An early-career academic’s experience of the Higher Education Teaching Development Conference, By Dr Aysha Bellamy
The Higher Education Teaching Development (HETD) Conference hosted at Royal Holloway University of London on 4th June 2024 was a national conference where a range of academics with teaching responsibilities were able to share their insights around advancing inclusive teaching and learning practices in higher education. This conference was developed by an organisational committee from Teaching in Higher Education: Supporting and Inspiring Students (or THESIS for short!). As a proud early-career member of THESIS, I was thrilled to be part of this planning committee.
We chose ‘inclusive education’ as our uniting theme for the conference. Such a topic had broad applicability: indeed, we attracted talks from academic and administrative staff alike on topics as varied as neurodiverse student experiences, co-producing and co-designing student initiative days, supporting students in their understanding of mental health and the use of library and AI tools to support learning. It was thrilling to see such a diverse array of interests coming together behind the scenes – and the more we discussed inclusive education, the more I began to realise that a project I had recently started to work on could also fill this brief.
My project
Gamification is the use of game-like elements, such as leaderboards and awards, to keep students focused on their learning. Whilst gamified education content is often considered engaging and motivating for students (Manzano-Leon et al., 2021), very few previous studies have considered the unique needs and experiences of neurodiverse students (Spiel & Gerlin, 2021). I therefore launched a study to gather feedback on the perceived positives and negatives of gamification in Higher Education.
Numerous themes emerged from this open-ended questionnaire often identified the gamification elements as “motivating, fun or engaging” – with one participant with ADHD describing the importance of an “immediate feeling of reward”. There were perceived drawbacks to gamification, however; with “time and effort” and “too much competition” being amongst the most common issues. My focus on neurodiverse voices and gamifying course content seemed to fit the remit of the HETD Conference nicely. However, as a new pedagogic researcher, I wasn’t sure if this topic would have the potential to fit the calibre of talks were likely to attract – but I knew the only way to know for sure was to try! So, I took a deep breath, submitted my abstract and was fortunate enough to be accepted to deliver a five-minute rapid-fire talk.
My experience of delivering a talk
Delivering such a complex research topic within such a small window can seem daunting. My best piece of advice is that you do not have to address every aspect of your study or initiative in such a short timeframe. Instead, choose one key message and focus on that. I decided that the most interesting theme that emerged from my data was that both neurodiverse and neurotypical students show a concern for fairness. Students pointed out that those with additional or diverse needs should not feel unfairly targeted by attempt to gamify lecture content. I believe that this concern for fairness should not only shape how we gamify courses, but everything we do as Higher Education providers.
Delivering my talk on the day was certainly exhilarating. Originally, I had worried that only having pilot data would make my talk feel weaker next to the other nine rapid fire presenters; however, I got a few questions in the networking reception after the conference, so I think that it went well!
Speaking to other guests over wine and nibbles at the event close, it was clear that most speakers felt supported by the “friendly and supportive” atmosphere of the day. As an early career academic, I too appreciated this collegiate atmosphere and the fact that I felt empowered to share my views and experiences despite my ideas still being in the initial stages.
As part of the organising committee, I took part in a range of jobs including the reviewing of abstract submissions. This role gave me a great insight into the kinds of things that reviewers and conference judgers are likely to look out for in your work. For example: the importance of hitting the relevant brief as well as delivering clear, easy-to-understand science. As the Wellbeing and EDI co-lead, I also created the accessibility documents for the conference. This has given me a good insight into the importance of setting up event spaces with accessibility in mind: for example, it was important for me that we had the use of a near-by ‘quiet room’ so that guests could recharge. Such an experience has given me insight into how to make conference spaces more inviting to all our guests, and this awareness is something I will take with me in future conferences. Overall, I would definitely recommend getting involved in conference organisation committees – not only as a great way to improve your CV but also to help design the types of conferences that you would ideally like to see in the world!
Contact: Aysha.Bellamy@rhul.ac.uk
References
- Manzano-León, A., Camacho-Lazarraga, P., Guerrero, M. A., Guerrero-Puerta, L., Aguilar-Parra, J. M., Trigueros, R., & Alias, A. (2021). Between level up and game over: A systematic literature review of gamification in education. Sustainability, 13(4), 2247. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13042247.
- Spiel, K., & Gerling, K. (2021). The purpose of play: How HCI games research fails neurodivergent populations. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 28(2), 1-40. https://doi.org/10.1145/3432245.