Student experience experts meeting

Speaker:

• Sarah Knight, director of digital leadership and transformation, Jisc

Group discussion – how the findings support strategic priorities of your organisation.

Speakers:

• Sarah Knight, director of digital leadership and transformation
• Elizabeth Newall, senior sector specialist, digital transformation

Speaker:

• Carolina Barnes, community specialist, Jisc

Speaker:

• Sheila MacNeill, consultant

The Greater Manchester Way Block Delivery Model: A case study from the business school

Speaker:

• Nurun Nahar, assistant teaching professor (accounting with business)

This 15-minute presentation introduces the Greater Manchester Way Block Delivery Model through a business school case study. It explains the rationale behind block teaching, outlines how modules were redesigned and delivered in the business school, and shares early some practical steps (including use of the beyond blended framework) taken by the school to put student engagement and staff experience at the heart of the change management process, before reflecting on key lessons and future development.

Speakers:

• Paola Marchionni, head of engagement, digital transformation, Jisc
• Deborah Munro, deputy director library and learning services, Aston University

In this session, a summary of data findings will be shared from across the institutions who have participated in our 2026 TNE research programme.  You will learn how our partners have used their original data insights to steer this year’s data collection, going deeper into the digital challenges first evidenced in 2025, and using this fresh data to steer strategic action plans for their institution’s TNE delivery.  You will get the chance to consider what these findings might mean for providing digital equity not just in transnational education, but across UK HE student experience.      

Speakers:

• Elizabeth Newall, senior sector specialist, digital transformation
• Dr Tabetha Newman, CEO Timmus Ltd
• Professor Daniela Standen, academic director of teaching and learning, NUIST-Reading Academy, University of Reading
• Dr Jiayi Wang, head of global partnerships and engagement, De Montfort University

We will hear from colleagues across higher education who share their practice.

Lightening talk one - How do learning experience and barriers differ between institutions? A pilot on student agency

Speaker:

• Marcus Messer, postdoctoral researcher, mechanical engineering, Imperial College London

Royal Holloway University and Kings College, London conducted a pilot survey (n = 587) across two UK informatics departments with contrasting intake profiles to examine how students learn, their experiences, and the barriers to learning.

This session shares the findings from this research and explores how student agency differs across the wider higher education sector and how we can support learning in the varied situations our students face.

The survey found that, on average, students most affected by barriers, such as childcare, background, transport issues, and scheduling conflicts, typically felt a lower sense of belonging and were more likely to rely on recorded materials than those students who were less affected by these barriers. However, we found no differences between institutions in how students manage academic stress, energy, sleep, or decision-making, suggesting that differences between institutions might lie in students' circumstances.

Lightening talk two - VLE First: Building staff capability for the next generation of digital learning

Speaker:

• Ben Jane, senior lecturer, Plymouth Marjon University

At Plymouth Marjon University, VLE First is an educator-led initiative where staff share adaptable HTML page templates, and all teaching staff are given the skills to use generative AI to reshape those templates around their own teaching materials. This enables staff with little or no coding experience to create richer, structured web-style learning resources within Canvas, while retaining ownership of their pedagogy, content and design.

What began as a small pilot has now become an institution-wide approach. All degree programmes are using the model, and most teaching staff are now building teaching and learning resources in this way.

Crucially, this is a staff capability model, not a central learning-technology service or an attempt to standardise teaching with set forms. The team teach the basic skills, share a toolbox of adaptable templates, and then create spaces for pedagogical conversations and ongoing template sharing. The next development extends the same principle: colleagues across the university are now learning to use generative AI to build their own interactive web apps for teaching and learning.

This lightning talk will outline this transferable, accessible approach and share what the team have learned about using AI to put new digital capabilities directly into the hands of educators.

Lightening talk three - Who’s the author? Assessment in the world of AI: Use of an in-person exam informed by course work submission

Speaker:

• Tim Williams, senior lecturer, London College of Fashion

At the London College of Fashion, Fashion Business School, during the academic years 2025/2026 the students from one course were required to undertake an in-person written exam as part of their submission.

This exam comprised of questions based on their individual self directed course work that had been submitted five weeks previously for their Final Major Project.  The questions were agreed through the assessment process by the marking team. There were two questions per student, each comprising of two selections of their text each with a specific reflective question to demonstrate their understanding of what they had written how they would develop their line of enquiry further.

The questions were given to the students under exam conditions using laptops that were password protected against any WIFI or bluetooth connectivity, there were also physical barriers to prevent use of USB sockets as well as bagging mobile phones, and watches. This combination of different questions for each student and password protection of individual identities on each lap top allows for the scaling of this process. The students answers were securely transferred and distributed back to the marking team by secured PDF’s via sharePoint.

We wanted to preserve the value of self directed learning, whereby the student, under supervision, sets their own line of enquiry for a transformative experience by taking responsibility their learning.  AI has now become part of the student learning experience, whether through its permission or prohibition by the University.  There has been concern over the academic integrity and peer to peer reputation.

These tools are undoubtably useful, and used well can be of great assistance. In industry where their appears to be anecdotal evidence that the shift to AI is through the employee in their work for their employers. In industry you will have to defend your idea, so this model allows the student to do this. It is accepted that there has been the traditional Viva, however, in practice this is difficult to work at volume.

This asymmetric approach facilitates scaling and a spreading of the marking load.