Events

Upcoming Events 

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Past events can be accessed via our YouTube Channel @REAL-HigherEd

Beyond Compliance: Quality, Power, and Transparency in Ethical Educational Research

Dr. Alison Purvis -  Wednesday 20 May 12:05–12:55pm (Online, Via Zoom)

Alison Purvis is an Associate Dean at Sheffield Hallam University and a nationally recognised leader in digital and inclusive education, recently named in the AI 100 UK List, 2025. She has shaped sector-wide thinking on people-centred digital change through contributions to the Office for Students’ Artificial Intelligence (AI) position statement and Jisc’s Digital Transformation initiative. At Sheffield Hallam University, Alison leads strategic work on digital learning innovation, disability advocacy and ethical AI, including the development of an institutional approach to AI transparency. Her work encourages critical engagement with emerging technologies, fostering inclusive practice, ethical standards, and developing staff and student digital confidence.

This session explores ethical considerations in educational research, drawing on recent work in social science ethical standards, research question design, and artificial intelligence transparency. It examines how high-quality research questions improve methodological rigour and ethical clarity, and how researchers can navigate everyday practical issues such as power relations between teachers and students, informed consent, and the challenges of studying one’s own learners. The session also considers wider sector issues, including expectations for transparency when using artificial intelligence and the implications for publishing practices. Using examples from Purvis and Crawford (2024), Purvis et al. (2024), and current work on artificial intelligence transparency (Purvis, 2025; Crawford et al., 2026 in press), the session offers applied guidance for ethics applications and reflective practice. The final part of the session brings these threads together, showing how responsible research design can protect participants, strengthen validity, and support trustworthy scholarship. 

Exploring ways to support and engage students during resits

Dr Karen Lander - Tuesday 23 June 12:05pm – 12:55pm  (Online, Via Zoom)

Dr Karen Lander is Director of Education in the Division of Psychology, Communication and Human Neuroscience at the University of Manchester and an active scholar in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. She contributes through editorial, peer-review, and international collaborative work, and is also a psychologist specialising in face perception.

This session: Resits provide ‘a second chance’ for students. Consequently, it is essential that we support students to make the most of this chance. Students with resits may lack academic confidence and become ‘disengaged’. Consequently, resits are a significant problem and barrier to continuation. Learning is dictated not only by the external environment but also internally through self-belief. Self-efficacy is related to a student’s emotional state and self-confidence and is an important asset for students to develop. Improving self-efficacy may be one way in which students can improve their engagement and help themselves. This talk outlines work (focus groups & questionnaires) conducted to consider the methods and strategies used to engage students during resit preparation. Recommendations for good practice and ways to help students to improve their self-efficacy / engagement are explored through 'resit roadmaps'.

The effectiveness of AI-based tools be in improving students’ communication skills

Dr Li Cunningham - Tuesday 7 July 12:05pm – 12:55pm (Online, Via Zoom)

Dr Li Xue Cunningham is an Associate Professor (Reader) in Management, Bayes Business School. Dr Cunningham’s main research, scholarship, and teaching interests lie in the areas of international and comparative human resource management, gender and diversity management, private enterprise business and development, and AI in business school education. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). She gained her BA (Hons) in Economics (First Class Honours) from Nanjing University, China, and Ph.D. in Management Studies from Bayes (formerly Cass), City, University of London.

This session discusses a two-stage study that aims to evaluate and enhance business students’ communication skills, a core graduate attribute through targeted coursework and the integration of AI tools. The localized AI tool, known as the “Gen-AI Teaching Assistant” is based on Chat-GPT and serves two primary functions: (a) assessing students' communication skills using pre-defined criteria through chatbot interactions, and (b) supporting skill improvement by allowing students to engage in multiple practice sessions within the same environment. By combining assessment and training, the study not only measures students’ existing capabilities but also facilitates their improvement through iterative, AI-guided feedback.  

Mapping Student Belonging Trajectories: A Collaborative Workshop Approach

Dr Katerina Machovcova and Prof Paula Miles - Wednesday 23 September 12:05pm – 12:55pm (Online, Via Zoom)

Katerina is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Education, Charles University, and a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Psychology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She is an experienced lecturer in social psychology and specializes in qualitative research methodologies. Her research focuses on higher education as a workplace, particularly leadership and followership dynamics, as well as student identity development, with special attention to students from marginalized groups.

Paula is a Professor in Educational Psychology in the School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews. She has extensive experience lecturing, developing and coordinating courses in New Zealand, Canada, and Scotland. Paula’s research focusses on factors that influence the student experience at university. This includes investigating: student wellbeing and sense of belonging; the effectiveness of different teaching styles; and, academic integrity as understood by students and staff.

The session: Since 2021, teams from the University of St Andrews and Charles University have collaborated on research exploring students’ learning, well-being, and academic identities. Our website is here: https://cher.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/category/collaborations/identity-belonging-and-wellbeing/. As part of a 2024 Seed Funding scheme, we developed and piloted an interactive workshop designed to map students’ belonging trajectories over time.

Rather than treating belonging as a fixed outcome, we conceptualise it as a dynamic, evolving process shaped by key academic, relational, and institutional experiences. In our trajectory-mapping exercise, students visually represent moments of increased and decreased belonging and reflect on what made those experiences meaningful. This approach both generates rich research data and serves as a reflective pedagogical intervention.

In this presentation, we briefly introduce our conceptualisation of belonging, demonstrate the trajectory-mapping method, and share findings from our pilot study, highlighting the diversity and non-linearity of students’ belonging journeys. We conclude by discussing how this approach can inform institutional practices aimed at strengthening student engagement and well-being, and outline directions for future research and implementation.

Past Events

Where available, these can be accessed via our YouTube Channel @REAL-HigherEd

“We’re in This Together”: Designing Groupwork Agreements to Support Inclusive

Collaboration

Dr Ashley Robertson -  Wednesday 25 March 12:05pm – 12:55pm (Online Via Zoom)

Ashley Robertson is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Glasgow, where she is Programme Lead for the MSc Psychological Studies (Conversion) programme and leads the Pedagogical and Educational Research Unit, the School’s learning and teaching scholarship network. Her work focuses on inclusive teaching, supervision, and assessment, and on reducing hidden barriers in Higher Education by making expectations and processes clearer. She is particularly interested in how explicit design can support student confidence, collaboration, and engagement across diverse cohorts. She also works closely with colleagues to share practical, evidence-informed approaches to learning and teaching, especially with early career staff.

This session explores how assessed group work is a common and authentic form of assessment in Higher Education, yet students and staff frequently report challenges related to task allocation, communication, and fairness. This talk presents the development and evaluation of a group work agreement designed to scaffold early-stage group organisation and make expectations explicit. Students co-created their agreements, prompting discussion of communication, timelines, and task allocation, and submitted these as a low-stakes formative activity. Using a mixed-methods approach, students’ group working skills were measured before and after the group work, alongside qualitative feedback on their experiences. Initial findings suggest improvements in task-related group working skills, with students identifying task allocation as particularly valuable, while changes in interpersonal skills were more limited. The findings highlight the importance of structured support for group organisation and suggest directions for further development.

AI for Research

Isabel Virgo - Thursday 26 February 12:05pm – 12:55pm (Online Via Zoom)

Isabel Virgo is an Open Research Librarian at Oxford Brookes University. The team support researchers with open access publishing, source discovery and a range of other open research practices. Isabel is also entering her fifth year of a part-time PhD looking at the information behaviour of a particular group of disadvantaged students, and uses a variety of traditional and AI-based discovery tools in her own research.

This session explores how AI tools have opened up new ways to find and engage with academic literature for researchers at all levels. Find out how these tools can help students and staff to find, scan and evaluate information sources in a way that is compatible with academic integrity. This session will consider how researchers can integrate these with existing research processes, as well as what the future might look like with the rise of agentic AI.