Two members of staff from KIITE recently presented their work on student response systems at the Academic Practice and Technology (APT) Conference 2019.

Dr Chris Little, Teaching Fellow and Learning Developer, and Cat Hallam, Learning Technology Officer for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, attended the 17th APT conference, held at University College London.

This year’s conference - titled ‘The changing roles of educators in higher and further education: the shape of teaching today’ - explored how higher and further educators in 2019 are responding to meet the challenges of student expectations about teaching quality, and how their education should prepare them effectively for their future careers.

As part of the programme, Chris and Cat delivered a presentation about their institutional projects to scope student and staff conceptions of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) student response systems (SRS) across Keele University: ‘When using these systems, this fear is gone: Student and staff understandings of student response systems.’

Chris and Cat shared insights into an institutional research project that they have been working on with Pete Lonsdale (Learning Technology Manager, School of Nursing and Midwifery), Daryl Kerr (Faculty Learning Technology Officer, Science Learning Centre) and Tom Lovelock (Learning Technology Officer, School of Medicine), to gather student and staff evaluative data on how SRS are used and what qualitative impact they are perceived to have.

Chris explained how the project will continue to gather data in order to arrive at a single, institutionally supported SRS solution, gathering examples of best practice along the way.

Chris commented:

"This was my first time at a conference more specifically aimed at technology and it had some really useful workshops that will definitely impact on my own practice. Cat and I presented preliminary findings from a project at Keele scoping out the innovative ways in which teaching staff are using student response systems, specifically Mentimeter. The talk went really well and prompted some really interesting discussions with external colleagues about how they support and encourage staff to use such systems at their institutions, which will definitely feed into the future of this project and other KIITE curriculum design projects."

Cat added:

"The conference provided a fantastic array of talks reflecting on the important role of education. APT covered the integral role academic practice interplays with technology. The discussions reflected how education technology has not changed significantly over the last decade, it’s reimagining the mode of delivery to meet the needs of diverse learners and staff that’s predominantly changed. As always, a good opportunity to disseminate good practice happening at Keele, reflect, explore and gain further insights about our roles and responsibilities in HE. I left with excellent innovative examples of technology embedded in the curricula that I'm keen to start implementing soon!"

For further information about APT 2019, and to view Chris and Cat’s presentation slides, visit the conference website.