“Please, ChatGPT, write me an essay in my own words…” Can Teachers Really Tell Their Students from Bots?

  By

Guido Conaldi and Francesco Mambrini

What’s happening with AI in Higher Education?

It’s an exciting time to be in Higher Education (HE). The landscape is transforming, and at the centre of it all, there’s a tech phenomenon that’s hard to ignore: AI-powered chatbots, like ChatGPT. Research in this area is exploding, spanning multiple facets of AI in HE (e.g., Perkins 2023; Kasneci et al. 2023; Fauzi et al. 2023; Mollick and Mollick 2022; Mollick and Mollick 2023). While we sense an overall positive sentiment towards this new tech, concerns around its impact on academic integrity are also surfacing. 

So, what’s the problem?

As researchers, these concerns resonate with us. We’ve had similar conversations with lecturers and know that they share these worries. The anxiety isn’t unfounded – the potential for students to use tools like ChatGPT in ways that don’t promote actual learning is real. That’s why we believe the key remains a shift towards more authentic assessment paired with the integration of AI-powered tools in our curricula. Authentic assessments, by design, encourage original thinking and the application of knowledge in real-world contexts, making it less likely for students to use AI-tools inappropriately – especially when their appropriate uses become part of the learning process.

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Understanding Stressors for International Students

  By

Chi Maher

Introduction

Stressors are psychological events that students tend to see as demanding, challenging and threatening to their safety (Cao et al., 2021). They can affect mental function, performance, and individual behaviour. A stressor is a stimulus that causes stress. Stress is a natural human response prompting us to address challenges and threats in our lives (Van den Bergh, 2021). 

In Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the UK students generally experience stress due to academic work demands and living away from home (Karaman et al.,2019). However, international students face not only the same stress as other UK-domiciled students; they also face additional stressors related to cultural adjustment, financial concerns and living away from their home country. Stressors may also occur when international students are unable to cope with their new environment in terms of culture and norms. It is often difficult to adjust to the culture and norms in another country. Adjusting to life in a foreign country with a different culture can be stressful for some students. For example, social norms in the UK such as, clubbing and drinking alcohol might be unfamiliar social activities for some international students making it harder for them to adjust to their new environment or maintaining new University friendships (Lomer and Mittelmeier, 2021).

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Using Experiential Learning to Promote Egyptian Students’ Industry Readiness: A Case Study from a Marketing Course

  By

Ranya Yousif

Marketing educators strive to achieve a balance between research-led education and industry-led education and aligning marketing curriculum with the standards and expectations set by employers. I am the module leader of the Advertising and Media Campaign course taught to senior students in major marketing. The module aims to demonstrate and familiarize the students with the steps of an advertising campaign, to provide the students with employable practical skills that can be very useful in their future careers. This case study is a reflection of the teaching and assessment strategies implemented in the module to facilitate students’ active participation in constructing their knowledge highlighting the use of experiential and authentic learning through activities stimulating practical contexts to facilitate students’ exposure to learning experiences that develop their critical thinking and other important skills needed in the marketing profession. The case demonstrates how the course curriculum is developed to achieve its learning outcomes and cope with the professional market requirements and students’ expectations.

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Value-Added (VA) Scores & Attainment Gaps: An Empirical Analysis using University PAS (Planning & Statistics) Data

  By

Mahkameh Ghanei and Francesco Guidi

Background

According to UK Government’s data, the attainment gaps for undergraduate degree classification in the UK by ethnicity & gender still shows biased towards black and ethnic minority groups.  Studies highlighting these differences due to various factors including ethnicity (Richardson, 2018; Arday & Mirza 2018).  In recent years number of solutions have been put forward by developing innovative pedagogy such as Team-Based Learning (TBL) (Cagliesi & Ghanei, 2021).

As we can see in figure 1, during academic year 2020-21, the best performed group of students were Whites as 39.4% of the obtained first class degree, and the Blacks with 20% were the lowest group achieving first class degree.  In addition, the Black students scored higher level of lower second- and third-degree classifications (32.9%). 

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University Students’ Views of Personal Tutoring: A Systematic Literature Review

  By

Scott Tindal

In her influential work Thomas (2006) argues that personal tutors fulfill multiple roles for students: to foster a sense of belonging to the institution; academic and professional socialisation; guide development; help with institutional processes and procedures; refer to further information and specialist support; and attend to students’ wellbeing and personal development. For those enrolled in professional degrees, such as nursing and medicine, personal tutors may also have an additional clinical/professional role in which they may be partially responsible for assessing fitness for clinical practical and/or formation of professional identity (Braine & Parnell, 2011; Holder, 2020; Ross et al, 2014). Therefore, the goal of personal tutors is to develop a mentoring and advisory relationship that supports students’ academic, and/or professional socialisation and development, as well as their mental and emotional wellbeing.

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Joyful Influencers: A day at the University of Greenwich Learning and Teaching Festival

  By

Peter Wolstencroft, Elizabeth Whitfield and Danielle Talbot

To quote Ferris Bueller, ‘Life Moves Pretty Fast. If You Don’t Stop And Look Around Once In A While, You Could Miss It’ and with the daily treadmill of meetings, teaching, marking, researching and the need to consider and plan for quality assurance, educational performance and regulation, nowhere is this more true than in Higher Education. A 5am start, a long train journey South and being packed onto a Tube on a hot, sweaty Thursday morning might not seem like the obvious starting point for a day of reflection. However, in reality it was the starting point for a festival where so many themes came together to signpost the way forward for our Teaching and Learning and our assessment practices.

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Use It, Don’t Lose It – Three Ideas To Get Online Learning Technologies Back On Campus 

  By

Gerhard Kristandl

In the UK, the last two years since March 2020 marked nothing less than a rollercoaster ride in higher education. A series of lockdowns due to Covid-19 necessitated an initially rushed move of learning and teaching to online. A plethora of new digital learning technologies entered the professional lives of many educators that they had hitherto not been exposed to. From VLEs (virtual learning environments) to video conferencing software packages, a steep and continued acquisition of digital skills, both pedagogical and technological, triggered an accelerated cultural shift (Vigo, 2019) towards the adoption of digital technologies by many educational institutions – a shift that had started long before the pandemic hit. 

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The Challenge of Authentic Assessment

  By

Alistair Bogaars, Yan Li and Shuai Zhang

The challenge 

We were challenged to think about incorporating authentic assessment principles into the core first year project management module by our Head of Department. We would like to share our approach to this challenge in our blog.  

What is authentic assessment?  

An authentic assessment requires the completion of ‘real-world tasks’ that are designed to demonstrate how students can apply the knowledge and skills they have learned (Mueller, 2018). Authentic assessments require students to actively use the theory they have been taught in a context that is ‘actual, contemporary and practical’ (Brown, 2015). 

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A Framework To Ensure More Inclusive And Personalised Student Employability And Career Services: Learning From The Best 

  By

Duyen Chu, Qijun Zhou and Alistair Bogaars

Introduction  

Employability and career services are an integral part of any UK higher education institution (HEI). Many factors can affect and shape the employability and career services of a university, including the constantly increasing demand of the job market, legal and professional requirements and institutional strategic priorities. In this blog, we develop and propose a framework for ensuring more inclusive and personalised student employability and career services. Materials for developing this blog derive from our broader Scholarship Excellence in Business Education (SEBE) and Connected Cities Research Group (CCRG)-funded project on student employability optimisation. 

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Working Towards A Measurement Of Internship Placement Value  

  By

Ronald Gibson and Raluca Marinciu

The current neo-liberal valuation of higher education views universities as the provider of labour market resources and improved student job prospects for those undertaking a business subject (Green, Hammer and Star, 2009; Holmes, 2013; Tomlinson, 2012; Tymon, 2013). Employability literature debates the postmodern internship as the answer to prepare students for work (Gault et al., 2000), gain transferable skills (Hillman and Rotham, 2007) and improve long-term employability (Hergert, 2009). However, not all internships are created equal, or lead to graduate level employment. In this piece we are referring to an internship as being a minimum of nine months of work experience, which can also be identified as a ‘placement year’.  

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