Student experience experts meeting - October 2026

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

Speakers:

• Sheila MacNeill, consultant
• 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

Speakers:

• 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.