Teaching Insights Seminars 2025/2026
Facilitated by the Teaching and Learning Academy, we are pleased to launch this year’s Teaching Insights Seminar series. These seminars are delivered by LJMU staff and present current issues, and practice related to teaching, assessment, and the student experience.
The schedule is presented below. Full details for each session are included as well as links to event booking forms.
Faq Items
A case study in accessing student voice: using a reflective tool for mid-module review to support module enhancement
Sarah Yearsley, Senior Lecturer, Education and Childhood, School of Education
Monday 6 October 2025, 2 to 3pm
Student voice plays a critical role in shaping inclusive, responsive, and effective higher education environments. By actively involving students in decision-making, curriculum development, and institutional governance, universities can better align their practices with the lived experiences and needs of diverse learners (Cook-Sather, 2006). Recognising students as partners rather than passive recipients of education fosters a greater sense of belonging, ownership, and engagement, which are factors strongly associated with student retention and success (Healey, Flint and Harrington, 2014). Moreover, listening to student perspectives can help institutions address structural inequalities and design support mechanisms that are culturally and contextually relevant (NUS, 2019). Embedding student voice is therefore not only a democratic imperative but a strategic necessity for building inclusive and equitable higher education.
This seminar will discuss the use of a reflective tool, which illuminates student perceptions of their teaching, learning and assessments, through the completion of a reflective sorting exercise and peer discussion. Used as a mid-module review it can contribute to ongoing conversations with students on module delivery, shape future teaching activities and develop student’s skills and attributes. The session will include a practical application of the tool where we can reflect on our own teaching practice and how we feel we support effective teaching and learning and engaging student experience.
The significant role of educators in supporting care-experienced students
Chantelle Lunt, Tutor and PhD Researcher, School of Education
Thursday 13 November 2025, 3 to 4pm
This seminar, led by Chantelle Lunt, will explore the pivotal role of educators in shaping the educational experiences and outcomes of care-experienced students. It will examine how relational practice, pedagogical approaches, and institutional cultures influence access, retention, and progression for this group of learners. The seminar will consider both the barriers created by structural inequalities and the opportunities for educators to provide stability, advocacy, and aspiration. In doing so, it will highlight theoretical and practical insights into how education professionals can better support care-experienced students to thrive within further and higher education.
Register for The significant role of educators in supporting care-experienced students
Investigating how Psychological Capital could provide new insights into closing achievement gaps and shaping the future of student success in higher education
Andy Doyle, Associate Dean (Education and Student Experience), Faculty of Society and Culture, Programme Leader, Liverpool Business School
Thursday 11 December 2025, 2pm to 3pm
This session introduces the construct of Psychological Capital (PsyCap) and its emerging role in higher education research. PsyCap, comprising hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism, has been widely studied in organisational contexts, where it has been shown to positively influence performance, engagement, and wellbeing. However, its application to student achievement, particularly in relation to socioeconomic disparities, remains significantly underexplored
The session will outline the rationale for investigating PsyCap as a potential mechanism to mitigate persistent inequalities in continuation, completion, and attainment outcomes for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Drawing on the theoretical foundations of positive psychology and the evolution of capital, the session will position PsyCap within wider debates on social mobility, widening participation, and student success.
Register for our Investigating how Psychological Capital could provide new insights event
Embedding Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) across disciplines
Dr Katherine Neary, Senior Lecturer and Dr Konstantina Skritsovali, Principal Lecturer, Liverpool Business School
Tuesday 10 February 2026, 1.30 to 2.30pm
This interactive session is designed to support colleagues in exploring how Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) can be meaningfully integrated into their own subjects and disciplines. While ESD is often closely associated with fields such as Environmental Sciences and Biology, adopting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework reveals its broader relevance. This perspective highlights how diverse areas of study at LJMU align with global sustainability challenges, including the climate emergency, and how they contribute to enhancing student employability in a rapidly evolving world.
The Liverpool City Region offers a rich context for demonstrating the importance of sustainability within our changing regional landscape. Increasing employer demand for graduates with ‘green skills’ is shaping teaching and learning practices across the University, in line with the LJMU Climate Action Plan. Drawing on examples from Liverpool Business School, this session will showcase how student skills development can be supported both within and beyond traditional classroom settings. It will also offer practical suggestions to help colleagues identify and embed ESD opportunities in their teaching in ways that are meaningful and impactful for student learning and future career readiness.
Register for Embedding Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) across disciplines
Supporting students with life-limiting illnesses
Joanne Vincett, Senior Lecturer, Liverpool Business School and Dr Marek Palace, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology
Thursday 12 March 2026, 2 to 3pm
This interactive workshop will explore the understated and sensitive topic of how to support students who disclose life-limiting or terminal illnesses. Life-limiting illnesses are those that are incurable and likely to lead to death, such as late-stage cancers, neurological diseases, lung disease and heart disease (Marie Curie, 2022).
The university currently does not collect information about students with life-limiting illnesses. Therefore, the number of students affected is unknown. However, Jo and Marek have had lived experiences of supporting students who disclosed their terminal diagnoses whilst on programme.
LJMU students who receive a life-limiting diagnosis during their studies face significant difficulties, particularly when they wish to continue their studies. For some students, completing their studies represents a profound commitment to personal goals and provides intellectual stimulation and distraction at a time when everything seems out of their control. Continuing their studies has the potential to offer a sense of purpose and accomplishment during a period of uncertainty.
However, what do you do when a student discloses a diagnosis to you? In small groups, attendees will discuss scenarios of situations, based on cases from Jo and Marek’s lived experiences and Jo’s research. Attendees will decide how to approach the situations as a tutor or supporting staff member. They will gain insights into relevant policies and guidance for supporting and signposting students, as well as the importance of language, confidentiality and emotional wellbeing (of the student and staff member).
Marek has had lived experience as a supervisor to a postgraduate research student who disclosed a life-limiting illness. The student succeeding in completing the PhD programme. Jo has had three experiences in which postgraduate students disclosed life-limiting cancer diagnoses during the studies. This motivated her to co-lead a project to develop a ‘Living to Learn Charter’ that outlines the support and provisions LJMU offers students with life-limiting illnesses. Based on findings from this project, she has also started a new Cancer Support Ambassador Network to support anyone in the LJMU community who is affected by cancer and would like to talk to someone.
Register for Supporting students with life-limiting illnesses
Enhancing the student experience by going off campus: how do students benefit from off-campus events, and how can we create events that enable more students to participate?
Janine Melvin, Student Experience Officer, Faculty of Society and Culture
Thursday 16 April 2026, 10 to 11am
“In delivering an outstanding student experience at LJMU, our impact must reach far beyond the curriculum. Moreover, it must embrace all aspects of student life, academic success, personal growth, well-being, and fostering a sense of belonging.”
From local day trips to field trips abroad, there’s evidence to suggest that events that take students off campus can help to bring them together as a cohort and enhance their learning. Activities like walking, travelling and even waiting around create new opportunities for students to get to know each other and their academic staff.
This session will look at research that asks students and alumni about their off-campus activities and encourages them to evaluate their experience in terms of learning gains, and of making and strengthening connections amongst their cohort. It will also look at the reasons student give for not participating in off campus events, to enable trip leaders to plan and promote events in a way that enables students to feel engaged, supported, and empowered throughout their educational journey.
This seminar will include practical advice and support, on the planning and implementing of off-campus events, from dealing with travel agents and going through the Risk Assessment process, to dealing with problems whilst away.
The session will conclude with a discussion where participants can share their own experiences of off campus events, what worked well, what problems arose, and what can we learn from each other’s recommendations.
Register for Enhancing the student experience by going off campus
Reflective practice in action: integrating learners’ reflections into teaching, learning and assessment
Robyn Wright, Lecturer, School of Law and Justice Studies
Thursday 7 May 2.30 to 3.30pm
The value of reflective practice in education is well established; it fosters self-directed learning, critical thinking, and self-awareness, thereby supporting learners’ personal and professional development. In this seminar I will share how I use reflective practice to support deeper learning in the classroom. We will consider strategies for engaging learners in reflection, from normalising everyday reflection with our peers, to writing reflectively for assessments. I am interested, too, in the role of reflection in experiential learning, so I will describe how student police officers use reflection to evidence their knowledge, skills and behaviours, and how we might adapt this for undergraduates who may not share the same level of personal or occupational experience. Framed by the concepts of andragogy and experiential learning, my aim is to offer practical examples that are relevant and adaptable across disciplinary settings.