Institute of Teaching and Learning

• Putting assessment in the hands of students - student-created rubrics - James Brooks
• The role of China English within academic ssessment - Alex Baratta and Paul Smith 
• Examopedia as an Innovation in Assessment  - Paul Baguley 

• Who moderates the moderator? Bringing consistency and best practice guidance to the moderation process - Ruth Ingram, Amber Ruigrok and Rebecca White
• Improving student outcomes through optionality in assessment - Jennifer McBride and Donna Lloyd 
• Continuous Assessments: Modular, customized assessments with mark differentiation - Murilo M. Marinho, Andrew West, Xiaoxiao Cheng, and Simon Watson

• Optimising Feedback in Group Work: Enhancing the Student Experience without Adding to Marking Workload - Anna Goatman and  Charlotte Hoyland
• Delivering feedback for learning: A case for using assignment-specific weighted rubrics for assessment - Fiona Velez-Colby and Jo Conlon
• Using Peer Action Learning to improve feedback to students - James Brooks 

• Lessons Learnt from Using Cadmus to Assess Group Assignments in Large Cohort Teaching - Gazierem Onwuegbuchulam, Akinloluwa Babalola, Farisya Abu Bakar, Haleh Sadeghi, Xirong Li and Dr Clara Cheung

• Developing the University of Manchester as a 'Learning Partner for Life' - Ang Davies

• Student Perceptions of (Un)Acceptable use of AI in Assessments - Dan Rigby, Guy Curtis and Joe Clare

• Transnational Futures; economic diversity and climate justice - Alex Gardner-McTaggart
• Applying experiential learning through serious games for healthcare education - Dr Alan Davies, Dr Fran Hooley, Dr Punsisi Somaratne and Prof George Moulton

• #Assessmentforgood Learning from failure to have greater impact - Jennifer O'Brien and Hilson Mutungamiri
• Embedding sustainability into the curriculum: A case study from psychology - Doron Cohen

• Empowering Pharmacy Students: Addressing Cardiovascular Health Disparities and Driving Sustainable Change - Harsha Parmar and Sarah Knighton
• Exposing Students to (Un)equal Justice through Service-Learning - Phillip Drake, Claire McGourlay, Caroline Hoyle and Chloe Cheadle

• How to encourage and include young women to consider a university degree - a case study with transferable skills - Patricia Perlman-Dee and Michelle Kipling

• Empowering Neurodivergent Students Through Inclusive Practices in Higher Education - Janine Dixon and Ruby Prior 

• A Scenario Analysis on the Transformative Potential of Student Partnerships and Co-creation in Fostering Belonging in Student Support - Rachel Studd, Rachel Parker-Strak and Thomas Pierce-Jones​

• Peer Mentoring for Foundation Studies Students on Engineering Pathways - Martin Simmons and David Ruiz
• Improving pharmacy student experiences of developing clinical-decision-making (CDM) skills: new graduate to final year peer support - Esnath Magola with Tala Al-Husari and LiMin Lau​ 
• How Peer Instruction can transform your lecture into an active learning session - Huw Morgan

• Social class inclusivity in teaching and learning of creative arts subjects - Sarah Weston 

• Improving radiology teaching at Manchester medical school through a student partnership - Aaisha Patel​

• The Belonging Network – The Journey of Staff and Student Partnerships in Fostering Belonging, Being and Mattering - Jennie Blake, Rachel Studd, Reimala Sivalingam, Sara Jackson, Sarah Finn-sell, Kai Prince, Nicholas Weise and Durian (Divya) Malhotra
• Developing Belonging: ​A Curriculum-Based approach in the BSc Education Programme through ​Sustainable Partnerships -  Sara Jackson, Choen Yin Chan, Karen Healey and UG students from the BSc Education programme

• Fostering Transparency and Reproducibility in Undergraduate Education: Empowering Data Researchers for the Future - Tatjana Kecojevic
• Student Partnership using the micro-sprint format - Eleanor Aspey, Aleena Hussain​ and Gillian Ulph
• MIMUC: Student partnership through planning and delivering an undergraduate conference - Rose Wagstaffe, Alejandra Vicente Colmenares,​ Neil Morrison, Neve Keable, Kai Prince and Aneuren Quinn

• Out of the margins: harnessing methods of digital annotation as a means of amplifying the student voice - John Roache and Minahil Tariq​
• Exploring how best to support students with resits and following periods of interruption - Karen Lander and Ruby Prior

This session was led by Miriam Firth, Academic Lead for Assessment (FLP) and members of the Flexible Learning Assessment and Advisory Group. This wicked problem set examined the theme of 'exploring assessment' by considering the integration of embedding activities for the University's Assessment Toolkit. This session explored the embedding of the Assessment Toolkit and strategies to ensure that resources and expertise are integrated into assessment and feedback practices.

Led by Andrew Whitworth and Zhuoran You from the Faculty of Humanities, this session focuses on the challenges of ergative assessment due to the increasing sophistication of generative AI. This session summarised the findings of a case study entitled 'Flexible Learning Pilot' and ran structured exercises with attendees and colleagues to help them ponder what an ergative approach means for them.

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Led by Catherine Murray and Clelia Tundo Cano, the focus of this session was using Cadmus at the University of Manchester to enhance assessment design and feedback quality, and maintain academic integrity in the transition to digital assessment. Cadmus is an end-to-end assessment for learning platform, designed to provide students with additional scaffolding and support with academic writing skills as they complete tasks. Cadmus Academic Integrity Assurance Analytics provide real-time insights into student working behaviours during assessments, enabling educators to provide proactive support to those who appear at risk of failing or academic misconduct, before the point of submission. Since March 2022, the University of Manchester has been piloting the platform, and in this time, Cadmus has helped deliver over 300 digital assessments, in a range of assessment types: essays, lab reports, portfolios, take-home exams, and most recently, in-person timed exams. During this session, a number of case studies from the pilot will be shared, and discussions held around how these features can promote inclusive and supportive assessment in other subjects. 

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This session was led byt Sonja Dobroski, Cristina Masters, Nadim Mirshak, and Emily Turner from the Faculty of Humanities. The University of Manchester lags behind other universities and the School of Social Sciences (SOSS) overall has scored relatively low on student satisfaction on assessment and feedback, and has promoted several School-wide initiatives to address the possible issues. We are a SOSS working group tasked with undertaking an analysis of the Faculty of Humanities’ Reduced Scale Stepped Marking scheme as one possible way of addressing the issue.  As it stands, they have spoken to academic colleagues, facilitated focus groups with UG/PGT students, and are piloting this scheme in a number of 33 modules in 2024/25. Accordingly, they would like to propose a Wicked Problem Set session that introduces this issue, presents our findings so far, and encourages staff and students from across Faculties to share experiences and thoughts on step marking and strategies/pitfalls for moving forward. 

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This session was led by Elaine Clark, Caroline Henaghan and Saniya Khosla from the Faculty of Humanities. This wicked problem set will begin with a brief presentation of methods which have been utilised to enhance reflection on an undergraduate course offered University College for Integrated Learning. This involved working throughout with a student intern to identify and explore the student perspective. We will then explore together what reflection within higher education means for our students, some of the challenges and opportunities and how reflection can be effectively scaffolded as an effective, and equitable, tool for assessment. 

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This session was led by Jennifer McBride, Pietro Paolo Frigenti, Jenni Rose and Emma Bramwell. This Wicked Problem Set explored the relationship between teaching and research, how students can/could benefit from UoM's research environment and resolving the obstacles to them doing so.

Led by Anna Theis and Jennifer Blake, this session focused on the creation of a central, cross-University online learning resource around academic integrity. This essential resource for students will reflect changes in pedagogical approach (for example around flexible learning or optionality in assessment) and new technologies (such an GenerativeAI). This workshop will introduce participants to the process and underpinning strategies used to prioritise the student voice (whilst still embedding staff-student partnership) in the development of the resource. Participants will take part in an action learning set that examines 35 the draft outline of the resource and reflect on the potential of supporting inclusive practice and pedagogy via such support. As the resource is due for completion in Sept 2024, participants’ views will feed directly into the creation of student guidance and support on academic integrity. As exemplars in best practice in student support, and due to the central availability of the resource it’s envisioned that the final version will have sector-wide impact.

This wicked problem set will present examples of innovations in inclusive curricula at the University of Manchester. We will engage participants in discussions around the tensions in the space, and explore the barriers and enablers to implementing inclusive practice. It is hoped that an action plan for embedding inclusion will be achieved can be generated. Student partner interns will share their perspectives on priorities for students. Examples for consideration will include sex and gender, ableism, and racial diversity.

This draws on the expertise of the Library Student Team which is representative of UoM's own communities, histories, and perspectives, ensuring representation from, for example, racially minoritised cohorts, neurodivergent learners and students with caring responsibilities. They will be at the forefront of developing and delivering this wicked problem set, reflecting on all their work on using AI for teaching and learning in HE.

We are all aware of the need for more inclusive teaching approaches to support our students. But this umbrella term encompasses a wide range of agendas and approaches, which can be overwhelming.

Specifically, we’re seeking to ask the following questions: - What have you done to make your teaching more inclusive? (can be big or small!) - What challenges or barriers have you faced when putting inclusive teaching strategies into place? - What approaches helped to overcome these? - What take home advice would you give to someone starting out?