#LTHEchat

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 11th February at 8pm GMT with guest Dr Alina Congreve to discuss how can we empower students to be part of a larger university ‘How real is too real? Authentic learning and climate change across the curriculum’?

Climate change is no longer confined to the parts of the curriculum where it has traditionally been expected to sit. While environmental science and geography have long engaged with climate change as core content, students are now encountering it across a much wider range of disciplines (Molthan-Hill and associates, 2025).

For example, law students are grappling with climate litigation, regulatory frameworks, and questions of responsibility across jurisdictions. Fashion students are engaging with fast fashion, supply chains, chemical dyes, and waste. Chemists are working on materials, energy transitions, and environmental impacts of production. Business students are examining climate risk, reporting, and organisational responsibility. Creative writing students are exploring climate futures, loss, and uncertainty.

This shift is not simply the result of institutional strategies or policy decisions. It is being driven by students themselves. The annual national survey of over 1,600 students in the UK in further and higher education, reports (79 %) reported being “fairly” or “very concerned” about climate change (SOS, 2025). Research by Leal Filho and associates notes that students believe climate change education can shape their attitudes and equip them with skills useful in their future professional lives and recommend that universities include climate change in curricular and extracurricular programmes to prepare future professionals. Climate change is increasingly experienced not as a specialist topic, but as a defining context for work, creativity, and decision-making across fields.

For educators, this creates both opportunity and unease. Climate change is clearly relevant beyond core environmental disciplines, yet many staff do not identify as climate experts. The question becomes not whether climate change should appear in these curricula, but how it can be engaged with responsibly and meaningfully. It is at this point that debates about authentic learning come into sharp focus.

Authentic learning is not just a change of format

Discussions of authentic learning in higher education often begin with assessment design. Essays are replaced with policy briefs, exams with consultancy-style reports, imagined audiences with real ones. These moves are frequently framed as ways of making learning more relevant, students more employable, and the experience more “real”.

Climate change exposes the limits of this framing.

A policy brief written only for a marker can feel just as artificial as an essay, while a more traditional academic task can feel authentic if it helps students make sense of complex realities and their place within them. The authentic learning literature consistently suggests that authenticity does not reside in task format alone, but emerges from purpose, context, and sustained engagement. Students are adept at recognising when “real-world” tasks are only nominally real and disconnected from meaningful participation.

This matters particularly in climate change education, where students are often acutely aware of the gap between curricular activity and lived reality. Authenticity here needs to become less about surface realism and more about how students are positioned as learners, participants, and future professionals.

Climate change as a super-wicked problem

Climate change is widely described in the research literature as a wicked, and in some accounts a super-wicked, problem. It has no clear solution, no single authority, and no neutral framing. Time to act is constrained, and many of the students we teach already have direct experience of its impacts.

My work with Iain Cross has explored what this framing means for curriculum design, showing how climate change is often taught as a technical issue rather than as a complex, interconnected system (Cross & Congreve, 2021). To use an analogy, to understand the challenges face by contemporary rail passengers, we first spend week understanding how a steam engine works. Where students are taught about climate change, this can often take the form of weeks of lectures about atmospheric science, with some technical fixes such as heat pumps and battery storage bolted on at the end. From a pedagogical perspective, this distinction matters. Many models of problem-based and challenge-based learning implicitly assume that problems are ultimately solvable within bounded contexts. Climate change resists this logic.

Mitchell’s Wicked from the Start (2023) is helpful here in clarifying why this mismatch persists. Mitchell argues that climate change education is constrained not only by the nature of the problem itself, but also by features of education systems that prioritise certainty, content coverage, and closure. He does not focus on higher education directly, however his analysis is useful for university teachers in highlighting why pedagogies oriented towards open-ended inquiry are better aligned with wicked problems than approaches that assume clear answers or resolution.

Students cannot meaningfully “solve” climate change in a module, a programme, or even a career. When curricula imply otherwise, learners often recognise the dissonance between educational tasks and reality. This can lead to disengagement, cynicism, or a sense that learning is performative rather than meaningful. Authentic learning in this context does not require solutions. It requires helping students understand what it means to act, think, and make judgements within conditions of uncertainty, disagreement, and constraint.

Agency without solutionism

University discourse around climate change frequently emphasises individual responsibility through consumer behaviours. Reusable bottles, keep cups, and lifestyle choices are visible and easily promoted. Research and commentary have noted that such framings to individualise responsibility can obscure the structural dimensions of climate change. Within the curriculum, there is an opportunity to offer a different form of agency.

When students make a small but genuine contribution to one element of a complex problem, the experience is qualitatively different from being positioned as responsible consumers. Working collaboratively on a bounded aspect of a larger issue can foster a sense of participation without implying solutionism. This kind of participation is associated with deeper engagement than activities framed primarily around individual behavioural change (Cross & Congreve, 2021).

Sharp and associates (2021) offer a complementary perspective. Their work does not propose students attend lectures about techncial solutions to environmental wicked problems. Instead, it explores pedagogical approaches that emphasise situated engagement, bounded inquiry, and co-learning, and argues that such approaches are more likely to support student agency and hope than teaching that foregrounds scale, abstraction, or global complexity too early. This emphasis aligns closely with concerns about agency in climate change education, without implying that students can or should resolve the problem itself.

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Emotion as part of authentic learning

Climate change education is unavoidably affective. There is increasing recognition that students bring anxiety, anger, fatigue, as well as urgency and hope into climate-related learning. This is why talking about the full range of climate emotions is more useful than climate anxiety. From an authentic learning perspective, emotion is not something to be managed away. It is a signal of how students are being positioned within learning activities. Powerlessness often leads to disengagement, while excessive moral burden can generate anxiety or withdrawal. In contrast, shared and bounded forms of participation can support motivation and care without overwhelming learners. Sharp and associates discussion of hopeful pedagogies is useful here as an illustration of how pedagogical framing can shape students’ emotional relationship to wicked problems.

Staff authenticity and pedagogical responsibility

Authenticity does not apply only to students. It also applies to university staff.

Many educators feel increasing pressure to address climate change in their teaching, often without feeling confident or supported in how it intersects with their disciplinary identities. Research on sustainability education in higher education has repeatedly noted that curriculum change is difficult to sustain when it is experienced as imposed or misaligned with subject-specific practice.

Work by Molthan-Hill and colleagues, which draws on case studies and institutional experience, highlights the importance of supporting educators to engage with sustainability and climate change in ways that are pedagogically credible and professionally legitimate. Rather than prescribing particular content or methods, this work emphasises professional learning, dialogue, and shared sense-making as foundations for capacity-building.

If learning does not feel authentic to staff, it is unlikely to feel authentic to students. University teachers modelling uncertainty, partial knowledge, and thinking-in-progress can be pedagogically powerful, but it also challenges traditional expectations of expertise and authority. There are moments when careful scaffolding and limits to authenticity may be more responsible than full exposure to real-world complexity. Recognising those limits is not a failure of authenticity; it is part of ethical teaching.

An invitation

“How real is too real?” is not a question with a single answer. It is, however, a productive one.

In this LTHE Chat, we invite participants to reflect on how authenticity is framed in their own teaching, how students are invited into complex and unresolved problems, and how agency, emotion, community, and staff identity shape engagement with climate change across the curriculum.

Climate change does not simply demand more authentic learning. It demands a more careful, relational, and ethically attentive understanding of what authenticity actually means, and how we support educators to teach wicked problems well across disciplines and over time.

References

Cross, I.D. and Congreve, A., 2021. Teaching (super) wicked problems: authentic learning about climate change. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 45(4), pp.491-516.

Leal Filho, W., Ayal, D.Y., Wall, T., Shiel, C., Paco, A., Pace, P., Mifsud, M., Salvia, A.L., Skouloudis, A., Moggi, S. and LeVasseur, T., 2023. An assessment of attitudes and perceptions of international university students on climate change. Climate Risk Management, 39, p.100486.

Mitchell, J.T., 2023. Wicked from the start: Educational impediments to teaching about climate change (and how geography education can help). Education Sciences, 13(12), p.1174.

Molthan-Hill, P., Ledley, T.S., Blaj-Ward, L., Mbah, M.F. 2025. Climate Change Education at Universities: Relevance and Strategies for Every Discipline. In: Lackner, M., Sajjadi, B., Chen, WY. (eds) Handbook of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-84483-6_153

Sharp, E.L., Fagan, J., Kah, M., McEntee, M. and Salmond, J., 2021. Hopeful approaches to teaching and learning environmental “wicked problems”. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 45(4), pp.621-639.

Students organising for Sustainability. 2025. The latest student attitudes about climate change. https://sos-uk.org/post/the-latest-student-attitudes-about-climate-change/

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 4th February at 8pm GMT with guest Prof Stephen Rutherford to discuss how can we empower students to be part of a larger university ‘Learning Community’?

Humans are social animals; we build communities. Universities are themselves built of numerous intersecting communities, each with their own core identities – students, professional services, educators, ‘teaching and research-focused’, ‘teaching and scholarship-focused’, etc (Henkel, 2000). Communities can be powerful, if they are mutually supportive, and if they are inclusive. Arguably, as educational institutions, the most important community in a university is the ‘Learning Community’. But are our university learning communities as comprehensive and functional as they could be, or is there a divide that hinders its effectiveness?

Learning communities are groups of people who share common goals and work collaboratively (Tinto, 1997). There are examples of these in both the academic plenary and the student body. Students naturally form learning communities (reviewed by West & Williams, 2017). Learning communities can provide mutual support, a feeling of belonging, and ease transitions. Networking is important for students as they develop. At the micro level, students readily form networks of support, ‘Personal Learning Networks’ (PLNs; Fair, 2019) with peers, friends and (if provided the opportunities to collaborate in the pedagogic environment) course-mates. These PLNs are self-constructed, unique to each student, and enable students to identify whom to turn to for support. PLNs overlap reciprocally with other students, and evolve and reorganise over time (Rutherford, 2019). But learning communities are broader than these PLNs. Lenning et al. (2013) identify three interconnected learning communities: The student learning community (SLC), the professional/academic learning community (PLC), and learning organisations (LO). The SLC intersects with both the PLC and LO, and contains student-student, student-faculty, and student-curriculum interactions within it. There are therefore potential links between different learning community structures. But are these links as powerful as they could be, and how do we encourage members of the SLC into the PLC?

An effective learning community is a partnership between the learners and the educators. Importantly, that partnership involves two-way interaction and interplay. This interaction can be either face-to-face, online, or a mixture of both. Lenning et al. (2013) stress that powerful learning communities can empower students to excel over and above what they could achieve in isolation. Effective learning communities foster improved outcomes for students, higher academic achievement, increased retention, improved thinking and communication, greater understanding of self and others, and increased social effectiveness. Effective learning communities can also support students who are underachieving, or who are facing mental health challenges (Lenning & Ebbers, 1999). Being part of an effective learning community can impact upon the student’s transition to, transition through, and performance at, university. The more impactful learning communities in universities are underpinned by partnership between students and staff, where students are respected as equal contributors. Healey et al. (2014) provide excellent suggestions on how to build partnerships with students that empower them as change-makers and co-creators. This shared responsibility and equal agency is fundamental to a true learning community.

However, in practice there is typically a visible, and potentially damaging, disconnect between the student and academic learning communities in the HE sector. Although they intersect, they don’t necessarily interact as a partnership. This disconnect can lead to problems in communication, mismatched expectations, and low satisfaction with the educational environment (Rutherford, 2019). Yet the whole premise of a university should be that the students are effectively less-experienced versions of the academics, and therefore on the same continuum of development. As educators we need to ensure that we encourage our learners along this continuum. Socio-cultural models of learning emphasise that learning is typically (though not always) an interaction between more and less experienced individuals – a collaborative activity, undertaken by social interactions (Bruner, 1996). In particular, ‘apprenticeship’ models of learning emphasise guided interactions between learners and more-experienced others. Rogoff’s ‘guided participation’ (Rogoff, 2003), Vygotsky’s ‘Zone of Peripheral Development’ (Vygotsky, 1978), and Lave and Wenger’s ‘Legitimate Peripheral Participation’ within a Community of Practice (CoP; Lave and Wenger, 1991) present how a naïve learner becomes more expert. The learner, who is often initially on the periphery of a CoP, is paired with a more-experienced other. The learner becomes increasingly encultured within that CoP by increasingly complex interactions with the more experienced guide. Mercer’s ‘Intermental Development Zone’ (IDZ, Mercer, 1996) emphasises that this learning is reciprocal, and can occur between two learners, as well as between a learner and an expert. These models, however, assume that the learner and the expert are part of a progressive continuum of expertise within the same community of practice. Yet in universities, students and academics often perceive themselves as separate communities. This divide is made even more stark in a highly commercialised HE sector, where students are ‘customers’, and where universities are increasingly forced by financial pressures to recruit high numbers and ‘teach efficiently’. This situation induces a ‘them and us’ mentality on both sides of the potential partnership. Academic staff are critical of students’ lack of engagement, while students are critical of faculties’ lack of individualised support. Limited contact time, workload pressures, and large class sizes worsen this divide.

So what would be the benefits of encouraging a more integrated learning community? One of the immediate benefits would be for students to see themselves as belonging to a larger whole, and (more importantly) feeling connected to the organisation. Visibly embedding both students and educators within the same learning community would help signpost disciplinary practices to the student that would make the learning experience more authentic. The student would potentially find it easier to ‘learn the rules of the game’ for their discipline, if it was clear that they were considered to be members of that discipline (albeit relatively junior ones). Learning communities also help foster and agentic identity, aligned with the discipline as well as the institution. We already see this with vocational degrees such as medicine, where the students typically have a strong identity aligned with their School and discipline. There is also potential positive impact on metrics such as the NSS. If individuals feel a sense of belonging within an organisation, with a better understanding parameters influencing how the organisation functions, they may be more tolerant of any potential rough edges or shortcomings that organisation might have.

The challenge, therefore, is how to frame university learning, and the university environment, to empower students to feel (and more importantly actually be) part of an integrated learning community. To be active agents in that community, rather than as passive recipients of a ‘product’, separate to the community of academics. Making the relationship truly collaborative and mutual would have the effect of enhancing both sides’ investment in the learning process: Increasing student satisfaction with their courses, increasing engagement, and even potentially reducing some students’ desire to cut corners by using generative AI. 

A recent discussion group of colleagues from 8 universities across Europe, led by the European University Association (Rutherford et al., 2025) tackled this question of how best to empower students, and develop partnerships with academic staff. We identified several potential ways in which students could be empowered to be part of a collective whole, and a mutualistic community with (at least some) shared goals. A key point of agreement within this discussion group was that any empowerment approach needed to be genuine and meaningful, and not just a superficial cosmetic exercise, “ticking a box” for student partnership. Empowering students in this way benefits all parties involved, but it needs active engagement and commitment on both sides to make it happen.

So, how best to go about it?

Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Fair, N. (2019) Understanding the networked student: how personal learning networks are used for learning. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Healey, M., Flint, A. & Harrington, K. (2014) Engagement through partnership: Students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education. York: HE Academy.

Henkel, M. (2000). Academic identities and policy change in Higher Education. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lenning, O. T., & Ebbers, L. H. (1999). The powerful potential of learning communities: Improving education for the future. Washington D.C.: George Washington Universiity Press.

Lenning, O. T., Hill, D. M., Saunders, K. P., Stokes, A., & Solan, A. (2013). Powerful Learning Communities: A guide to developing student, faculty, and professional learning communities to improve student success and organizational effectiveness. Sterling, VA.: Stylus.

Mercer, N. (1996). Words and minds: How we use language to think together. London: Routledge.

Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rutherford, S. 2019. ‘Flying the nest’: An analysis of the development of self-regulated learning during the transition to Higher Education. Ed.D Thesis. University of Reading. https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/124834/

Rutherford, S., Francis, N. and Peterbauer, H. (2025). Learning and teaching to empower students: Thematic peer group report. Project Report.[Online].European University Association. Available at: https://www.eua.eu/publications/reports/learning-and-teaching-to-empower-students.html.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind and society: The development of higher mental processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

West, R. E., & Williams, G. S. (2017). “I don’t think that word means what you think it means”: A proposed framework for defining learning communities. Educational Technology Research and Development, 65(6), 1569-1582. doi:10.1007/s11423-017-9535-0

Q1 What comes to mind when the term ‘learning community’ is mentioned?

Q2 How do we promote the idea of a learning community to students?

Q3 How can we get staff on board with Learning Communities?

Q4 How do we ensure that our learning community is fully inclusive of all demographics of learners and staff?

Q5 How can we design our learning activities to embed students within a wider learning community?

Q6 Should the drive to create an effective learning community in our institutions be top-down or bottom-up?

Speaker Bio

https://profiles.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/rutherfords

https://www.eat-erasmus.org/

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 28th January at 8pm GMT with guest Prof Damien Page to discuss Leadership and Academic Flourishing.

University leaders juggle a lot. Financial sustainability. Strategy. Governance. Regulators. Government. Partnerships. Reputation. Committees upon committees. It’s no surprise leadership can feel like permanent firefighting.

But if there’s one role that should trump all others, it’s this: creating the conditions in which people can flourish. Everything else flows from that. And yet, in a sector under huge pressure –  tighter regulation, shrinking resources, constant “transformation” that usually means cuts – this core purpose is often the first thing to slip.

Ironically, it’s precisely in difficult times that leaders should double down on it.

What does “flourishing” actually mean?

Ask a room of academics what they need to thrive and you’ll get a hundred different answers. That’s not a problem, that’s the business. Academic work is deeply personal. Discipline matters. Career stage matters. Institutional context matters.

But some themes keep coming up: autonomy, time, trust, space to think, freedom to explore and challenge, and leadership that supports rather than constrains. Real wellbeing isn’t lunchtime yoga (pleasant though that may be). It’s manageable workloads, clear priorities, and leaders who remove obstacles rather than add them.

Flourishing isn’t abstract or fluffy. It’s intensely practical. And leadership is the difference between it happening or not.

Leadership has to be close to reality

If leaders want academics to flourish, they need to understand what university life actually looks like now – not how it felt when they last taught regularly, and not the sanitised version that makes its way up through layers of management.

The more senior you become, the more reality gets filtered. Bad news is softened. Problems are minimised. A “good news culture” creeps in. And reality never reaches the top on its own.

There’s a lot of advice in higher education about leaders needing to be ‘less operational and more strategic’. Strategy matters, of course. But separating the strategic from the operational is one of the biggest mistakes universities make. Adaptive leadership depends on moving constantly between the two , understanding how the organisation actually works and letting that shape strategy.

Why so much university strategy fails

Most university strategies look impressive. Slick design. Inspiring verbs. Five or ten year horizons. Pillars, themes, golden threads. They arrive with a sense of destiny.

And then… very little changes.

For most staff, strategy only becomes visible at appraisal time, when they’re asked how their work aligns with it. That’s a problem.

As Richard Rumelt explains, bad strategy is usually full of buzzwords, avoids naming real problems, confuses goals with plans, and sets vague objectives detached from reality. Universities are particularly prone to all of these.

Good strategy starts with honesty: heavy workloads, rising expectations from students, tighter regulation, changing job markets, and finite resources. It then sets a clear approach to tackling those problems and backs it up with coordinated, realistic action. Without that grounding, strategy becomes theatre.

Get closer, not higher

This is why leaders need to become proximal. Town halls and all-staff meetings rarely surface the real issues – speaking up in those spaces often feels risky. To understand what’s really going on, leaders need to meet people where the work happens, without layers of management present.

But proximity only works if people feel safe to speak honestly. Psychological safety matters here. Not performative listening, but listening that leads to change.

Flourishing lives in the operational details

Flourishing isn’t enabled by vision statements. It lives in budgets, workload models, systems, and calendars.

Financial stability matters because money buys time and space. If people are constantly asked to do more with less, flourishing is impossible. Workload models aren’t boring admin, they’re strategic choices about what a university values.

And then there’s the other activity: endless meetings, sprawling committees, bloated processes, and clunky systems. Much of this adds little to teaching, research, or people’s development. Leaders should be ruthless minimalists here. Fewer meetings. Fewer forms. Fewer systems. Less noise.

Culture is felt, not declared

Culture isn’t a statement on a website. It’s what people feel every day. Trust. Transparency. Freedom. Authenticity.

Leaders shape that culture by how they behave: explaining decisions openly, trusting people to do good work, admitting what they don’t know, modelling healthy boundaries, and treating failure as learning rather than punishment. Being human matters.

Strip away what blocks purpose

Academics don’t need leaders to invent purpose, it’s already there. What they need is leadership that removes the barriers that suffocate it: bad strategy, needless bureaucracy, punitive cultures, and constant distraction.

University leadership is hard, emotional, and often uncomfortable work. But creating the conditions for people to flourish isn’t a nice to have. It’s the job.

Q1. Leaders should create the conditions in which academics may flourish. What does flourishing in the workplace look like / mean to you?

Q2. Should creating conditions for people to flourish be the utmost priority in the HE sector at a time of competing pressures?

Q3. What enables staff to feel as though their development, wellbeing and contributions are valued?

Q4. The TV series ‘Undercover Boss’ features CEOs in disguise investigating how their organisation really works. What might an undercover senior leader find in an HEI?

Q5. If ‘flourishing lives in the operational details,’ what one thing would streamline HE workloads?

Q6. What would help us to ‘feel’ a university culture?

Speaker Bio

Generative AI has become part of higher education with remarkable speed.

In a short period of time, it has entered classrooms, assessment design, academic writing, feedback processes, and professional workflows. For many educators, its arrival felt sudden and difficult to make sense of, leaving little space to pause and consider what this shift means for learning, teaching, and academic practice.

Initial responses across the sector have often focused on risk, regulation, and control. These concerns are understandable. Yet they only tell part of the story. Alongside uncertainty and anxiety, there is also curiosity, experimentation, and a growing recognition that GenAI raises questions that are fundamentally pedagogical rather than purely technical.

On 21 January, we are delighted to host #LTHEchat to explore these questions together and to move the conversation from reaction towards more intentional, reflective practice.

The discussion will be grounded in the Manifesto for Generative AI in Higher Education, and informed by the wider work of GenAI:N3, a national initiative in Ireland supporting collaborative engagement with generative AI across higher education.

GenAI:N3: A Collaborative Project for the Sector

GenAI:N3 is a national network that was established in Ireland as part of the N-TUTORR programme, to support technological higher education institutions as they responded to the rapid emergence of generative AI. Rather than focusing on tools or technical solutions, the project centres on people, practice, and shared learning.

At its core, GenAI:N3 aims to build institutional and sectoral capacity by creating spaces where educators, professional staff, and leaders can explore GenAI together. Its work is grounded in collaboration across institutions and disciplines, recognising that no single university or role has all the answers.

The project focuses on several interconnected areas:

• Supporting communities of practice where staff can share experiences, challenges, and emerging approaches
• Encouraging critical and reflective engagement with GenAI in teaching, learning, assessment, and professional practice
• Exploring the ethical, social, and institutional implications of GenAI, including questions of power, inclusion, sustainability, and academic judgement
• Developing shared resources, events, and conversations that help the sector learn collectively rather than in isolation

GenAI:N3 is not about accelerating adoption for its own sake. It is about helping institutions and individuals make informed, values-led decisions that are aligned with the purposes of higher education.

The Manifesto as a Shared Thinking Space

The Manifesto for Generative AI in Higher Education emerged from this collaborative context. It did not begin as a formal deliverable or a policy exercise. Instead, it took shape gradually through workshops, conversations, reflections, and recurring questions raised by staff and students across the sector.

What became clear was a need for a shared language. Not a framework that closed down debate, but a set of statements that could hold complexity, uncertainty, and difference.

The Manifesto brings together 30 short statements organised across three themes:

• Rethinking teaching and learning
• Responsibility, ethics, and power
• Imagination, humanity, and the future

It is intentionally concise and deliberately open. It does not offer instructions or compliance rules. Instead, it invites educators and institutions to pause, reflect, and ask what kind of learning we are designing for in a world where generative tools are readily available.

One of its central ideas is that GenAI does not replace thinking. Rather, it reveals the cost of not thinking. In doing so, it challenges us to look beyond surface solutions and to engage more deeply with questions of purpose, judgement, and educational values.

Why These Conversations Matter Now

Much of the early discourse around GenAI has centred on assessment integrity and detection. While these issues matter, they risk narrowing the conversation too quickly.

GenAI does not operate uniformly across disciplines, contexts, or learning designs. What is productive in one setting may be inappropriate in another. Students experience this inconsistency acutely, particularly when institutional policies feel disconnected from everyday teaching practice.

The work of GenAI:N3, and the thinking captured in the Manifesto, keeps this complexity in view. It foregrounds ideas such as transparency as a foundation for trust, academic judgement as something that can be supported but not automated, and ethical leadership as an institutional responsibility rather than an individual burden.

These ideas play out in very practical ways, in curriculum design, in assessment briefs, in conversations with students, and in decisions about which tools are used and why.

Why #LTHEchat?

#LTHEchat has long been a space for thoughtful, practice-led discussion across higher education. That makes it an ideal forum to explore generative AI not simply as a technology, but as a catalyst for deeper pedagogical and institutional reflection.

This chat is not about promoting a single position or reaching neat conclusions. Instead, it is an opportunity to surface experiences, tensions, and emerging practices from across the sector.

The questions we will pose are designed to open up dialogue around issues such as abundance, transparency, disciplinary difference, and what it means to keep learning human in a GenAI-rich environment.

An Invitation to Join the Conversation

Whether you are actively experimenting with generative AI, approaching it with caution, or still forming your views, your perspective is welcome.

Bring examples from your own context. Bring uncertainties and unfinished thinking. The Manifesto itself is open to use, adapt, and challenge, and GenAI:N3 continues to evolve through the contributions of those engaging with its work.

As the Manifesto suggests, the future classroom is a conversation. On 21 January, we hope you will join that conversation with us through #LTHEchat.

Links

GenAI:N3 https://genain3.ie

Manifesto for Generative AI in Higher Education https://genain3.ie/files/manifesto/

Questions and Chat

Q1 – We talk a lot about GenAI as a “disruption”. What actually feels disrupted in your teaching or learning practice, and what hasn’t changed at all?

Q2 – The Manifesto for Generative AI in Higher Education argues that we teach in an age of abundance, not scarcity. What does that idea challenge most in current higher-education practice?

Q3 – Many institutions have focused on detection and restriction. What would it look like to design learning and assessment assuming GenAI is present?

Q4 – Transparency is described in the Manifesto as “the new integrity”. How comfortable are we “really” with being open about how GenAI is used by staff and students?

Q5 – GenAI does not “live” the same way in every discipline. Where do you see productive disciplinary differences emerging, and where are blanket policies getting in the way?

Q6 – Looking ahead: what is one small but meaningful change you could make in the next semester that keeps learning human in a GenAI-rich world?

Guests Bios

Dr Hazel Farrell (PhD, SFEA, MA)
South East Technological University (SETU)

Hazel Farrell has been immersed in the AI narrative since 2023 both through practice-based research and the development of guidelines, frameworks, tools, and training to support educators and learners throughout the HE sector. She led the national N-TUTORR GenAI:N3 project which was included in the EDUCAUSE 2025 Horizon Report as an exemplar of good practice. She is the SETU Academic Lead for GenAI and Chair of the university’s GenAI Steering Committee. The practical application of GenAI provides a strong foundation for her research, with student engagement initiatives for creative disciplines at the forefront of her work. Hazel recently won DEC24 Digital Educator Award for her GenAI contributions to the HE sector. She has presented extensively on a variety of GenAI related topics and has several publications in this space.

Ken McCarthy (MSc, PgDip)
South East Technological University (SETU)

Ken McCarthy is the Head of the Centre for Academic Practice at SETU, Ken leads strategic initiatives to enhance teaching, learning, and assessment across the university. He works with academic staff, professional teams, and students to promote inclusive, research-informed, and digitally enriched education.  He is the current vice-president of ILTA (Irish Learning Technology Association) and was previously the university lead for the N-TUTORR programme.  He has a lifelong interest in technology and education and combines this in his professional role.  He has written and presented on technology enhanced learning in general and in GenAI in particular over the past number of years.

There’s no nice way to talk about redundancy.

It doesn’t arrive as a single moment, even when there is a single date attached to it. It arrives in phases: uncertainty, waiting, the conversation itself, the aftermath. For some, it’s sudden. For others, it’s drawn out and quietly exhausting. Either way, it has a way of cutting through confidence, identity, and momentum, particularly in a sector many of us entered because we believed in it. Many of us still believe in it, despite the current state of the sector and our shared experiences of trying to navigate constant change. 

A gentle note: this post talks openly about redundancy, job loss, and their emotional impact. Writing about these experiences has been challenging for me at times, and reading about them may bring things up for you too. Please take care of yourself as you read, and feel free to step away or re-engage in whatever way feels right.

What often goes unspoken is the emotional impact that redundancy and job loss has: the need to stay composed, professional, and outwardly “okay” at precisely the moment when certainty and the feeling of confidence and wellbeing collapses. Many people describe a quiet sense of shame, even when they know intellectually that redundancy is structural, not personal. Confidence takes a hit long before a job title disappears, and recovery is rarely linear. The worst thing to be told by HR during the process is “It’s not personal.” When, in reality, that’s exactly what it is and what it feels like.

It’s also important to acknowledge voluntary severance and voluntary redundancy, which many colleagues across higher education have had to consider in recent years. Faced with ongoing cuts, restructures, and repeated rounds of change, some people make the difficult decision to step forward voluntarily; not because they want to leave, but because they are trying to manage risk, protect their wellbeing, or create a degree of certainty in an otherwise unstable situation. These choices are rarely straightforward. They are often made with full awareness that further redundancies may follow, and that staying might simply delay the inevitable. Voluntary routes don’t remove the emotional impact; they shift it earlier.

For some, choosing voluntary severance is a way of regaining a small amount of control; a chance to plan, to leave with dignity, or to reduce the prolonged anxiety of waiting. For others, it brings its own form of grief: leaving work they care about, colleagues they value, and identities they’ve spent years building. None of this is easy or something many of us ever prepare for. But perhaps, with higher education in the current state it’s in, we should. If nothing else, being aware of it might help in the long run. 

There’s also a financial reality that rarely gets talked about openly. Finding a new role can take time, often longer than expected, particularly in a sector that is being affected by a tough economic climate like higher education. Based on lived experience, it is not unrealistic for a job search to take six months or more, even for experienced professionals. Where it’s possible, having the equivalent of six months’ salary saved can make the difference between being able to think clearly and being forced into rushed decisions under pressure. Many people don’t have that buffer, especially after previous redundancies, which only goes to amplify stress and anxiety. This isn’t about blame or planning failure; it’s about acknowledging the real conditions people are navigating.

This week’s #LTHEchat is for you if you’ve experienced redundancy, are currently navigating your way through it, have experienced being under threat of redundancy, or are quietly wondering how you’d cope if it came your way.

It’s worth saying explicitly that this conversation sits in a UK higher education context. The structures, protections, and expectations around redundancy vary internationally, but in the UK, it has become an increasingly familiar feature of academic, professional services, and learning technology careers. For many, redundancy is no longer a once-in-a-career disruption, but something encountered multiple times across roles, contracts, and institutions. I know it has been for me (more on this later).

Under UK employment law, redundancy comes with a statutory minimum level of protection, based on length of service and age, and only after a qualifying period of employment. While this provides a baseline of financial support, it is often just that: a minimum. It rarely reflects the real impact of job loss on household finances, mental wellbeing, or longer-term career security, particularly when redundancy happens more than once or later in life.

I won’t go into the specifics of the law, but you can and should read up on it here: https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights

“You’ll normally be entitled to statutory redundancy pay if you’re an employee and you’ve been working for your current employer for 2 years or more.”

The important bit here is that, if you’ve been in the same role/contract for less than 2 years, you are entitled to nothing beyond your normal contract conditions and notice period.

I cannot stress this enough but, if you are under notice or a restructure, redundancy, or feel in any way that this might happen to you, then you really do need to know your rights!

This chat is about three things:

First: if this is happening to you, this space is for you.

You don’t need to project optimism. You don’t need to have a success story ready. You don’t even need to be actively job hunting yet. Redundancy has a way of isolating people just when connection matters most. This chat is about saying: you’re not alone, and this experience is more common than we often admit in HE.

Second: sharing ways to stay sane and keep going.

Job hunting is not just a practical exercise, it’s an emotional one. It requires optimism to be available on-demand, self-promotion under strain, and repeated exposure to rejection or silence, often while trying to hold together family life, finances, and a sense of self-worth. Updating a CV while processing loss, uncertainty, or anger takes a toll. We’ll talk about routines, boundaries, mindset shifts, and small habits that help maintain momentum without burning out. Not productivity hacks, but survival strategies.

Third: finding your next role, without losing yourself.

Redundancy often forces reflection: What do I actually want? What am I good at that I’ve been underselling? What could I do differently next time? We’ll share practical advice on CVs, applications, networking, and interviews, but also talk about how to make choices that feel aligned, not just reactive.

Why this conversation matters now

Higher education is changing rapidly. Funding pressures, restructures, and fixed-term roles are now part of many career paths, particularly in learning technology, digital education, and professional services. Redundancy is no longer an exception, it’s becoming a structural feature of the sector.

Yet we still talk about it in hushed tones, as if it signals failure rather than context.

This chat is an invitation to be honest about that reality, to learn from one another, and to remind ourselves that careers are rarely linear, even when LinkedIn profiles make them look that way.

Living through redundancy, or the sustained threat of it, doesn’t happen in isolation. It spills into family life, relationships, sleep, health, and self-belief. Partners carry worry. Children notice tension. Friends don’t always know what to say. Even when nothing has “officially” happened yet, the emotional load is real. Wellbeing isn’t a side issue here; it’s central. For many people, the hardest part isn’t the job search itself but trying to stay present and grounded while life continues around them.

 The personal bit – my experience(s)

I’ve experienced redundancy multiple times (five, at the last count) over the course of my career – three in the last seven years and within higher education and digital learning organisations. I won’t list them out here (you can see them on my LinkedIn profile), but they span different organisations, different roles, and very different stages of my life.

What matters more than the specifics is the pattern.

Each experience landed differently, not because the circumstances were wildly different, but because I was. Earlier on, redundancy felt like disruption and shock. Later, it carried heavier emotional and financial consequences, affecting not just me, but my family and the sense of stability we were trying to maintain. The longer you work in the sector, the more you build – responsibilities, commitments, expectations – and the harder that uncertainty hits.

Over time, redundancy doesn’t just interrupt work; it reshapes how you relate to it. You become more cautious. More alert to signals of change. Less willing to assume that stability will follow effort. That shift isn’t cynicism. It’s self-protection.

What has stayed with me most is the cumulative emotional impact. Each redundancy leaves a residue: heightened anxiety, reduced trust, quicker fear responses when organisations talk about “change” or “realignment”. It’s not something you “get over” neatly. It’s something you learn to carry; sometimes well, sometimes not.

I share this not to dwell on the past, or to offer myself as an example, but to be clear about why this conversation matters to me. I know what it feels like to be a competent, capable, committed, passionate and energetic lifelong learner, yet still be exposed to forces beyond your control. I also know how much harder it is to keep going when belief – in yourself, in the system, in the future – has taken a knock.

Lessons learned

What I’ve learned isn’t that redundancy gets easier with experience. In many ways, it’s the opposite.

Each time it happens, the impact accumulates. The emotional weight is heavier. The financial risk is greater. The effect on wellbeing and belief is harder to absorb. Earlier in a career, redundancy can feel like a shock or a disruption; later on, it can feel like something more existential; a challenge to stability, confidence, and the assumption that good work will eventually lead to security.

What changes isn’t resilience so much as context. Different stages of life bring different responsibilities, pressures, and limits on how much uncertainty you can carry. Experience doesn’t cushion the blow, it just means you recognise it more quickly.

I have written about my experiences before, please read if you’d like more insight into the lessons I’ve learned and how I’ve moved beyond the shock, distrust of leaders and the motivations, grieving, wellbeing, etc

• November, 2022: Redundancy
• June 2023: What Do I Do Now?
• March 2025: Navigating Change

Join the conversation

This chat isn’t about fixing redundancy, it’s about acknowledging its reality, sharing what helps, and reminding each other that none of this is faced alone. Whether you’re in the middle of it, on the other side of it, or supporting someone who is, your perspective is welcome.

• Bring your questions.
• Bring your hard-fought lessons.
• Bring your uncertainty, if that’s where you are.

Most educators already aim for this, but the expectations and the stakes are rising.

Questions and Chat

Q1. Redundancy doesn’t always arrive suddenly. For some it’s imposed, for others it’s voluntary severance made under pressure or uncertainty. Where are you currently, or where have you been, on that journey?

Q2. In the early days of redundancy or deciding to take voluntary severance,
what felt hardest, emotionally or practically, and what helped you cope, even in small ways?

Q3. Wellbeing often takes a hit long before work officially ends.
What have you found helps you maintain some sense of balance or stability while living with uncertainty? #LTHEchat 

Q4. CVs, applications, and “selling yourself” can feel especially hard at this point.
What’s helped you tell your story honestly, without feeling you have to apologise, explain, or fake optimism?

Q5. When job searches stretch on, motivation can dip. What’s helped you keep going or what do you wish you’d known earlier about sustaining momentum?

Q6. For someone facing redundancy or weighing up voluntary severance right now:
what’s one thing you’d want them to hear from people who’ve been there?

Guest Bio

David Hopkins is a digital learning leader with over 18 years’ experience working across UK higher education, online education, and EdTech organisations. His work has focused on designing and delivering large-scale online and hybrid learning, leading digital learning teams, and supporting institutions through periods of change, including platform implementations, new programme launches, and organisational restructures.

Across his career, David has worked in both established universities and early-stage education start-ups, giving him a practical understanding of how innovation, uncertainty, and risk play out in real roles and real lives. He has experienced redundancy multiple times and writes openly about its professional and personal impact. David is passionate about inclusive leadership, sustainable digital education, and supporting people through transition; whether that’s navigating redundancy, rethinking career direction, or building resilient learning environments.

Join us on Bluesky for #LTHEchat on Wednesday 7th January at 8pm GMT with guests Puiyin Wong, Dr Katharine Hubbard, Dr Kevin Campbell-Karn, Professor David Webster and Paula Han to discuss Navigating the New OfS Quality Era: What It Means for Students, Staff and the Sector.

The Office for Students’ (OfS) latest proposal represents a significant shift in how teaching quality and student outcomes will be assessed. The message is clear: every higher education provider will be pulled into a single, integrated quality-assessment system that blends the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) with core regulatory conditions.

For the sector, it’s a moment of scrutiny, but also a chance to rethink how we support students.

What is changing in the new quality landscape?

Under the proposals, all providers will be assessed on a regular cycle and rated on two things: student experience and student outcomes. Both come with tougher baseline expectations and a ‘Lowest Rating’ rule meaning if a provider is Bronze in Student Outcomes but Gold in Student Experience, they can only be awarded Bronze overall. The OfS also wants to strengthen the role of the student voice, make wider use of the National Student Survey (NSS), and in the second round the Post-Graduate Taught Experience Survey (PTES). The OfS will now intervene more quickly when risks show up.

If a provider underperforms, the consequences could be serious: Restrictions on growth, funding or even degree awarding powers. And postgraduate taught programmes are no longer just a ‘health check – they are becoming a high-stakes regulatory metric comparable to the NSS.

In short: accountability will be universal, cyclical and very visible.
More details here: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/reforms-to-quality-regulation/the-future-of-quality-regulation-quick-guide-to-our-proposals/

But the evidence gap is real

Jim Dickinson put it bluntly in a WonkHE article You can’t fix OfS’ quality proposals without fixing the NSS: https://wonkhe.com/wonk-corner/you-cant-fix-ofs-quality-proposals-without-fixing-the-nss/

He’s right. The NSS was never designed to measure staffing levels, resourcing, assessment validity or the quality of academic support. Yet those now sit at the core of regulatory decision making. Without a stronger, more rounded evidence base, institutions risk being judged on data that simply doesn’t capture what quality really looks like.

So yes, we need better measurement, but we also need to strengthen our own internal systems for understanding what’s happening in our classrooms, workshops, labs and learning spaces.

What educators can do now: designing high quality learning under B1 & B2

Conditions B1 and B2 already lay out what “good” looks like in terms of academic experience and the support/resources students need to succeed. In practical terms, that means designing learning that:

• is current, coherent and challenging, rather than a collection of disconnected modules
• actively engages students through discussion, hands-on tasks, labs, digital tools, and not just long lectures
• is supported by realistic, accessible resources
• builds in formative feedback and genuine academic support
• is inclusive by design, reflecting the diversity of students’ backgrounds and circumstances
• involves students meaningfully, not just at the end of the module, but throughout the learning process

Most educators already aim for this, but the expectations and the stakes are rising.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth…

All of this is happening in a sector where staff are exhausted. Academics, professional services colleagues, technicians, learning designers, librarians, wellbeing teams — everyone is stretched. People are being asked to do more whilst resources shrink.

The reality is that implementing these proposals properly will require more time, more people, and more investment. It also means recognising that colleagues across the university, not just academics, are experts in their own right and essential to delivering a high quality student experience.

And whilst improving quality is important (students are investing heavily in their education), there’s no point in pretending the OfS proposals will be easy to meet. For some institutions, they may feel less like a helpful framework and more like a stick to beat them with.

References

Office for Students. (2025, September 18). The future of quality regulation – quick guide to our proposals. https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/reforms-to-quality-regulation/the-future-of-quality-regulation-quick-guide-to-our-proposals/ (Office for Students)
Dickinson, J. (2025, December 5). You can’t fix OfS’ quality proposals without fixing the NSS. Wonkhe. https://wonkhe.com/wonk-corner/you-cant-fix-ofs-quality-proposals-without-fixing-the-nss/ (wonkhe.com)

Guest Bios

Puiyin Wong is Senior Advisor (Digital Pedagogy & Practice) at Buckinghamshire New University, where she leads the institution’s strategic development of digital education, as well as the Digital Education team. She is also Trustee of ALT and a PhD researcher at Lancaster University. Her research explores the interplay between pedagogies and technology for learning and professional development. With over 20 years experience in HE and a keen interest in bringing people together, she is connected to colleagues in the UK and internationally. Importantly, as a person from the Global Majority, she empathises with her peers from underrepresented groups. Puiyin leads a multi award winning researchers community – #TELresearchers & #HEresearchers that connects educational researchers at different career stages, from around the world.

Dr Katharine Hubbard is a National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow of Advance HE, and is currently Director of Learning Enhancement and Academic Practice (LEAP) at Buckinghamshire New University. Katharine is a leading expert in higher education, including equity within HE, awarding gaps, effective pedagogies within STEM subjects and career support for education focussed academics. She publishes impactful educational research and scholarship in international peer-reviewed journals (Katharine’s GoogleScholar profile). She is the author of a sector leading Inclusive Education Framework, funded by the Quality Assurance Agency and highlighted as excellent practice in reports by both QAA and AdvanceHE.

Dr. Kevin Campbell-Karn is the Head of Graduate Outcomes, dedicated to bridging the gap between academic study and professional success. With 23 years of HE experience and a background as a first-in-family graduate, Kevin understands that data only matters when it leads to real opportunity. His approach is grounded in proven success: he previously led placement provision in Sports Therapy that secured 100% NSS overall satisfaction for three consecutive years. Now, Kevin focuses on coaching and empowering staff through the shifting quality landscape. Rather than just enforcing policy, he works alongside academic teams to demystify complex OfS metrics and integrate career readiness into the curriculum. His goal is to support colleagues in designing meaningful interventions that improve student outcomes without increasing workload, proving that regulatory compliance and authentic student support go hand in hand.

Professor Dave Webster is a Senior Advisor in Pedagogy and Practice here at BNU. He has previously worked at the University of Liverpool, SOAS, and the University of Gloucestershire. His doctoral research was in Buddhist Philosophy, and he has written on a wide range of topics, including critical notions of spirituality, philosophy, blues music and sport. He has ongoing concerns with inclusive pedagogy, ethics & AI in Education, Buddhist philosophy and for much of his time he is interested in the phenomenology of learning and belief. He is a National Teaching Fellow, and a Senior Fellow of the HEA (Advance HE), and sees Quality Assurance predominantly through the lens of ensuring equity amongst learners.

Paula Han is a Senior Advisor in Pedagogy and Practice here at BNU is a driven education professional with 21 years’ experience across post‑compulsory, Further, and Higher Education. She has designed, delivered, and led curricula, and headed teacher‑training programmes that energise and empower practitioners. Paula’s expertise in teaching, learning, and assessment is grounded in current pedagogical research, and my enthusiasm for transformative practice consistently inspires the academics I train.
Paula has a strong track record of elevating academic practice through targeted CPD, one‑to‑one coaching, and strategic projects such as Supported Teacher Research initiatives. Her impact was recognised with the Student Union Award for Academic Staff Partner of the Year at BNU.
As the first in my family to attend university, Paula is committed to lifelong learning – she has a Masters in Education, Senior Fellowship, and has led research into unseen observations in Higher Education.

Learning Enhancement and Academic Practice (LEAP), Buckinghamshire New University
LEAP is BNU’s central academic development unit. In addition to our broader academic development programme, we are responsible for rapid improvements in teaching quality and regulatory compliance, focussing on areas with poorer student outcomes. We work collaboratively with senior leadership, programme teams and individuals to identify issues and develop practice.