inform university-wide policy changes which effectively address the unique challenges faced by neurodivergent individuals in Higher Education.
Enhancing the feedback practice of staff and students
Lead: Josephine Van Ess, University of Sussex Business School
This project aims to enhance the feedback and feedforward practice among staff and students in the Business School. This initiative recognises the need to provide feedback that is consistent, timely and provides opportunities for the academic development of students irrespective of their learning journey.
Through this project, we will develop resources that will help enhance feedback practice among staff and encourage student engagement with the feedback process. Additionally, workshops will be organised for faculty to identify good feedback and feedforward practice in the School and the wider University and HEI environment.
Virtually Real – Uniting Virtual and Reality – Teaching & Learning in an Abstract Space
Lead: Alexandre Rodrigues, Engineering and Informatics
With this project, we aim to bring together the real and the virtual. An existing design teaching space was converted into Virtual Reality. In this space, students and lecturers can discuss, manipulate and assess 3D products, while at the same time receiving formative feedback and assessment. This visual evaluation of products or components in an immersive space enables correcting prototypes before being turned into physical objects, saving time and resources.
We aim for this space to be a repository of student work, a space for discussion but also a space for virtual inclusive and comprehensive teaching and learning. This space does not replace the important physical resources and skills needed in product development. Rather, it’s an example of an emerging tool that is already being used in some industry sectors. By providing students with this resource, we believe they will have better career opportunities in a digital working environment.
Making Critical Hope Practical: Connecting Students, Solutions and the Curriculum
Lead: Anke Schwittay, Global Studies
This project will deliver a series of workshops with social change practitioners who are making a positive difference in the world, to show International Development students the possibilities of enacting transformative change in the world and the journeys of practitioners themselves. The aim is to foster a sense of ‘critical hope’ in students who can often become disillusioned by teaching that only focuses on the shortcomings and failures of international development.
The four practitioner workshops will introduce students to local projects on and off campus, focusing on gender and equality and ecological and economic sustainability, as well as an international solidarity network through a virtual event. This will prompt students to reflect on how they themselves can become engaged in change making, during their studies and in their future careers. A final curricular co-creation workshop will enable students to feedback their learning into curricular design and enhancement in the International Development department, the School of Global Studies and the university more widely.
Professor Claire Smith, Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education and Innovation, said:
“These awards demonstrate our continued commitment to promoting innovative teaching and learning at Sussex, and it is fantastic that in this new round of funding we have been able to support six more inspiring initiatives. Working together, we continue to innovate in ways that benefit our teaching and learning community, helping shape the future of education.”
If you are interested in applying for funding for your own project, the next round of applications will open in the new year. Find out more about applying to the Education and Innovation fund.