LEAD - Learning Enhancement and Academic Development
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/14083
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Item Belonging through compassion: Supporting hope through the design of a website for educational development and social justice(OpenBook Publishers, 2025-07-02) Hill, Vikki; Bunting, Liz; Abegglen, Sandra; Burns, Tom; Heller, Richard; Madhok, Rajan; Neuhaus, Fabian; Sandars, John; Sinfield, Sandra; Singh, Upasana GitanjaliThis chapter advocates for a more compassionate approach to Higher Education as a pathway to achieving social justice. Central to this vision is the cultivation of belonging through relational learning communities that honour interconnectedness, shared humanity, and equitable power dynamics. Through a case study of a digital educational development platform, the authors demonstrate how compassionately designed, co-produced, dialogic, and person-centred resources can support more inclusive and humane pedagogies. They outline practical strategies for embedding an ecology of compassion within institutions and highlight the necessity of systemic, institutional commitment to challenge inequitable policies and practices in Higher Education.Item Rethinking assessment? Research into the affective impact of higher education grading(University of Greenwich, 2024-05-09) Currant, Neil; Bunting, Liz; Hill, Vikki; Salines, EmilyAssessment plays a central role in learning in higher education (HE), but often the impact of grading assessment on student motivation, behaviour and wellbeing is insufficiently considered in policy and practice. With the growing concern in the HE sector about student mental health, a consideration of the affective dimension of grading is timely.The discussion in this paper on the affective dimension of grading is based on research conducted during the pandemic on the ‘no-detriment’ implementation of pass/fail assessment at the University of the Arts London (UAL). Qualitative research was undertaken with first-and second-year undergraduate students in the fields of creative arts, design and communication to investigate the effects of the switch from letter grading to pass/fail and student views on grading more generally. Our findings suggest that grading affects student stress, anxiety, learner identity, motivation, student self-expression, creativity, and peer relationships.In the light of our findings, we bring together discourses about assessment, grading and student wellbeing to consider the longer-term implications for assessment practices in a post-pandemic world.Item Relational Reflections: How do we nurture belonging in creative Higher Education?(Staffordshire University, 2021-10) Bunting, Liz; Hill, VikkiIn this paper, we reflect on a strand of educational development work that aims to foster belonging and develop compassionate pedagogies within a UK creative arts university in response to COVID-19 and global calls for racial justice. We underpin our paper with our theoretical understanding of belonging as a relational phenomenon and explore how this aligns with antiracist policies and practices. We present our rationale for the design of podcasts as dialogic, affective and asynchronous tools for use in educational development to respond to both practical and epistemic needs. Contributions from academic and support staff on ‘myth-busting belonging’ are explored as we consider the implications for educators in planning and delivering the curriculum. We position the role and responsibility of institutions to design and implement equitable policies and practices, to support staff to foster belonging, as central to this work.