ID210 Keele Education Laboratory

The Idea

We need to return to our innovative and experimental origins by establishing ourselves as leaders in evidence-based education and curriculum innovation. 

The Keele Education Laboratory (KEL) would create a formal structure for collaboration between students, academic and professional services staff to develop and test curriculum innovations. This would ensure that we are ideally placed to enact dynamic and agile curricula fit for the mid-21st century. The KEL would catalyse change in the teaching of our disciplines by encouraging experimentation and evaluation in our teaching, learning and assessment, provide a mechanism for scaling successful innovations and be the structure that bridges the silos between disciplines and directorates. The KEL would support innovation and development across our key curriculum strands: social, ethical and environmental responsibility; wellbeing in the curriculum; inclusion and accessibility; employability and skills; research-informed teaching and digital excellence. This would ensure that our graduates are equipped for skills-based portfolio careers and making meaningful contributions to their communities. The KEL would facilitate and sustain exciting interdisciplinary collaborations across the institution to develop innovative new ways of teaching and assessing topics, developing and evaluating new pedagogical approaches, and disseminating outcomes extensively to realise the broader impacts of our innovations. By sitting alongside our existing formal processes such as portfolio reviews, processes where student feedback or metrics indicate action must be taken and the work of those with formal roles in education, the KEL would be able to support great emerging ideas from anyone involved in education. For students, this would represent a structured and rewarded way of engaging beyond module feedback forms and could include existing mechanisms such as student placement modules and internships, as well as being active participants in trialling activities on their programmes of study.  

The KEL would aim to: 

Facilitate calls for collaborators for projects, enable effective project management, provide support for evaluation, dissemination and management of risks. 

Support staff developing an evidence base for exciting and engaging new pedagogies and innovative teaching underpinned by a scholarly approach and effective evaluation methods. 

Develop inter-professional and student-staff collaboration and cooperation fully across Keele. A significant barrier to the success of education enhancement and pedagogical innovation is the perception (particularly amongst academic staff) of barriers such as timetabling, QA and ‘risk’ management, the challenges of acquiring protected time to develop collaborations and ideas and trial them, and reasonable workload for staff and students to co-create, collaborate and innovate.  

The KEL would be a refreshed approach to teaching and pedagogical innovation with embedded student co-creation and more dynamic collaborations, leading to an enhanced student experience. Why are we letting others dictate our education offerings when our curricula need continual renewal to reflect the pace of change in many disciplines? And to what extent are we teaching what we have always taught because those others, who taught different generations of students, made decisions about content?

Why This Idea Should Be Considered

We have talented Education and Scholarship academic staff, amazing colleagues in KIITE, IDS, Library Education Centre, APP, QA, other professional and technical services roles. Communication between these groups is limited, often to operational emails and formal committees. Our current invitation to submit strategy ideas clearly demonstrates a willingness by staff to contribute more broadly. This idea would lead to wider recommendation of the value of all colleagues and ensure that those talented colleagues are recognised and rewarded for the contributions they make. 

Current models of engaging with students (Student Voice, Module Evaluation) are not effective across all programmes/schools. We need to demonstrate that we are serious about working with our students to shape the process of education not through opinions on products and this could achieve that through formalised and valued co-creation.

How We Would Implement This Idea

The KEL would be co-led by academics and professional services staff, acknowledging the considerable expertise already present at Keele. Establish priority areas for projects and put out calls for proposals, and trial new ways for staff to find potential collaborators and projects. Develop innovative and engaging CPD courses for staff (in-person, online, self-serve) to enable evidence-based design and evaluation of our education offerings at all scales. Implement evidence-based co-creation and collaboration models that are effective for working with students and develop new ones. Disseminate our approaches and position ourselves as leaders in evidence-based practice and education innovation.

What Success Would Look Like

Establishing KEL 

• Co-leadership between academic and professional services staff 
• A clear remit to support educational experimentation, evaluation and excellence 
• A clear participation and rewards structure for engaged students partners who co-create educational experiences on projects 
• Processes that lead to strong collaboration between students, professional services and academic staff to ensure high quality, innovative, and effective educational experiences within disciplines and in inter-disciplinary modules like the GCP. Rewards might take the form of wages (internships) or credit (placement module), as well as the opportunity to develop professional skills in an interdisciplinary team.  

Student Outcomes: 

• Adaptable and talented graduates, enthusiastic about lifelong learning, grounded in disciplinary knowledge and skills. 
• Student partners with strong skills and experience of working on projects with significant outcomes. Staff and Institutional Outcomes 
• A national and growing international reputation for dissemination of high quality innovative and evidence based educational approaches led by collaborative teams of students, academic and professional services staff. 
• Success in league tables and other subject and institutional measures of esteem (TEF, NSS, APP…). 
• Effective and nationally leading education experiences in our disciplines underpinned by motivated, supported and innovative teams of staff and students and supported with rigorous evidence.