Reading Club

A massive thank you to everyone who joined us for our latest Reading Club on 11th September 2024. It was great to be joined by new colleagues to the Reading Club and spend the evening sharing discussions and ideas. In this session, we talked about Tobais Alexander Bang Tretow-Fish, Bjarke Lindsø Andersen, Thilde Emilie Møller, Anne-Mette Nortvig’s What does it mean to prepare for class? A case study on students’ study habits in a nursing educational programme. This article sparked a wide-ranging and really interesting discussion on a number of different topics. We started by sharing thoughts and ideas on […]

A big thank you to everyone who came along to our latest Reading Club on 8th May, it was great to see so many interested colleagues joining in our discussions – and a great and wide-ranging discussion in was! In this session we chatted about Constantine Manolchev, Ryan Nolan and Eleanor Hodgson’s opinion piece, Unlikely allies: ChatGPT and higher education assessment from Issue 30. We are also very happy to be joined by two of the authors, Constantine and Eleanor. We opened proceedings by discussing an argument in the opinion piece that discussed parallels between intertextuality and GenAI, which caught […]

A big thank you to everyone who came to our Reading Club on 10th January – it was great to see new and returning faces alike! In this session we discussed Katie Stripe and Iro Ntonia’s Twenty-two recommendations for inclusive teaching and their implementation challenges from Issue 28. We opened up with a discussion about inclusivity in general. We all took the viewpoint that inclusivity should be driven by a desire to do good / social justice (that it is indeed a core duty or any education provider) – not just because it is stated by law. Taking a more historical viewpoint, it […]

Thank you to those who joined us for the Reading Club on 12th April 2023. We discussed Shannon Martin and Jim Lusted’s Critical Reflections on the Racialised Hierarchies of an Ethnically Diverse Staff-Student Scholarship Project Team from the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Special Edition. We were fortunate to have Jim join us to engage in the conversation and give direct insights into the topic of this paper. The discussion opened with questions on the findings of the study itself and what key learnings Shannon and Jim had taken from their work. Jim highlighted that although it is important to recognise that black student experiences are widely […]

A big thank you to those who came along to our Reading Club on 8th February 2023. In this meeting of the Reading Club we discussed Helen Hargreaves, Sarah Robin and Elizabeth Caldwell’s ‘Student Perceptions of Reading Digital Texts for University Study’ from Issue 24. It was great to have Sarah join us to take part in the discussions and provide further insight into her paper and research. We started with an appropriate discussion of how we all read the paper in preparation for the Reading Club – which resulted in a variety of different answers, from reading the paper digitally on a […]

Thanks to those who were able to come along to our Reading Club on 14 December 2022 – it was great to be back. This time around we discussed Joe Greenwood’s ‘A systematic approach to designing English for very specific academic purposes materials tailored to a specific course in the main subject of a higher degree.’ From Issue 23. We would like to thank Joe from joining us to discuss his work and answer our questions. We started the Reading Club by discussing the differences between EAP and EVSAP and the similarities with learning development in ensuring these skills are delivered within […]

Thanks to those who were able to come along to the Reading Club meeting on 11 May 2022, where we discussed Arina Cirstea’s paper ‘Engaging students online: an analysis of students’ motivations for seeking individual learning development support’ from March edition of the journal. The full paper is available here, the questions we used available here.  We discussed the author’s definition of student engagement (which combined emotional, behavioural and cognitive aspects, see Henrie et al 2016) and unpicked some of the key findings from this small scale, mixed methods research project.  We reflected on the importance and value of individual tutorials and […]

Thanks to all who came along to our March Reading Club and joined in our discussions of the 12 papers which make up the ‘Fostering Student Engagement’ theme of the Compendium of Innovative Practice: Learning Development in a Time of Disruption. We had a wide-ranging discussion, sparked by the different ideas and themes across these 12 papers. As with all discussions about student engagement in live online sessions, we talked about students’ use or non-use of webcams. However, we quickly agreed that this was students’ choice, and shared ideas on how students can show their engagement in other ways – using […]

Thanks to those who were able to come along to the Reading Club meeting on 12 January 2022, where we discussed a section of the JLDHE compendium focused on ‘Prioritising wellbeing through community and connection’ – available here. Attendees shared personal experiences of, and encounters with, different manifestations of staff and student wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our reflections were also shaped, in part, by responses in the HE sector to the spread of a new variant of COVID – which we now know as Omicron. This nature of our discussions at this Reading Club meeting served as a reminder that […]

Thank you to everyone who attended our November Reading Club. At this event we discussed Camilia Devis-Rozental’s and Susanne Clarke’s case study: ‘HE staff’s attitudes and expectations about their role in induction activities’ from Issue 21. We would like to thank both Camilia and Susanne for coming along to the session, their passion for their work and supporting their students helped to make for a really positive and informative session. During the event we spent a lot of time talking about the usefulness of the ‘tourist’ metaphor advanced by Camilia and Susanne in their case study. This is the idea that we […]