Teaching Insights Seminars 2026/2027
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 current schedule is presented below with more sessions to be added. Full details for each session are included as well as links to event booking forms.
Faq Items
From Images to Impact: How Photovoice can shape student experience, pedagogy, and curriculum
Emma Ball, Senior Lecturer, School of Sport and Exercise Sciences
Thursday 29 October 2026, 2 to 3pm Online
Embedding student voice in higher education creates opportunities to develop practices that are responsive, meaningful and effective. This seminar explores the use of photovoice, a participatory visual research methodology that empowers students to communicate their lived experiences through photography and critical reflection, both within and beyond the university boundary. By positioning students as active partners in co-creation and knowledge generation, photovoice provides a powerful, engaging mechanism for collaboratively designing solutions that enhance teaching, learning, curriculum development, institutional policy, that inform the wider student experience.
The seminar will draw on a range of case studies from different disciplines and educational settings to demonstrate how photovoice has been used to facilitate authentic, student-generated evidence to inform the co-creation of pedagogies, curriculum design, and generate change. In doing so it will highlight how visual narratives can reveal aspects of student experience that may remain hidden through traditional evaluation methods, creating opportunities for students and staff to work in partnership to shape educational practices. The session will enable attendees to gain practical guidance on implementing photovoice within their own contexts, alongside an understanding of its methodological, ethical, and pedagogical considerations and to use co-creative approaches to strengthen student engagement, influence policy, and foster innovative practice.
Inclusive Teaching and Learning: Tools and Techniques for Higher Education
Rachel White, Senior Lecturer, School of Biological and Environmental Sciences
Wednesday 11 November 2026, 3 to 4pm Online
The core principles of inclusive teaching centre on equity, belonging, and flexibility, celebrating the diversity of learners while promoting equitable access to participation and achievement. Join this interactive workshop to explore evidence based approaches for creating inclusive, engaging, and stimulating learning environments in higher education. Together, we’ll identify barriers to learning, such as physical access, language, and cognitive differences, and identify practical, adaptable solutions through teaching design and varied assessment strategies. The session introduces universal design for learning (UDL), active and collaborative methods, and reflective practice, to ensure all students feel valued and supported. Through case examples and peer discussion, we’ll demonstrate how small pedagogical adjustments, such as providing pre reading lists, chunking information on slides, using varied questioning techniques, and summarising taught sessions, can transform engagement and participation. You will leave with a practical toolkit of methods and techniques to embed inclusive practices across disciplines, and foster belonging, enhance participation.
Book now for Inclusive Teaching and Learning: Tools and Techniques for Higher Education
Skills for the future: A case for group project assessments?
Lucy Burns, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Science
Thursday 26 November, 10 to 11am, Online
Many students dread group projects because of past experiences of unequal contributions, unfair marking practices, and poor leadership – and staff may bring their own educational or professional experiences of dysfunctional groups into the classroom when teaching modules with group projects. This session argues that group work can be transformative in developing students’ confidence, problem-solving, and communication skills; however, we shouldn’t assume that students already know how to do this difficult work. Using my experience of designing and leading a level 5 Creative Writing module with a group-assessed creative project, I’ll argue that students are best placed to succeed when group work is scaffolded by resources, practice, and critical reflection. I’ll share examples of the successes and challenges of group work on the module and offer colleagues practical exercises and further resources for modules with group projects.
Book now for Skills for the future: A case for group project assessments?
Creating Inclusive Learning Environments: From Listening to Action
Alexandra Williams, Teaching Fellow in Interior Architecture and Nicola Toomey, Senior Lecturer, Liverpool School of Art and Creative Industries
Wednesday 9 December 12.30 to 1.30pm, In person, Studio 1, John Lennon Art and Design Building
The value of inclusive teaching environments is well established. Every space and curriculum makes assumptions about who belongs in it, and those assumptions shape belonging, engagement, and outcomes for every learner.
In this session we reflect on our critical appraisal of Studio 1, the principal teaching space for the undergraduate Architecture and Interior Architecture courses at the School of Art and Creative Industries. As a course centred on experiential learning, following Kolb's cycle of concrete experience, reflection, and active experimentation, Studio 1 needs to be carefully managed as a flexible, multi-use space serving a wide range of activity and need.
Central to our appraisal was a participatory co-creation event conducted with our Level 4 students. We will share how we designed accessible activities to gather student feedback and spatial proposals, how we structured the session to enable genuine participation rather than passive response, and how we used what students told us to inform concrete changes to the environment.
The session is structured around a transferable question: how do you find out what is and is not working in your teaching environment, and what do you do with that knowledge? Held in Studio 1, the session will use artefacts from our co-creation event - annotated plans, student feedback, and the preferred inclusive studio proposal - as evidence of the process in action. The proposed activity invites attendees to experience one of our student engagement activities applied to their own teaching environments, surfacing common concerns and allowing the discussion of transferability to be shaped by what participants discover during the session.
Book now for Creating Inclusive Learning Environments: From Listening to Action
A Strengths-Based Approach to Personal Tutoring
Jayne Erlam, Senior Lecturer, and Fiona McClelland, Academic Programme Tutor, School of Law and Justice Studies
Students on vocational and apprenticeship programmes often balance academic study alongside demanding professional roles and workplace responsibilities. This can create unique challenges for personal tutors seeking to provide effective support, maintain engagement, and build meaningful tutor-student relationships.
This Teaching Insights session will explore how a strengths-based approach can enhance the personal tutor role when working with learners, particularly on vocational programmes. Drawing on Tony Ward's Good Lives Model, the session will consider how focusing on learners' strengths, motivations and wellbeing can support academic achievement, professional development and learner retention.
Through practical examples, attendees will explore how strengths-based principles can be applied in personal tutoring conversations to help students identify and build on their existing capabilities, navigate challenges, and thrive both academically and professionally.
Key themes include:
- using strengths-based approaches within the personal tutor role
- applying the Good Lives Model to learner support and development
- promoting wellbeing, engagement and academic success
- supporting learner satisfaction, retention and professional growth
Book now for A Strengths-Based Approach to Personal Tutoring
AI Agents as Safe Practice Spaces: Supporting Learning, Confidence and Employability
James Hartwell, Senior Lecturer, School of Engineering and Built Environment
This reflective session explores the use of a SchoolAI agent as a learning tool to support intellectually stimulating, professionally relevant and student-centred teaching. Drawing on a 12-week module design in which the AI agent is used at three strategic points, the session will consider how guided AI interaction can help students engage with critical course content while developing confidence, communication, judgement, and other key professional skills.
The session will examine how AI agents can provide a safe, low-stakes space for students to test ideas, rehearse professional conversations, receive formative prompts, and prepare for placement or graduate roles. Although the example is drawn from quantity surveying education, the approach will be intentionally subject agnostic, encouraging colleagues across programmes, schools, and faculties to consider how similar tools might support small and large cohorts. The session will conclude with reflections on practical implementation, student engagement, and responsible use.
Book now for AI Agents as Safe Practice Spaces: Supporting Learning, Confidence and Employability