A one minute video is created using PowerPoint with attention to colour, text, animation, and music. This video is shared with students to update them on new resources available on Moodle as well as upcoming teaching sessions. The intention of the video is to provide important information in a lively way, therefore working as an alternative to email. The videos are also personalised to include featured messages to encourage our students.

Dr Bryan Brazeau has a background in various cultural and linguistic academic settings, which has helped him devise this concept and subsequent pedagogical practise. The idea seeks to encourage learning across ‘neighbourhoods’ or linguistic boundaries. In an academic setting, this looks at tapping and utilising the existing pool of linguistic and cultural variation within the classroom on a given topic. Interdisciplinarity is at the heart of this practice tied with the idea of linguistic hospitality, coined by Paul Ricoeur, the notion of welcoming foreign cultures and languages into one’s own. This practice is very much in the embryonic stages, but presents the opportunity to take a different perspective on language in western education while merging the borders of subject-based teaching.

To support students when reviewing material, presentations are accompanied with an audio recording and transcript. During the pandemic, when video recording became more common, these were also accompanied with a transcript of the presentation. A transcript is important for inclusive and accessible learning as it allows students to read the presentation.

Online Intercultural Exchanges offer a form of computer-mediated learning whereby students from geographically remote classes work together online (in pairs or small groups) on learning tasks developed by teachers or educational facilitators. They allow students to have a meaningful intercultural experience as part of their education, increasing mutual understanding and global citizenship. Besides, our students’ feedback has also shown that this pedagogy has helped them to boost their mental health and wellbeing. This was particularly evident during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Students develop Multiple Choice Questions as part of a formative assessment process, a percentage of which contribute to their summative assessment. This fosters respect, reciprocity and shared responsibility and provides understanding of the development of their assessment as well as investment in a collaborative partnership approach to their assessment.

In the Chemistry department, every student in their 1st year has compulsory intercultural training as part of their core modules.

Policy Briefings and Pitch assessments are “authentic tasks” that offer value beyond instrumental gains, and expand student reward, motivation and welfare. The model offers “assessment for learning” around a specific issue of personal interest, while demonstrating both substantive subject knowledge and relevant process skills: of rigorous research, transparent scholarly, engaging and persuasive presentation. Students receiving appropriate marks can revise work following summative feedback; where quality thresholds are met, Briefings can be published online. This immediately valorises assessment and creates evidence for employability. Briefings can be substituted for other disciplinary relevant artefacts.

As a whole, our 2nd year cohort have encountered consistent difficulty with a particular assignment in my module. This is largely accounted for by assignment timing (after the Christmas vacation and an early January exam) and poor time management by students- however, this results in less-than-optimal coursework for students (in terms of format and summative/formative objectives) and a potential wellbeing for both staff and students. By reviewing assignment objectives, constraining the time demand of the assignment, but not compromising its ability to differentiate and challenge students, we have created a more resource-efficient/wellbeing-consistent assessment for both staff and students.