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Wednesday 26 June 2024
10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
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Nano Conferences are a series of online, bite-sized, convenient sessions that share practices to enhance the student experience.
Running once a semester, Nano presentations last only 15 minutes and showcase staff and student insights from a variety of disciplines and settings across the CU Group, and external speakers.
Academic Enhancement and Professional Development
As part of the University of Hertfordshire’s digital strategy, the role of Student Technology Mentors (STMs) has been instrumental in supporting both staff and students with their digital capabilities over the past few years. Throughout this time, the STMs have worked in partnership to help lead and inform digital strategy as well as supporting academic staff with their curriculum design.
To continue our partnership culture, a partnership project was evolved to give the STMs (9 in total) the opportunity to lead, author and develop online digital skills content for their fellow students. This idea originated from the students themselves. The partnership has opened a new innovative pathway of enhancing digital capabilities across our student body with the benefit of challenging staff perceptions of students as content creators.
This talk will present findings from a research project that explored the pedagogical decisions and rationales of educators and digital learning professionals in deliberately designed online learning contexts. It will focus on three key themes: (1) embracing a multi-level view of student learning journeys, (2) embedding multiple and diverse ‘voices’, and (3) creating a web of social learning opportunities and ‘spaces.’ The study suggests holistic and multivoiced approaches to pedagogy and highlights the need for narrative-based online learning design, purposeful hybrid learning spaces and an expansive view of educators’ roles. These insights can be enlightening for educators, teaching teams, digital learning teams, academic developers, researchers, and university leadership, opening up dialogue and new directions for online learning practices and research.
This pilot study explores the use of AI in supporting MSc Molecular Biology students to write a lay summary to aid in their 2000-word Critical Review assessment. Students underwent a training session on the ethical use of generative AI in academia, then used generative AI to produce a 500-word summary of their assigned topic. A follow-up session was conducted to guide the development of their Critical Analysis from the AI-generated summaries. Both pre-training and post follow-up, students were asked to complete a questionnaire on their knowledge of AI, and its uses in university assessments and critical academic writing.
The results showed that students had a good initial understanding of the limitations of generative AI. Post-exercise, 40% learned about the potential for AI to provide misinformation and produce biased outputs, while 20% learned about the possibility of AI generating irrelevant citations. Interestingly, 60% failed to learn that the use of AI should be acknowledged and referenced, though all understood that misuse could lead to academic misconduct. On average, students rated the usefulness of AI in creating their summaries as 4 out of 5. 60% stated that the exercise provided a solid foundation for writing their critical review, while acknowledging the limitations of AI in critical thinking and accurate referencing. All students agreed that while AI can be used to gain basic knowledge and create summaries, it cannot replace human critical thinking in critique-based assessments.
Listen to former student, Kenechukwu Agudosy, sharing his experiences and reflections about the role of digital tools in teaching and learning.
Simulation in teaching and learning fosters experiential, immersive learning environments. It enhances understanding of complex concepts, encourages problem-solving, and promotes engagement. Online activities include interactive simulations, gamified quizzes, and virtual reality experiences. The Simulation Design Guide showcased in this presentation will aid in creating effective, learner-centric simulation experiences, ensuring educational objectives are met while maintaining a high level of user engagement.
Academic Enhancement and Professional Development