Intercultural insight: reflective practices for GTAs

Lead: Dr Zi Wang (Student Opportunity)

This project, consisting of two repeated two-hour workshops, aims to enhance GTAs’ reflection skills by getting them to apply some useful models, and to investigate their intercultural experiences in their teaching. While reflective practices are highly valued in the professional development of novice teachers such as the APP PGR programme at Warwick, the level of GTAs’ reflexivity and the quality of their reflection could be improved due to their lack of experience and lack of training. We would particularly like to draw GTAs’ attention to the intercultural aspect of their experience, because intercultural encounters make a large part of their teaching experience at Warwick and can be challenging.

Student focus groups to support disability-linked inclusion

Lead: Dr Romain Chenet (GSD)

Inclusion is and will remain at the heart of this pilot project, targeting needs for a rounded and student-led view of where barriers or impediments to undergraduate student inclusion may exist amidst complex phenomena: varied administrative, pedagogical, and societal dimensions that result in multi-layered and diversely embodied experiences amongst learners affected by students with Specific Learning Differences and/or neurodiversity conditions (SpLDs-ND) whilst undertaking undergraduate degrees. The project will advance via focus group sessions led by a staff member and student researcher, with 5-6 attendees per session. The researchers involved have personal experiences with SpLDs-ND statuses, and we commit to a compassionate, learner-centred, and generative approach in pursuing this project.

Assessed Groupwork Scoping Activity

Lead: Tom Greenway (Student Opportunity) and Mujthaba Ahtamad (WMG), Designing and Assessing Group Work

We currently do not know the extent to which assessed groupwork is used across the university, how many students experience it, and what the different assignment creation and assessment practices are currently being used. As such, we do not have clear examples of best practice or certainty on what the most common practices are. We need to research current practices across the university to help establish best practices and find ways of improving existing practice. Getting an overview of how assessed teamwork is used across the university will enable us to identify areas of excellence and areas where we can target for improvement.

To operationalise and strategically integrate the Warwick Belonging Framework across the University

Lead: Dr Tom Ritchie (Chemistry) and Inca Hide-Wright (Leadership and Management Development), Building Belonging Framework

This funding request supports the continued collaborative development and implementation of the Warwick Building Belonging Framework. By funding student participation in learning circle activities, we can:

• Sustain Collaborative Development: Maintain the collaborative approach that was instrumental in creating the framework by paying students for their time and expertise.
• Enhance Framework Effectiveness: Enable students to actively engage in testing and refining the framework through hands-on application and user feedback.
• Promote Framework Dissemination: Support student participation in the Warwick Education Conference, facilitating the sharing of knowledge and best practices related to the Warwick Belonging Framework across the University.