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Academic Development Centre

NTFS 2024 Winners

Dr Isabel Fischer

Associate Professor (Reader) of Responsible Digital Innovation and Education

Isabel Fischer is an Associate Professor of Responsible Digital Innovation and Education at the University of Warwick Business School. Her teaching and research focus on the intersection of digital innovation, social inclusion, and pedagogy. Isabel spent over 20 years working in technology innovation and digital transformation at American Express and Visa, and was a regular guest speaker at her local university before transitioning into academia full-time in 2015. Her teaching reflects this industry experience bridging the gap between classroom learning and real-world application to support engagement and employability. Her use of innovative assessment methods such as scholarly blogs, allow students to publish their work on LinkedIn and enhance their professional online presence. Isabel also collaborates with the Warwick incubator as part of her interdisciplinary modules to embed entrepreneurship.

Isabel is deeply committed to education as a tool for social change. By 2022 she had developed an AI-based formative feedback tool to provide personalised, formative feedback on students’ assessment drafts, enhancing their academic writing skills and overall learning experience. This personalised support levels the playing field for students who may not have a strong academic support network, e.g. first-in-family, care experienced students, or international students.

Unlike generative AI tools, Isabel's tool focuses on improving students' own writing rather than replacing it. It offers guidance on referencing, spelling, grammar, sentiment analysis, and visualisations such as dynamic knowledge graphs, which help students understand the interconnections of their work. More recently Isabel has led intra and inter-university work on pedagogic practices using generative AI. She developed a comprehensive open-access resource bank for educators and students, capturing diverse voices through videos, podcasts, and reports.

Isabel’s doctoral research investigated students’ perceived obstacles to academic and employment success. Discovering that female students expressed an ongoing confidence gap Isabel became an advocate for inclusive education, creating an empowering classroom environment for all students, with a particular emphasis on supporting oral communication.

Isabel believes deeply in the transformative power of reflective practice, which led to the achievement of Advance HE Principal Fellowship. She is a strong advocate for Fellowship, encouraging and mentoring fellow educators to develop their reflective practice.

Professor Jane Bryan

Professor 

A Professor of Law and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Jane has devoted her career to creating a more just and inclusive higher education, empowering all students, particularly those from marginalised communities, to find their voice and use this to drive change in HE and beyond.  

Jane qualified as a solicitor in 1995, joining Warwick Law School in 2009. Jane’s belief in the transformative strength of dialogue to redress power imbalances, connect and develop others, and build and repair community bonds has driven her far beyond her formal roles. Jane has been a champion and change-maker for student voice, peer-dialogue on teaching, and dialogue-based conflict resolution institutionally, nationally, and internationally. 

Aware of the harm caused by adversarial litigation, Jane qualified as a mediator to empower those in conflict to resolve issues themselves. Jane has been passionate in bringing an understanding of mediation into the education of future lawyers to seed change societally in how conflict and disagreement is addressed. In 2021, Jane created the ground-breaking, multi-award-winning peer mediation service at Warwick to enable dialogue to help restore fractured relationships amongst the staff and student body. She was also appointed chair of the Academic Forum of the Civil Mediation Council which seeks to support the embedding of mediation training and services within HE.

Jane was the first, and for a decade, the only teaching-focused academic in the research-intensive Warwick Law School. As a Foundation Fellow of the Warwick International Higher Education Academy, Jane has long advocated for parity of esteem and opportunity for teaching-focused staff, co-drafting a briefing document which led to new academic promotion criteria at Warwick enabling promotion for teaching excellence and co-leading a university Promotion and Reward group which supports the career progression of teaching-focused academics.

Jane has also been committed, without any formal role, to bridging the gap between research and teaching, championing student research across the globe. Jane leads the national Posters in Parliament annual student research exhibition and co-organised the joint British and World Conference of Undergraduate Research at Warwick in 2023 which brought together the largest gathering of student researchers outside of the US.