“A summer of CPD”: a look back at Academic Development events

Academic Development are a team of committed experts in Higher Education working at the heart of the University of Portsmouth to support individual academics, course teams and schools in developing our core education to support student outcomes. Through their work in enABLe, supporting professional standards accreditation with Fellowships (APEX) and delivering on university strategic projects, the team operates across the institution with all of our disciplinary areas and professional services. 

As with every summer, it is a time for staff development across the University – here, we share some of the headlines from our flagship events in supporting our academics and courses to succeed.

Beyond the Chat: Understanding the Impact of ChatGPT in Higher Education

The summer began with perhaps the most urgent area for discussion facing academics in Higher Education – the advent of generative AI becoming available en masse to the world. The ability of Large Language Model technology to write content initially caused worries among academic staff relating to academic integrity and questions as to how they could ‘AI-proof’ assessments, so that colleagues knew they were marking students’ personal work.

The event tackled these concerns head on with a welcome keynote from Joel Mills from BPP University London, where he gave recommendations on the skills needed in both academics and students to be critically aware of the current technologies’ abilities and limitations. The event drew a sector-wide attendance of over 200 delegates online, where the second plenary speaker, David Smith from Sheffield Hallam University, outlined ‘How AI has Answered the UnGoogleable Question and What Happens Next’. This offered practical solutions to the integration of such AIs into the skills development of our students and considerations for the future of the writing process in Higher Education.

The afternoon ended with a University of Portsmouth briefing from Professor Harriet Dunbar-Morris and Professor Ale Armellini on guidance and reassurance of the institution’s priorities going forward to maintain our institution’s and students’ academic integrity.

Personal Tutor Colloquium

At the start of June, the academic community came together to discuss the importance of, and share practice surrounding, personal tutoring at the annual Personal Tutoring Colloquium. The University of Portsmouth has long valued personal tutoring as often the front-line of student support, where our academics are allocated hours and touch points to support our students’ orientation, transition and retention in university life.

The day began with a keynote address from Jim Dickinson of Wonkhe, who gave an up-to-date picture of current Higher Education regulation from the Office for Students, and related to this to the challenges students face in the cost-of-living crisis. This difficult scenario for university students set the event’s themes, where speakers included Wellbeing Signposting Advice sessions and support in student belonging.

The highlight was the student panel, where members of the Students’ Union fed back on their experience of personal tutoring, celebrating staff efforts to support student success.

Learning and Teaching Day 

Later during the same week, we had the annual Learning and Teaching Conference: the largest event run for educational development at Portsmouth, where there are opportunities for staff to share practice across parallel sessions.

This year, the event landed a week after the launch of the University’s new Education Strategy, where Professor Paul Hayes and Professor Harriet Dunbar-Morris discussed the strategic priorities of engaging every student in a life-changing experience; meeting changing demand and widen participation; and supporting our staff to be creative and bold. It was the final priority on which the day particularly focused, where the first plenary shared inspirational lightning talks of enhancements made by colleagues at Portsmouth such as embedding internationalisation into the curriculum, the impact of the Eldon Hub+ and the Faculty of Business and Law (BAL) ‘Ask Us Anything’ events.

Sharing and celebrating best practice created a thriving atmosphere of the excellent innovation at Portsmouth, including methods to build and communicate academic integrity in BAL from Emma Winter and Claire Burrell, critical discussions around student satisfaction and content capture from Shaun Seale in Technology Enhanced Learning, and ‘5 tips for Engaging Level 4 Students in the Placement Preparation Process’ from the University Placement Team. Workshops also featured topics such as engaging in the Student Consultancy Service and adapting to generative AI in assessment design.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Festival

June also saw the annual Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Festival, which offers a week of activities for academics, professional services and students alike to engage with.

This year, the event had themes of both supporting certain student groups through educating staff to be more considered and inclusive in their practices, and to celebrate the wonderful staff and student diversity at Portsmouth. Focusing on certain student groups, events included ‘Understanding the experiences of autistic students and how to best support them at university’, and ‘Exploring the educational experiences of disadvantaged boys’, giving staff the opportunity to learn from research to improve their practice.

The keynote of the event took place halfway through the week, where Portsmouth welcomed Professor Digby Warren from London Metropolitan University to speak on ‘Exploring the educational experiences of disadvantaged boys’. The event also included several networking and support sessions where colleagues and students could come together to share learning and celebrate diversity at the University of Portsmouth.

Employability Conference

With the advent of the new Department of Student and Graduate Success (drawing together Academic Development, Technology Enhanced Learning and Careers & Employability Services), the University welcomed back the Employability Conference in September.

This conference prioritises sharing of practice that works in embedding employability into the curriculum, and more than 25 staff discussed examples where academics had meaningfully built careers planning and employability skills into their core curriculum. Additionally, the conference heard from several plenary speakers, including from our keynote speaker Dr Charlie Ball of Jisc who highlighted the most recent trends in graduate recruitment.

Overall, the event drew 138 registrations from academics across the institution, which saw the University launch the new Portsmouth Award to increase student employability and heard the most recent briefing on the impact of placements on graduate outcomes.

EQUIP Course Leader Briefing

As part of annual quality assurance and enhancement activities, every course leader at Portsmouth completes an Excellence and Quality Improvement Plan (EQUIP) each year to report on progress and share best practice.

To greater support colleagues going through this process, Academic Development organised a final event of the summer to focus on briefing course leaders on best practice in writing SMART Actions, engaging with students in co-creation and using our data dashboard.

This event saw over 60 course leaders come together for Q&A activities, workshops on best practice and to hear about the new EQUIP Support Package, which this year includes new support streams such as fostering a sense of belonging, supporting student retention, and supporting graduate employability. 

Looking ahead to 2023-24

As Academic Development look to the year ahead, delivering on the Education Strategy is a top priority. The team are moving into their rolling CPD Professional Development Series, as well as creating opportunities to share best practice at our mini festivals (online conferences).

Author: Dr Andy Clegg is Head of Academic Development, and Tom Lowe is a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education, at the University of Portsmouth