27/07/2026 by lizziepinard

Podcast: Lead us not into temptation: notes from the StudentXGenAI project – with Stephen Gow

This is a BALEAP TELSig podcast which I have had on my list to listen to for a while. The blurb: Last year HEPI reported 95% of students were using gen AI, but recent research from Stephen Gow and Sam Illingworth casts doubt on this figure. Today I’m joined by Stephen to talk through some of the key finding of his Leverhume Trust funded study that draws data from over 7,000 participants. What do students really think about gen AI in higher education, and how should this shape the way we treat it in the curriculum? As curriculum and materials development is a not insignificant part of my role, this is very relevant to my interests!

There’s a bit about Duolingo and streaks at the start but I’m waiting for the main content before I start making notes! If you are interested in Duolingo and streaks, listen to the start of the podcast! Though I do like the analogy between Duolingo/streaks and going to the gym every day but only using one piece of equipment.

It’s about what users actually think about the technology underneath the surface. Companies introducing no phone policies at work, offering lockers and pouches, to try and boost productivity. Not like picking up a newspaper back in the day because the sole purpose of the algorithm is to hold your attention. They mention teenagers wishing Tiktok could be uninvented. Technology use can be a compulsion. If you look/walk around in a library, you’ll see how many devices people have. You are in multiple places at once with it. When students used to come to university, the library would be the best information you could get and you’d have to go there to research things. The internet does give us access to far more information but managing that information is incredibly challenging. The prinicples of quality of information don’t change. The issue with GenAI as it’s come along is the “double-edged sword” that it does enable to a certain extent to digest all of the information but you aren’t too sure of the quality of the ingredients of that information. A model e.g. Claude may differ between different conversations/threads. Like the film Mickey 17 (maybe wrong number), he’s given himself up to be cloned for military and scientific experiment purposes. But each clone is slightly different. You could be having a really interesting interaction and then start up a new one which feels slightly different.

We have to keep in mind incentive structures: devices whose purpose is to hold attention and chatbots also are. E.g. if you finish a conversation, it will ask you if you want something else, suggest something you might want. There are models with guardrails on too. Tools will suggest ways to go to a student or researcher working on something. It takes a lot for you to say no. You can then discuss the ethics of doing the thing it suggested, and then it will say actually it will get you into trouble. But it can be useful if used in the right way. Just like with Duolingo. Ideally we want students who want to learn but even if the tools were to stop developing today, they have incredible capability and can do things that will massively affect peoples’ motivation to do things. The flip side is that the human brain is incredible, so how do we have a co-existence of those intelligences.

The elevator pitch of the study: The whole project is the StudentXGenAI project. The dynamic tensions paper is a scoping review, including trialling different AI tools. He approached it like a student would. Within the paper he talks about the findings from 40 papers limited to qualitative studies as the plan was to do interviews subsequently. Reflecting on student and researcher use of these tools. After the scoping review came 20 interviews with students. Then the Leverhulme funded bit was a survey of students in the UK. 7000 responses. They found a window without other surveys and got university buy-in by giving them the data of their student respondents to analyse. While for the project it was aggregated. They targeted students whether or not they use GenAI. 70% were using it, 30% were not using it for anything (studies, work, personal life).

Knowledge and access: do they know how to use it, how did they learn how to use it? Mostly trial and error. University resources are very low down. They are very useful if they use them but mostly they weren’t used.

What do you use it for? Brainstorming, computer coding, etc.

Attitudinal area of questions: Do you trust the outputs? What motivation do you have for using the tool (easier, faster, helps me to overcome blocks were common answers).

There was a petition at the University of Salford pushing back against the integration of GenAI.

There is a real tension between productivity/performance and learning. Instrumental action (Wnting to complete something to get it done) vs more communicative action where you are learning to do something and communicating with people in your society to get things done. If we are too instrumental, we stop communicating. We are in competiton with each other. Competition vs collaboration are another area of tension. Degrees in a massified system become less of a thing you do because you want to do it and more something you do because it is the done thing. A means to an end. So students more likely to approach it instrumentally. If you are stressed and getting into debt and find there is a tool that makes things easier, you will consider it a benefit.

The dataset was deliberately large in order to be able to draw some conclusions. The bulk of the questions were the same as an Australian study, and there were a lot of similarities which was interesting.

In terms of institutional policies, we have see versions of the traffic light system etc, assessment scales, two lane approaches, based on the assumption that everyone is using it so let’s facilitate that. Its efficacy as a learning tool is in question so there is a tension between creating conditions where we regulate it vs encouraging use of it because it’s the future.

Based on the data from the 7000 students, there is room for regulation. You can’t ban it but by having these systems you are saying it should be regulated. There is a false binary between using genAI and not using genAI. While the systems mentioned above, if implemented fully, at first assessements would primarily be red, and then over time there would be shifts into amber and green.

Staff don’t trust students, students don’t trust other students, staff don’t trust staff when it comes to using GenAI. The survey shows that students appreciate clarity and want to do the right thing. The majority of the students are honest and want to do the right thing. In both the Australian and this data, 67% of students will be honest and won’t use if when told not to. We need to hold onto this. The majority of people want to do the right thing. A significant minority will use it when not allowed. 10-15% self-report very instrumental approaches, just going to use it. This matches self-reporting on deliberate plagiarism and contract cheating. So what do we do, how do we find the balance between security of the assessments and trusting the majority of students. Security measures often impact the validity of the assessment. We need to take a step back and instead of having traffic light systems etc, have targeted experimental modules where staff and students work together and we see how staff and students are really using it. Have learning enhancement digital people working with staff and students, to see what really works. Then carry what is learnt to other departments. Increasingly there are wearables so we need to have a dicussion about privacy and data issues.

The students who are honest and recognise that using genAI isn’t the best approach, still have to deal with the instrumental pressure. They can see that other students are using AI and giving a false impression of ability and they don’t want to be at the tail end of the bell curve so they are pushed into using it rather than really learning. They don’t feel like they can afford to do the work in the way it was intended.

Is writing a prompt a skill in the same sense as the things that it is replacing? The Australians went back to pen and paper exams while in the UK we were still in a post-covid mindset of very, very enhanced trust – 6hr window, do the exam online, we trust you. If you look at pre-covid exam regulations and security, all you had was the person in the room and their brain. Post-covid, everything was more unsupervised, tools were not proctored. A worrying lack of attention to assessment security. What impact might that have on motivation?

Now it’s 2026, GenAI became a thing in 2022 so there has been time for the kneejerk outright ban, to embrace, and then trying to find a balance. The new normal. The challenge to trust of the digital world. The free era of AI is coming to an end now, as they need to finance, so time for premium. University of Manchester has given co-pilot to all students and staff, lots of universities doing similar. But more common for students to use free tools which have all sorts of data issues. Who owns the information? More collaboration between institutions and negotiating as a block with the GenAI companies is needed but we aren’t there yet. Everyone is trying to reinvent the wheel but it is not joined up enough.

What is the next big question that needs answering? To reflect on the perceived benefit of productivity. If a student can be productive and perform well without learning well, then there is a huge assessment validity issue. How do we solve this, and genuinely assess in the way that we learn?

My thoughts:

It was a good podcast but I think I was hoping for more student voice to come through. More qualitative information from students relating to the three areas mentioned – knowledge and access, what do you use it for and the attitudinal aspect. I think I was also hoping for more concrete suggestions for curriculum and materials design. It may be that I didn’t successfully extract that information from the podcast format. I shall be reading the articles linked to above to glean more. I suppose that is kind of the point: the podcast is never going to be that comprehensive! (Edit: the “Dynamic tensions” one has some interesting stuff in the “Thematic analysis and discussion” part! As does the paper about the Australian study!)

Anyway, I think the bell-curve thing is very interesting – students using it even though they’d rather not because other students are using it and they don’t want to get left behind. That is a very strong argument for designing assessments that reward the skills you are teaching, accept ethical use of AI but don’t reward non-ethical use of AI. We have attempted to do that in our coursework essay assessment via reworking the criteria, with some success but the future will be impacted by evolution of the tools and further evolution of the criteria that is outside our control.

There also seems to be tension between AI-required assessment and the 30% who don’t want to use AI for various reasons (ethical, environmental, want to learn themselves). I suppose a carefully designed assessment could address some of that (e.g. make it so that they do still learn themselves; make it so that it doesn’t require heavy interaction with a tool so that the environmental impact is lower etc.)

It was heartening to hear that students appreciate clarity and the majority will try to follow the rules, as clarity and support is what we are trying to achieve in our curriculum and materials. Though I wonder if that is the case regardless of context. I.e. does the bell curve issue (or the need to succeed) have more influence in a context like ours where the outcome is very high stakes (determines whether or not the student gets to progress to univerity in the first place)!

I think it would be interesting to show students some questions and results (some are illustrated in the Advance-HE article) and discuss where they fit in/why, to get them thinking about it and give them insight into how others use GenAI. Perhaps get them to answer the questions on a google form then show the results side by side with the results from the 7000. All sorts of things you could do with it! Watch this space. 🙂

20/07/2026 by lizziepinard

Trinitiy College London webinar: The Learning GPS – Helping Students Navigate, Monitor and Recalculate Their Learning Journey – Maria Eugenia Ianiro

Session plan:

Introductory questions
Introduce Learning GPS
Metacognition definition and importance
Activities
Final takeaways

Question 1: What do you before starting a journey? Imagine that you want to travel, what is the first thing you do when you want to visit a place that you have never visited before.

Participants’ answers: Look for a map, check the route, gather necessities, plan day by day, obtain information about the place, pack a passport, check for restaurants…

Maria suggests: choose destination, check the route, monitor the traffic, recalculate if necessary (if there is a problem/situation where we need to readjust).

Question 2: Do your students do the same when they learn?

Participants’ Answers: yes, no, not sure, not always, not really, it depends… varied answers!

Maria proposes: using a Learning GPS:

G – Goal: Where am I going? So this is what we need our students to think about.

P – Progress: Am I on the right route? Am I ok? Or do I have to make some changes?

S – Success: How far have I got?

Maria says this framework should be accompanied with metacognition which is what we will look at now.

Metacognition = “thinking about thinking” (Flavell, 1979 p.906) It is the ability to think about and regulate one’s own learning. In the classroom it means helping learners become aware of how they learn, what strategies they use and how they can improve.

Why is it important? An essential element in today’s education but sometimes neglected by teachers as we don’t know how to implement it in lessons. It is an ongoing habit that transforms learning into understanding. Very important in age of genAI where there is a lot of content at hand. Metacognition CAN be taught, modelled and practiced and it SHOULD be.

G – Goal

Where am I going today as a learner? When students know the destination they can make better decisions, stay focused when they face challenges, and recognise success when they arrive. Every class needs a destination. We need to share that destination with students so they know where they are heading.

Question 1: How do you usually begin a lesson? (My answer: warmer, learning objectives; other answers: attention hooks, chat, emotional beginning, what do they already know about the topic…)

Question 2: Before your students start a task, do they know the activity…or the destination? (Varied answers!)

The activity and the destination are not the same thing. The activity is the what, the destination is the why/the goal.

Suggestions:

Here are some activities we can use to activate this idea of working with a goal.

My Learning Destination

Before starting, students complete:

Today I am learning to… (to is important.. so it isn’t just Today I am learning the present perfect)
This is useful because… they need to be able to connect what they are doing with how it will help them.
I will know I’m successful when…

Before I start checklist

Students tick before a task:

I understand the task
I know what the final product should look like
I know how much time I have
I know what resources I can use
I know what to do if i get stuck

This is practical for writing, projects, exam tasks or group work.

Success Criteria Builder

Instead of giving students success criteria, students build them. For example, before writing an email…

“What makes a good email?”

clear greeting
reason for writing
polite tone
closing phraase
correct punctuation

Students can then use this list to guide them while working to help them stay on track.

Choose your route

Give students different ways to approach a task.

E.g. learning new vocabulary

Students choose one:

make a mind map
group words by topic
write exmaple sentences
draw pictres
teach the words to a partner

Which route will you take today and why? (Activate metacognition)

Predict the roadblocks

Before the activity students complete:

I think this task will be easy because…
I think this task may be difficult because…
If I get stuck, I will…

Strategy passport

Before the lesson, students choose one strategy to travel with

Today I will use

underline key words
ask for clarification
use my notes
reread instructions
check a model
use a dictionary
rehearse bfore speaking
plan before writing

This kind of activity will help them become more aware of the strategies they use

KWL For Language learning

Before a topic:

K – What do I know?
W – What do I want/need to know?
L – What did I learn? (complete at end of class)

Plan my answer

Before speaking or writing, students complete:

My main idea:
Two words/phrases I want to use:
One grammar point I want to practise:
One thing I need to be carefrul with:

Traffic forecast

Before the task, students predict their confidence:

I don’t know how to start yet (red)
I may need some help (amber)
I think I can do this (green)

What would help you move from red to yellow? yellow to green? Then they need to think about their strategies

3 minute planning pause

Before any main task:

Minute 1: What do I have to do?
Minute 2: What do I already know that can help me?
Minute 3: What strategy will I use first?

So they need to think abotu the activity itself and what strategies they will use to complete it.

Goals: Students don’t need to know only what they’re doing. They need to know where they are going.

P – Progress

Question we need to ask: Am I on the right route? Why is this important? Learning doesn’t happen in a straight line. Effective learners constantly monitor their understanding, notice when something isn’t working and adjust their approach. If we help our students to do this, we will reduce the level/amount of frustration students have. It is ok to make mistakes and for things to go wrong but we need to be able to adjust or it is really frustrating.

It isn’t about asking “am I right?”. It is asking “is this strategy working?” “Do I need to make a change?”

Ideas:

Learning dashboard.

Instead of checking only answers, students monitor four aspects of their learning.

Self evaluation:

I am….

understanding
participating
using strategies
staying focused.

For each one, students choose where they are on a scale of smiley, neutral, sad. Then after they do this, ask “Which area needs your attention?”

GPS recalculating

Whenever students feel stuck, they cannot simply say:

“I don’t know”

Instead they complete:

I am stuck because…
The strategy I’ve tried is…
Now I’m going to….

E.g. I’ve already reread the text, now I’m going to underline the key words.

Midway Pit Stop

Halfway through the activity, students answer 3 questions:

What is going well?
What is still difficult?
What will I change during the second half?

One minute. Then continue working.

Then at the end ask: which area needs your attention?

Strategy tracker:

During the lesson they tick every strategy the actually used.

reread
asked a question
used a model
looked for examples
worked with a parnter
checked my mistakes
slowed down
explained my thinking

Which strategy helped you the most?

Strategy checkpoint

Did my strategy help me reach my destination?

How did planning your ideas help you write a better text?
Why is it important to link your ideas in and between paragraphs clearly?

Students have to think about the strategies implemented and check if the strategies they used help reach the destination

Confidence thermometer

Every 15 minutes students indicate:

I’m getting lost
Getting there
Very confident

Then ask what would move you one level higher?

Learning selfie

Pause.

Students finish the sentences:

Right now I feel… because… .
What I need next is…..

The selfie is an invitation to post and reflect on this particular moment.

My next best step

Instead of what should the teacher do? Students ask “What should I do next?”

Possible answers:

reread
ask a classmate
check my notes
practice another example
ask for feedback
keep going

Error detective

While working, students identify one mistake. Instead of correcting immediately, they ask: Why did I make this mistake? What strategy could prevent it? This makes mistakes part of the learning process positively.

Checkpoint cards

Every 15 minutes, students answer one question:

CHeckpoint 1: What have I understood?
Checkpoint 2: What strategy am I using?
What should I keep doing?
What should I change?

To help them be aware of what stratgies they are using while completing activities.

Stop – think – adjust: a simple routine that can become automatic in your lessons.

Stop: students think “What am I doing?”
Think: “Is it working?
Adjust: “What should I change?

Mid-journey questions – these help students do the same: pause, think and decide what to do next.

E.g. How does the way we read a text change when we use information from it in a new way? How can you practice this skill outside the classroom?

The three mirrors:

Students monitor learning through three lenses

Content: do I understand?
Strategy: is my strategy helping?
Effort: Am i giving my best attention to this?

S – Success

Have I reached my destination? What have I learned about my leanring? Succes is not completing a task, it is understanding the journey that led to it. So the most important thing is the learning process of the student.

The rear-view mirror:

Project an image of a rear-view mirror. Students complete:

Today I learned…
I was surprised by…
The most useful strategy I used was…
Next time I’ll…

This table can be related to strategies or techniques implemented in lessons.

Before and after

At the beginning of the lesson: I think…
At the end: Now I think…

Learning highlight

Students choose one moment. Concentrate on that moment and complete the sentence: Today the moment I learned the most was…because… The most important part is the wyy. This is encourages them to identify high impact learning experiences.

Strategy awards

Give students categories:

best strategy
biggest improvement
most helpful mistake
best question
most creative solution

This moves the focus away from marks, to focus on different areas to evaluate.

My future self:

Finish the lesson by writing:

Dear Future me,

Next time remember….

This creates transfer, which is the highest level of metacognition. Instead of only reflecting on the past, students prepare themselves for future learning.

A postcard to my future self:

Today I discovered… I hope you remember… See you next lesson!

Exit Ticket 2.0

Instead of Today I learned…

Use:

One thing I can do now that I couldn’t do before…
One strategy I’ll use again is…
One thing I still need to practise is…

The next destination:

Finish every lesson with:

Today I arrived at…
My next destination is…

Ask students to set their own goals. This reinforces that learning never ends. With these two sentences, you are adding metacognition.

Reflective hexagon

Students write six words:

What I learned
What helped
What challenged me
What surprised me
What I’ll remember
What’s next

My learning story:

Students complete:

At first…
Then…
Finally…
Now I know…

Metacognition promotes deeper learning, enhances self-regulation and motivation, fosters lifelong learning and supports 21st century skills.

My thoughts:

This was a great, if exhausting, session! Loads of great ideas that are really simple, I hope to try some of them out next academic year, in individual lessons and also in conjunction with the end of week reflection form I do with students. As ever, just need time to think about the hows and whens of it all!! 🙂

16/07/2026 by lizziepinard

ELTC TD Session: Reflections from BALEAP ‘Gen AI PIM’ Event – Tim Radnor

One of our teachers attended the recent BALEAP PIM: EAP and the Academy in the Age of GenAI: Implications for practices and practitioners and today is sharing his reflections on it. It will be interesting to hear about this and compare it with the AI-related talks that took place at the InForm conference that I attended sometime after this PIM took place!

The session will include a few reflections based on current research: focus on 2 conference presentations that Tim attended, on two aspects of how Gen AI and EAP intersect. We will also discuss how the issues raised may impact our professional practice.

We started by looking at statements from a session Tim gave in November 2024 and identified how things have changed since then:

There were opinions that AI is even more widespread now and established now, and getting better at what it does, with more natural responses.
There is also more opportunities for creating AI tools e.g. Gemini Gems, so more customisable.
In terms of policy, it is on the way to become embedded in assessments and curricula here at Sheffield, but across universities policies are very different, there isn’t uniformity.
We are more aware of drawbacks including environmental damage, ethical issues, reliablity of results, information ‘dumping’.
Academic research into Gen AI and EAP has grown rapidly in the last two years, is much broader now.

In terms of the BALEAP day, there was a full day of presentations with 8 strands that each included several papers. There was a lot of overlap between strands. We are going to focus on two only:

First presentation: How Gen AI reshapes perceived academic writing ability in EAP contexts by Dr Elhadj Moussa BenMoussa (University of East London)

Tim had seen one of Moussa’s presentations before in the academic literacies BALEAP sig so knew of his research. Moussa’s study looked at student drafts of academic essays, then AI-assisted revisions of the same texts, as well as tutor feedback on draft and edited version. (Tim doesn’t know the level of the students or class they were in.) But they were in-sessional. And recurring patterns were found:

Before AI: writing weaknesses were visible and tutors could identify various issues e.g. grammatical errors, spelling, cohesion.

After AI: the text improved, weaknesses such as those above became hiddent beneath fluent prose but the thinking had not improved.

“The illusion of competence” was the speaker’s phrase. AI texts often appear fluent, coherent, academically structured (in terms of paragraphing) and confident in terms of style and tone. However, they may contain weaknesses in terms of argumentation, critical engagement, source integration, disciplinary reasoning and authorial stance (writer’s voice in other words). The speaker was looking at it from an academic literacies perspective. He found that the text appears stronger but the underlying understanding remains unchanged.

The AI version has added ideas, has better cohesion, higher level vocab. In the AI-assisted version, the element of the student’s perspective on feedback has been lost. If anything, the student draft is more critical even though simpler. The AI version has no argumentation in it. We are assuming an average level of simple, straightforward prompting. Prompting expertise doesn’t contradict the argument here however. The AI assisted version sounds more academic but does it demonstrate deeper knowledge? No, it is just descriptive.

Why does this matter to EAP?

Traditional indicators of proficiency are becoming less reliable for assessment as AI performs these automatically. EAP practitioners are uniquely places to help understand the shift to evaluating reasoning, knowledge, rhetorical decision making, source use and intellectual ownership.

Moussa argues that we need to “make thinking visible” (epistemic visibility was the fancy term used!). We need to make students demonstrate why they made choices, how arguments were developed, how sources were selected, how evidence was interpreted and how conclusions were reached. I.e. shift from what was written to how was knowledge constructed.

As a takeaway, Moussa recommended:

That was the first presentation. The next stage was to discuss for five minutes: what do you think the implications of these ideas are for how we adapt assessments, feedback on written work and classroom activities on EAP (pre-sessional, in-sessional, foundation…)?

Ideas shared in our session:

focusing on speaking rather than writing as more difficult to fake
focus on the process rather than the end product but at the same time do we need to go back to in-room exams rather than ongoing/project assessment? Not sure how much focus on process helps.
Have to accept they are using it and think more about how
More use of reflection on own learning progress with reference to specific lessons and learning materials
Given that students will be expected to be able to use AI effectively in future workplaces, it arguably makes sense to assess their ability to use it well rather than how they perform without it
A variety of assessment types to cross-reference for gauging student abilities
One of the things is in class helping to develop their analytical skills on the spot e.g. when we do a task in a breakout room, saying to students right now you’ve done that task, how easy or difficult is it (scale of 1 to 5), how do you rate yourself? (1 to 5). Make them think about it. Then, so why was it difficult? Why was it easy? To get them used to providing answers that aren’t AI-based, but are their own analysis of their learning.
Also for feedback on regular tasks, you can build in that critical process. Moving beyond lanaguge correction to looking at the ideas themselves and encouraging reflection.
Consciously use AI in a course programme and ask students to use it in a particular way and then they critique the output that they get
Adapting marking criteria
For each assessment it has to be stated what the parameters for AI are.
Bit of a paradox: that shift to arguing, styles, evidence etc sounds as if we have surrendered and are trying to engage students receptively but not productively?
Or is it more helping the students improve their reasoning etc as they produce the text and then polishing it with AI? If you can help students as much with reasoning and argument as with language, but you have to look at language as well e.g. how to do these things. But if you already have the reasoning formulated in depth, the polishing is less of an issue. The suggestion isn’t to copy and paste!

Focus on Gen AI literacy.

What do we understand by this term?

Ideas shared in our session:

writing prompts
being able to evaluate output quality and relevance
being able to use AI tools to enhance learning and productivity (ethically and appropriately)
knowledge and flexible application of AI tools for different purposes, i.e. social , academic, vocational activities
know how to use accurately and appropriately according to circumstances

Here is a definition of GenAI literacy from the literature:

Second presentation: “Student practices and experiences of Gen AI: developing a practice-oriented heuristic for GenAI literacy” by Julio Jiminez, Katherine Mansfield and Richard Paterson from University of Westminster.

Background: There is tension between institutional discourse (polices, integrity, guidance, how we teach it, recommendations) and student practice. Students are already integrating gen AI into their practice but in more nuanced ways than institutional discourse assumes. Policies struggle to keep pace with rapidly changing practices and technologies.

Research question: What do students actually do with GenAI in everyday academic life?

The speakers surveyed 441 students across 66 disciplines.

Findings:

GenAI is used by students for…

generating ideas (68%)
planning work (66%)
finding sources (33%)
receiving feedback (24%)

Note: Very different percentages between the top two and bottom two. They talked in focus groups with the students as well.

Key themes:

Students use GenAI strategically: they pick specific tools for specific tasks; their selection takes into account what they consider the uses and limitations of the tool; their use suggests that rather than simply using tools because they are there, use is based on the fit between the task and the tool.
GenAI literacy is emerging: students do critically evaluate the accuracy, reliablity and bias of tools and output and they are developing awareness of what is and isn’t appropriate use. To improve this, there needs to be ongoing decision making which is context-sensitive.
Learning is increasingly human-AI mediated: GenAI is used to support planning, drafting and revision. However, students maintain their evaluative control over the outputs. Therefore, academic practice is becoming a human-AI hybrid process.

Overall, this all indicates that students’ GenAI literacy is moving beyond technical proficiency towards strategic, critical and context-sensitive use.

The speakers came up with 4 principles for how these findings could feed into approaches to teaching GenAI literacy:

They came up with this framework (Framework rather than practical steps):

From left to right it moves from more basic to more complex.

Finally, we discussed the following more practical questions based on this session:

Does any of your experience of student use of GenAI align with or differ from the findings in any way? How?
How well does the heuristic (framework) match how students are taught AI lteracy in an institution or teahcing situation you are familiar with?
Can you think of any practical exercises, workshops or courses for sudents that could incorporate the ideas from this session?

Ideas shared:

Students are given specific information about AI use but it isn’t incorporated into day to day activities. So one participant uses it in classes to help students become more independent users but class time is limited. Need longer sessions where you can demonstrate something and give students time to try it. So it shouldn’t be an add-on anymore.
Students used gen ai to create diagrams for their presentations and cited them as well as referenced their creations They were relevant and much better to support their speaking than looking for what approximates relevance for their topic – So creating visuals. It worked really well in conjunction with academic referencing/citing. They were responsible enough to cite and add sources if necessary. It helped them support their speaking. This requires increased literacy in terms of knowing about doing that and how to do it. However, with simple prompts they managed very good results.
Get Gen AI to write an essay in class and then get the students to analyse its weaknesses, such as poor argumentation and use of evidence. This requires criticality in this area.
Often a massive disconnect between AI-positive message from here and what people experience. There needs to be a more joined up approach.

Tim’s overall reflections on the conference were as follows:

he doesn’t know as much as he thought about EAP and AI (I think that is probably true for many of us!)
There is a lot of research going on into EAP and AI
EAP professionals have an important role to play in the transition to the integration of Gen AI in HE institutions
Students may be using GenAI in a more strategic, critical way than EAP practitioners assume

My thoughts:

My first take-away is how much student agency there is around AI. That whole strategic use thing. It suggests that it is really important in terms of AI literacy and how we teach use of AI to involve the students’ perspective as much as possible, to better understand their use and be better able to help them shape their use to fit the specific context in terms of what is and isn’t acceptable and helping them refine their use. I suppose the more confident we become about GenAI, the more confident and better able we will be to have these sorts of conversations with students.

Thinking about my specific context, this last academic year has been the first year where we have acknowledged AI rather than ignoring it beyond having a blanket ban which is impossible to enforce. We relied mainly on interactive content put together by the digital team, which we gave students time to complete in class. In the coming year, in contrast, the idea is to have in-class activities that are teacher-led rather than interactive content-led regularly in the first five weeks of the course and then at a few specific points thereafter. We will see how it goes!

My second main take-away is the difference between the student example and the AI revision. I can imagine a student who fed in the studente example and got back the AI example would be like “yeah, great, this is better! I’ll use this!” while their actual message has been lost. Of course, they’d need a clear understanding of both their message and the AI output in order to realise that. So I wonder how we help them become better able to do that. I need more time to think about that! I always need more time to think about things but time is in such short supply…

01/05/2026 by lizziepinard

Neurodiversity: inclusive pedagogy, fostering effective learning for all (Cambridge webinar)

My second webinar for the day! (Now yesterday!)

Speakers: Paul Ellis and Kate Trafford from Cambridge International dn Cambridge English respectively.

Hoping to: understand principles of inclusive pedagogy and build a tool box of inclusive classroom ideas to support all learners.

Terminology:

Neurodiversity: different ways that we all think, move, hear, see, understand, process, information and communicate with each other. We are all neurodiverse. This describes variation in peoples’ minds.

Neurotypical: the group whose thinking, moving etc reflect social or cultural norms, the typical way.

Neurodivergent: the group who have a type of brain often considered different from the socially constructed norm.

This reminds us that there is no single way that we learn. Our language needs to be up to date and inclusive. Inclusive terminology is important.

We started with a poll. How much do you agree?

Differentiation like giving dyslexic learners separate worksheets is the best way to creat an inclusive classroom.
Inclusive teaching practices are beneficial for all students, not just those with learning differences.
I feel confident teaching neurodivergent learners and have many strategies in my teacher toolbox ready to use.

Paul and Kate’s principles: a holistic view

Equitable outcomes for all students – with or without a formal diagnosis. In some countries you can get a diagnosis for e.g. autism, dyslexia. Today we won’t be talking about specific conditions but rather inclusive education for all. The focus is on removing the barriers and not changing the learners themselves, just enabling them to show what they know and can do. Neuroinclusive approaches support all learners.

Performance = potential minus interference. (Timothy Gallwey, 1972) We all face barriers to performance that could be anything taht gets in the way of your potential to perform to your best. This can vary depending on the day, and what other influences there are going on. The good news is, you can use first class teaching strategies e.g. active learning, assessment for learning, self-management, UOL principles then you are already looking after a lot of learners in your class. Then only a small number of students will need also differentiated activities and testing, and additional support. An even smaller number will need personalised interventions.

Neuroinclusivity in education means a classroom culture that anticipates every kind of brain and removes barriers so that every learner can engage meaningfully.

Small consistent changes can have a big impact. Universal design for learning: divides into representation of content (multimodal, videos, quizzes, textbooks), action and expression (oral presentations, written text, digital portfolios, group work) and engagement and motivation (give choice and link units to relevant content and long-term goals).

Some common classroom behaviours and their possible causes:

difficulty getting started: can be due to not knowing where to start and having cognitive overload. Once working memory is too full, information cannot be processed so they may have difficulty progressing.
losing focus or “over-focusing”: can be due to lack of clear time or progress markers, not enough sensory or cognitive variation
emotional responses that seem disproportionate: learners may have a low sense of safety and predictability, or cognitive fatigue.
longer than average time to process spoken instructions: too much demand on working memory demands and auditory processing load.
sensory discomfort (light, noise, seating, temperature): learner is experience sensory overload from their environment which creates a barrier to learning and ability to complete tasks.

Environmental barriers are not learner deficits. The barriers are task design, instructions, pace, sensory overload and relational climate. Inclusion shouldn’t result in extra work, it is small, consistent adjustments that remove barriers for learners.

Neuroinclusive practice: removing the barriers

Part 1: Quick wins

Immersive reader: It is on Microsoft word but Apple has an equivalent. What you see is you get tabs that enable you to change page colour, text spacing, a read-aloud function, live focus which enables you to focus on one line at a time. Which of these things help depends on the individual. (Google docs enables you to change the page colour in page set up! I use that!)
Bionic reading: some parts of each word are in bold. Again, whether it is helpful depends on the individual. You need to involve the students not decide for them.
Different colour backgrounds: on paper or plastic coloured overlays.
Fonts: use sans serif fonts e.g Arial, Tahoma (we like Open Sans at work!)
Use a visible clock: to help students manage time especially during tests, exams and timed activities.
After asking a question, count to three before calling on anyone. Pause and then give them a chance to respond. (Usually teachers give 0.7 seconds for learners to respond. Waiting time is so important! Don’t be scared of silence!)
Vary the way you call on learners (e.g. written responses on a mini-whiteboard) (Wooclap is a digital example we use)

Part 2: long term strategies

These might take a bit more planning but will be very worthwhile. These are built on 6 core elements, 3 of which (the 3 in bold) we will focus on today:

creating a clear lesson structure
incorporating appropriate technology (if found beneficial)
adapting the learning materials (e.g. level or physical nature)
explicit classroom delivery and instructions
integrating learning and asssessment
setting the right environment

Creating a clear lesson structure

Have a visual lesson checklist. Use the pages of the coursework/resource as a springboard for your lesson.

Share learning objectives at the beginning of class so students know the starting point and the goal for the timeframe of the lesson.

If that checklist is only given verbally, it will be forgotten. If written down as a checklist, it will help keep learners on track, and help them maintain focus.

3 different ways to present a visual checklist:

AI generated: number, icon, description
whiteboard clipboard with numbered descriptions
pinboard note with numbered summarised descriptions

Try different ones, see what learners prefer.

Establish a clear and consistent routine. This allows a positive start to the lesson and review prior learning. It creates predictability so students know what they are coming into and what will be expected of them. This creates a psychologically safe environment. It also allows you to address any issues that arise and take the register quickly and quietly. 5-10 minutes is it all it takes. This can be any kind of do-now activity that students do as soon as they come in. If you have multiple lessons per week, you could have a particular routine for Lesson 1 of the week, Lesson 2 of the week etc that is the same each week.

Explicit classroom delivery and instructions

I do – we do – you do: teacher models, students do all together, student does individual attempt. This can help avoid cognitive overload and achieve a sense of teamwork as you are doing it together. Teacher writes a sentence, students complete it on mini whiteboards, students do an individual activity.

Use a variety of instruction techniques to ensure learners are following the class rhythm. Bring L1 into the classroom: get learners to explain the instruction/activity/concept to a grumpy grandad who doesn’t speak English (maybe be a bit less specific incase someone’s relative just died…)

Another example is: Say it, show it, write it, repeat it.

These ideas allow L1 into the classroom in a small, controlled way to check understanding.

Setting the right environment:

Sensory objects: when learners can channel their energy, they have improved concentration. Learners can have a specific sensory object of their choosing which they keep with them. Can take it out when needed. You could have a selection box for learners to choose from when they need a moment of self-regulation. This helps to create a safe environment. Being able to choose their own one encourages agency.

Individual headphones can be useful: excess background noise can be very distracting. Headphones can also be used for listening to audiobook or listening and reading a text at the same time.

Digital exams: What could be the benefits for learners sitting a digital exam ? More focus, fewer distractions, more control, more empowering.

(I would add:

use natural lighting rather than overhead lighting where possible.
if you are using a computer connected projection screen, enable “Night light” (in display settings on Windows) to minimise glare.
have quiet activities in between the group activities to allow overstimulated students to have a breather )

We only looked at three pillars today. We will be able to look at others ‘for homework’ via some wider reading we will be given.

Keep in mind:

neuroinclusive approaches support all learners
these approaches are good for adults as well!
focus on removing the barriers and not changing the learners
good teaching practises are inclusive teaching practices
small actions applied consistently lead to great impact

Next steps:

All of the ideas shared today are tried and tested!

We repeated the poll from the start of the webinar. There have been some changes since the start, more people feel confident: 4 and 5 have increased while 3 has decreased.

Resources:

The middle one, Neurodiversity and Education, I didn’t know about – looks interesting! (On a non-Cambridge note, Pavillion ELT recently brought out English Language Teaching in a Neurodiverse World.)

And some more cambridge stuff!

…And some more!

…and in list/link form.

Two webinars in one day was a lot! Anyway, it’s so nice to see neurodivergence being acknowledged and talked about in ELT in recent time. Hopefully, while it seems to be a current theme, it will not just be a passing craze! I have so much buzzing around in my head relating to inclusion and relating to group dynamics, and all the sessions I’ve attended this year so far, and all of it in relation to classroom practice. What I don’t have is time to really think deeply about it all and bring it all together (so much time pressure around other things right now)! Though on the plus side my end of semester feedback from my class in terms of learning envrionment was really positive this year for both semesters, so what I have been doing in relation to these things has nevertheless been well-received by students.

30/04/2026 by lizziepinard

BALEAP TAFSIG Webinar ‘Developing a viva-style assessment for a large language course: a collaboration between two large scale pre-sessional programmes’ –

I was keen to join this as in title it seems to be relevant to our ACP – Academic Coursework Presentation – which has a Q&A component. TAFSIG is Testing, Assessment and Feedback Special Interest Group within BALEAP (glad she clarified that because I didn’t know!) They have a YouTube channel with weinar recordings (I shall have a look at that!)

4 speakers: Craig Davis, Nicola Harding (Manchester), Lori-ann Miln, Phillippa Bunch (Southhamtpon).

Context and collaborative development:

The presessionals are similar in some respects: large student and tutor cohorts (100+ tutors). Both assess writing in an essay (challenges brought by genAI and suspected malpractice but no real way of authenticating engagement with writing components).

Manchester: Reading to writing (80% writing, 100% reading) L2S (50%S seminar, 100% listening). Previously seminar with brief presentation followed by discussion was 100% of speaking score.

Southhampton: Assessments are more separated out. One key difference from Manchester is that students can choose their own topic for their researched essay = a lot of different research areas. Reading is demonstrated through writing. Speaking is a presentation followed by Q&A. Listening is a lecture followed by discussion where skills are assessed. There are different read/writing tutors and speaking/listening tutors.

Manchester and Soutthampton had a collaboration, identifying similar challenges a few years ago and sharing ideas around assessments and after several meetings realised they were all moving in the same direction, as GenAI use became more prominent and they were trying to deal with that in the assessment design. They were also prompted by feedback from lecturers across the university, saying that rehearsed presentation was not effectively assessing their ability to produce spontaneous speech.

Manchester Case Study

Created the question and answer assessment:

Question 1: Prepared question, same for all students (2 mins)
Question 2: product focused from question bank (3 mins)
Question 3: process focused question seleted from question bank (3 mins).

All students were given the same question: To what extent should AI be integrated into HE?

Example of Product focus: Tell us about a specific source you used in your essay – how and why did you use it?

Example of Process focus: What was the most significant/helpful piece of fb you received and how do you respond to it? (make sure student answers both parts of the question)

Follow up prompts: Why do you think that? /Is there anything else that you found helpful/unhelpful.

Scaffolded process:

Stage 1: Assessment overview (brief introduction during student orientation talks)
Stage 2: Tutor-led sesion focusing on the assessment (every assessment is supported by synchronous taught session, look at criteria and apply them to example answers).
Stage 3: individual tutorials x 2 redesigned to follow a Q&A format (existing activity, part of the course, mini QAA for that to enable practice.)
Stage 4: individual study (checklist of preparations and a reflection leading into final stage)
Stage 5 (final questions and preparations: final group tutorial, centres on the Q&A and the assessment coordinator drop-in – where students could ask any questions, not many did)

How were tutors supported?

The assessment was piloted with volunteer students from PS April 2025 and standardisation packs were created using videos from the pilot.
An answer guide (University of Manchester is quite prescriptive around this part of the assessment: pros and cons, but one of the pros is the easy ability to produce such a guide!) was created to support marking.
A streamlined criteria for live marking: was made as useful as possible for the tutors, as there are lots of students marking up to 18 students each, and doublemarking.
Marking template was provided with space to write which questions were asked and space for notes about the answers.

Students were assessed on speaking by focusing on: fluency, pronounciation, language. Students were also assessed response to the question by focusing on: relevance, specificity, development

Speaking (fluency, pronunciation, language) contributed only to speaking (25%) and Response to questions 1-3 each contibuted 25%. For writing score, 20% writing and then response to questions 1-3 contributed 33% each. So increasing the focus on process.

They were quite prescriptive in terms of what was provided to tutors, as it was the first time to run it large scale. Everything was live doublemarked, assessments all scheduled over 3 days.

How did students perform?

Generally fairly consistent. Outliers: Speaking: 57 students scored 20%+ higher on L2S than on Q&A. 12 students scored 50% or below in QAA but above 70% in L2S Writing: 20 students scored +25% lower on the Q&A

Overall, the assessment was well received by teachers and students. However, timetabling was a big challenging as everything was live doublemarked. Questions banks supported tutors and ensured consistency, while prompts supported students in speaking for the full 3 minutes (mostly). However more question-specific follow up prompts and more guidance on managing the discussion elements could be needed.

Part 1 and 2 had a lot of overlap and also some scripting and reading from the essay = more difficult to authenticate and mark, as not saying a lot about student engagement. Question 3 was more revealing about how students engaged with the process, and therefore more useful.

Next time: They want to switch the focus to process rather than product – product – process. Still the same components (1 rehearsed, 2 not). This will require revisiting the question and prompts. They may also change the ratings to make Q&A 40% of writing. In terms of identifying outliers earlier = having a minimum component threshold for referral, so if student falls below 40% for any component they will be flagged. They also want to have a gap cap between the writing and the speaking

Southhampton Case Study

Soutthampton did a formative presentation (4 minutes) and Q&A (2 minutes) then later a summative presentation (6 minutes) and Q&A (4 minutes). The Q&A consisted of 2 questions: 1) demonstrate understanding of content and 2) demonstrate reflection on research process.

They don’t have much quantitative data at the moment but plenty of qualitative. The Q&A was worth 20% of the assessment criteria with content, structure, communicaton, precision and accuracy also each worth 20%. Students needed to be able to talk about they used their sources and how they used feedback.

In terms of tutor support: they provided structured tutor training embedded in the induction programmes. They also provided a question bank to support consistent assessment delivery. Finally, they did standardisation sessions. They thought this would suffice. But, after moderation and observation of formative assessment, they saw a lot of variability and disparity/inconsistency in tutors’ ability to run the Q&A in terms of formulating suitable open ended questions, and scaffolding student responses in real time. There were also struggles around sustaining interaction beyond surface level clarifcation, in terms of not allowing enough time and space for students to develop detailed responses. Some interactions were very brief, while others were more developed and encouraged critical thinking, thereby resulting in a better score. So, based on the formatives, in preparation for the summatives, they produced an enhanced guidance and question bank with initial questions and possible follow up questions, which helped with the issues identified when it came to the summatives. It should be noted that the questions had to be able to fit everyone’s essay topc even though they would all be different.

Things they found interesting: students developed more confidence in oral academic English, there was stronger evidence of research engagement, fewer formal academic misconduct cases but also the quality of student enagement depended heavily on the tutor’s quetsioning technique. A positive outcome: students reported feeling more prepared to communicate in an academic environment.

Looking ahead, they want to perhaps shrink the prepared presentation and extend the Q&A, with increased emphasis on process, linked to student folder. They also want to enhance tutor development with targeted training.

Key considerations and shared findings

Both assessment designs responded to AI by increasing emphasis on more spontaneous and more authentic Q&A
Different approaches but common challenges particularly around questioning, interaction and consistency.
Overall positive student outcomes.

Ongoing debate on balancing the structure for fairness and reliability with flexibility for authenticity and responsiveness.

Discussion/Questions

The first question was about student grading: how much focused on subject knowledge, language etc. Manchester doesn’t score much for content, focuses more on language, and relevant response to questions (which is sort of content based).

The second question was about the degree of mitigation of AI use. The focus on process has helped, moving away from end-loaded assessment and building it in throughout the course as well as building in meaningful dialogue from day 1. Also makes feedback into more of a process as it is revisited. At each formative stage there is opportunity for discussion with the students and this can be very constructive. Also, knowing from day 1 that they will need to do this encourages engagement with the process. With online courses, the live transcription thing is a challenge. Live Q&As are much better quality than online, as students have to be more natural and spontaneous and use oral strategies when they aren’t sure what to say etc. Any suggestions to help with online are welcome!

Reading/writing team do a lot of critical reflection as part of the course. (This related to a question about how prepared students were for the level of criticality required by the speaking assessment.)

The question bank: Soutthampton are asking 6 questions each time formatively in reflective tutorials so students get used to the style of questioning. A list of questions is not given in advance, but they do get two practices so students get the chance to practice responding to that style of questioning process.

How important is the prepared part of the presentation, would it be better to get more quickly to the Q&A. Answer: good question, they have been tempted to do away with the presentation part but they keep coming back to the point that on most degree programmes ss have to give a presentation, whether or not they use AI to do that, so the presentation skills are stilll useful to take forward and therefore it still has value. Focus on process is very present already in the writing, this may be brought more into the speaking as well. In terms of keeping the presentation, the prepared part allows more confidence coming into the more spontaneous part. There is still thought about changing the weighting so that the prepared part has less weighting.

My thoughts

Phew! Interesting hour, well spent! Southhampton’s current approach seems more similar to ours – except we have 7-8 mins presentation and 2-3 mins of questions. We have a mock and final, which I guess equates to the formative-summative. The latest cycle did identify issues like those mentioned above around consistency in questioning, in terms of difficulty of questions asked and depth/length of interaction. We had already discussed the need to standardise this more, so there are some good ideas in this session to draw on!

I feel that the Q&A component of our criteria could also use fine-tuning, drawing on some of the ideas shared today. At the moment the Q&A is only worth half a criteria but that is not something we can change without a Studygroup-wide discussion and process so it is definitely not a very near future thing, but we definitely can improve on how we do and mark the Q&A part, then perhaps at some point if we can shift it towards representing more of the overall presentation score (which itself is 50% of students’ speaking score), we will be in a better position to do so.

For now, we have an entirely different kettle of fish spilling all over the place development-wise, however! 😉

17/04/2026 by lizziepinard

Assessment and generative AI

This was an internal workshop which was aimed the whole university not only us ELTC folk. Being the end of marking week and my work week (final hour thereof!) it was a good chance to grab the opportunity to do some development (woohoo!)!

The plan was to reflect on the impact of gen AI on assessment, hear about the university’s new common approach to gen AI in the curriculum and then focus in on what fair and appropriate use of gen AI in the context of an assessment might look like and what an “AI-required” assessment might look like.

Here are my notes from the session:

Currently, students can gain a passing grade or even a high pass, using AI in a written assessment. This use is not something that we can detect accurately and fairly, and therefore we can’t ban it as the ban would not be enforceable. However, that does give us the responsibility of ensuring that students use AI well and effectively, and develop appropriate knowledge/skills. We also have to prepare students for workplaces where AI will be used (though as yet what exactly this looks like is unclear!). So, rather than focusing on the negative impact on assessment, we should use these developments as an opportunity to focus and reflect on what, how and why we assess, with a view to improving the process for all concerned.

By Sept 2028, all programmes at the university will include 2 summative AI-Required assessments annually. Well, not *all* – this applies to Year 1 and 2 of undergraduate programmes. “AI free” and “AI-required” assessments are to be explicitly categorised. In AI-free assessments = it should not be possible to use AI, and skills must be demonstrated in an environment where AI assistance is not possible. The choice to do this type of assessment should be grounded in the learning outcomes e.g. communication and interpersonal skill evaluation, development of oral defence and articulation skills, verification of minimum competence, preparation for high-stakes professional contexts, simulation of professional practice conditions. In AI – required assessments, students would have to use AI in some way in order to complete the assessment and develop AI literacy in the context of their subject.

For all assessments that are not labelled either “AI-free” or “AI-required”, fair and appropriate use of AI should be possible (as long as it doesn’t constitute “false [automated] authorship”) in a variety of ways. We should include a statement on AI and academic misconduct (see below) on all assessment briefs. Alongside this, we need to teach students what good use of AI is in the context of a given assessment. However, this should not just be a list of what is and isn’t approved, as that is not something we can enforce in terms of the things on the “what isn’t” list.

There is still quite a lot of grey area – how to define “mostly” or “entirely” for example – where is the line? It does require unpacking for us to understand it fully and communicate to students effectively what it means.

Next, we looked at a generic task and what would be fair/unfair use of AI. Using AI to support elements of the task that the student is doing themselves and getting feedback of what they have done, are examples of appropriate use. A question that arose from a participant: Does getting AI involved in this way minimise student development in terms of the editorial process? Or, does it help them develop the ability by showing them a model of how to do it? It was suggested that perhaps it depends on whether the student lets the AI have the last word. That is, if the student simply adopts the AI comments wholesale without critique, then possibly the overall effect on the development of editorial process is negative but if the student approaches it critically, and learns from it, perhaps it can be helpful?

How could we communicate effective use to students? How could we adapt the task to discourage inappropriate use? Need to be careful of “traffic light” systems because they are not so suitable as we can’t actually enforce the “red” area rules. We need to talk to students about it, come to a shared agreement with them. There is also an issue that students have access to widly different AIs, of varying power. For AI-required assessments here, Gemini should be used – but again, how do we enforce that? Answers on a postcard! AI isn’t limited to LLMs, a participant suggested we need to consider what other platforms/programmes that exist and might support students. The response was that in large part, the focus on LLMs is because they are applicable to everybody, while more specific AI have more specific subject applications. To consider others, you need that more specific knowledge and skill set. (Which is an issue for departments and department-specific training I suppose!!)

Currently, there are some things that students can do better than AI but how long will it be until AI does do everything well in relation to the task? Then we won’t have that option anymore. Probably we are not that far from it. Is it worth putting in for major changes to an assessment when it takes 2 years for that to go through by which time the changes may be obsolete? E.g. hallucinations are getting rarer and it is less likely for it to use invented sources. A more current problem is it won’t go for the best journals or do a great job of assessing what is good or not. But then, you can get round this by specifying in a prompt what you want to be included/excluded. Assessing students in real time, using pen and paper, rather than digitally is an option, as is making the task more personal, having to draw on student experience rather than a generic case.

What about AI-required assessments? AI use might just be a component of an assessment, not a whole assessment that is about use of AI. It doesn’t even have to include student use of AI tools. They could look at pre-created content, talk about why they have decided NOT to use AI, analyse use of AI in a specific context, create a plan for how AI could be used ethically etc Students can ethically object to using AI but should still be able to learn about it.

So what might an AI-required assessment look like? What we need to start from is what skill do we want them to develop by using AI in this assessment? The university are putting together an AI literacy bank, broken down into Awareness, Competence and Ethics, which we can use to help inform task design/adaptation. In our context, students are in the very early stages of their academic journey so we would need to pick out what these students would most benefit from at this stage in their academic journey. [This is useful information as we were wondering if and how this would apply to us. Looking at the framework, it should be possible to identify which element(s) are possible for us to integrate and assess, building on what we have done already in this direction.]

We were asked to suggest modifications to the example task, and responses were more muted – possibly because it was quite complicated and there wasn’t much time!

It was noted that an AI-free assessment should be AI-free for pedagogical reasons, we should have a pedagogical justification. It is a descriptor rather than a label to adopt because we are scared of AI and student use of AI. As we start adapting assessments, need to think about what sort of changes – administrative, minor or major changes – are required. The reality is, the majority of changes relating to AI would hopefully fall under administrative changes: changing how the task is written, changing the information in the assessment brief provided to students = relatively quick to make. Changing an assessment type completely would then be a minor adjustment and require a longer process. A major change is to the programme level learning outcomes, so is unlikely to apply here. So anything around assessments would be classed as at most a minor change. We’ve got two years lead time – January 2028 ready for September 2028 intake would be when to put through minor changes to assessments. [Obviously for us on the AES (Academic English Skills) programme, it is a bit different as Studygroup timelines and processes are involved!]

It was an interesting session. Currently, our coursework assessments are neither AI-free or AI-required, and we have tried to encourage students to use it ethically to support their learning in the context of a given assessment rather than to do it for them. We have adapted our criteria for the writing coursework (extended essay) so that students need to do the skills we teach (critical evaluation, synthesis etc) well in order to score well, and conversely can submit a polished piece of work grammar/vocabulary-wise yet still score poorly. As mentioned above, how long the new criteria will hold effective for is anybody’s guess.

Based on today, and on the trajectory of travel for our coursework speaking assessment (presentation), which is moving towards greater emphasis (in terms of time and marks awarded) on the q&a part than there is currently, I wonder if that is where more personalisation could be incorporated and/or where we could get students to elaborate on how they have used AI, or any decisions they made around their AI use? Anyway, we shall see. In terms of how we teach students how to use AI effectively, going beyond checklists, that is one of our development aims for the coming semester – integrating that teaching more fully into lessons rather than it being more of a bolt-on of do’s and don’ts.

There will be more of these kind of sessions in the nearish future, so I will be interested to attend them!

20/02/2026 by lizziepinard

Practical tips and ideas about the Neuroscience of Language Learning (Ana Biazon Rocha, ELTC)

On Thursday 19th February, I attended this online in-house TD session about neuroscience and language learning.

Why is Ana talking about this? She has done part 1 of a course in neuroscience run by ITDI so is disseminating to us (yay!), and will be doing part 2 soon!

Truths and myths about the brain

We started by looking at the following truths/myths about the brain:

We mostly use 10% of our brain: false – our brain is very active all the time and uses about 20% of our daily calories intake. It is just how the brain works, a natural thing.
Your brain can only produce one or two thoughts in your conscious mind at once: true – can only handle a small amount of information at one time. The idea of “multitasking” is a myth. The classic example: teachers talking and students on phones = problem. Why? Because their brain cannot listen to the teacher (in a foreign language) and use a mobile phone (in L1!) at the same time. Their attention will be focused only on one.
The brain uses both hemispheres for learning and working with language: true – new technology has confirmed this (despite a previous myth saying that we only use the left side of the brain to process language).

Neuroscience and learning

Tells us about how the brain works, which can help us understand how learning works inside the brain (Letby, Maine & Harries, 2021).

Gives us evidence of how things help learning and what we can do to help our brain learn.

Four brains in the classroom

In the classroom, we have four different types of brain working:

social brain
language brain
learning brain
teaching brain

The Social Brain

A large part of our brain is programmed to predict what is going to happen (in order to survive threats) and what others want, think and feel. This is controlled by the “mentalising network” also known as the social brain. The social brain is important because learning is socially regulated. If the brain feels it is not under threat, it is easier for it to focus. Focus is needed to create memories. “Human beings are uniquely equipped to learn language through social engagement” (Brown & Lee 2025). = student – student relationships and student – teacher relationships are both important!

So when students feel emotionally safe and not afraid to take risks, when they work collaboratively, when the topic connects to their real lives and interests, when tasks are challenging but still achievable, when there is a sense of purpose and clear direction, when tasks are well scaffolded, when the environment is comfortable, when support is available, when there is more face to face interaction rather than screen time, when they are well fed and have energy… this is when they are most cognitively available.

How to nurture the social brain?

building rapport
using students’ names
pair work and group work to complete tasks
pair work and group work before whole-class speaking
using humour
focusing on low-threat correction
using emotional checks
creating a safe and engaging learning environment

We are human beings first and foremost. How we feel matters first and foremost.

The Language Brain

All cognition, including language, is embodied. That means that the brain and body are highly integrated. So your brain controls how your body operates and your body controls how your brain operates. The brain uses physical experiences to build complex sensor an dmotor models to understand the world. Using language activates the sensor models and the motor models in the brain that represent the language that you learn. This is embodied simulation. E.g. when you hear the word apple. Automatically your brain thinks about the sensor model that it has for that specific thing. You might have heard of “neurons that fire together wire together” – it means that we have billions of neurons, if they are working at the same time they are firing together (when we are learning), and the more practice/repetition of that certain activity/word/thought links the groups of neurons so the memory is produced and strengthened.

For language, best = meaning, action, emotion and interaction fire together.

So, things that are less wiring for students are teacher explanation for five minutes, decontextualised rules, lack of variety (doing the same things every lesson) and the famous clicking through slides.

E.g. A teacher explains what a seminar discussion is. “In a seminar discussion, we… etc etc” = no wiring.

Things that wire:

A teacher sets up a seminar discussion and students participate. Students must respond to a peer, refer to evidence, agree/disagree, and reformulate ideas.

It is more student-centred.

Nurturing the language brain:

repeated vocabulary in context
personal stories
pair and group talk
roleplay
grammar/pron and real communication (not decontextualised)
think – pair – share (no one is put on the spot)
peer teaching (explain to your partner what just happened)
positive feedback and risk-taking
clear expectations and consistent follow up (lesson objectives made clear to students)
focus routines (e.g. the mood slide at the start of lessons; phones away = discussion starts)
linking learning to previous learning
moving students around (changing interaction patterns, activities involving movement)
reflection
short brain breaks to defuse overload e.g.

Ana gave us one of these! It is one of the secrets. In our lessons there is a lot of content so it can become too much. Therefore, having one minute stops at regular intervals (with stretching, with eyes closed etc) can be very helpful. This means you can continue with a fresher brain.

The Learning Brain

Learning is memory formation, consolidation and modification: When neurons fire together, they form the connection, which creates the memory which represents the learning. With no practice/no repeat, the memory formation doesn’t happen. Consolidation is needed: practice, doing. Modification is required to move things from short term memory into long term memory. To become learning, the memory needs to move to the long term memory. This transition happens through sleep. Sleep is the most important element but our students stay up all hours! This means no processing of information can happen.

Four main factors of learning: sleep (physio – physiological), novelty (brain compatibility), spaced repetition (Deep processing), personally relevant (meaningfulness). Students’ lack of sleep = low ability, low confidence, low motivation. A good idea to have a serious discussion about this with students. Sleep is THE factor for academic success. Don’t assume they already know this. Also, no emotion, no learning.

We were given some reflection questions:

Nurturing the learning brain:

5 minute retrieval routines (e.g. list as many phrases as you can from Tuesday)
Make sentence writing meaningful e.g. “x things I’ve never done but secretly want to” rather than “using the present perfect”
Encourage peer teaching e.g. “Explain this to a partner”
Reinforce the importance of sleep – “Tonight’s sleep will help you organise this”.

The Teaching Brain

What happens if we overload students with content? Cognitive overload. Learning requires mental effort. When the weight is too heavy, cognitive overload occurs. This interrups the learning process.

To lessen the load:

revist concepts in multiple ways
keep language simple (not dumbed down but only including the most necessary information), structured (accessible to learners) and redundant language (more often in learners’ working memory)

If we think about learning, it is 50% knowing and 50% DOING! Get students DOING things. Also aim for less content and more consolidation.

How to nurture the teaching brain:

if you feel you are “covering a lot”, it is likely that students may be retaining very little.

So, instead of long explanations, try:

short sentences
clear sequencing
repeating key phrases

After every explanation ask: where is the doing

Four pillars of learning:

We ended with some more reflection questions:

This was a really interesting session, and I’m looking forward to integrating what I’ve learnt with all the other stuff I’ve been learning/thinking about lately (group dynamics theory, inclusion theory). So much to think about! 🙂

08/02/2026 by lizziepinard

Cambridge Online Day session – Creating an inclusive learning environment: Teacher tips and takeaways (Ben Goldstein)

This session is part of a Cambridge day of webinars. I saw it advertised and had to break my not working at the weekend rule because it sounded too good to miss!

Ben will be talking about inclusion today. There will be a little bit of theory and some practical tips. Sounds awesome! (If anyone attended, or if Ben reads this – unlikely – and thinks I got anything down wrong, please do comment and I’ll be happy to correct it!)

Ben starts by asking: What do we mean by inclusion?

We had to write down in the chat what we think inclusion means. He said use nouns: I came up with welcoming, belonging – others said equity, fairness, embracing differences, differentiation, special educational needs, acceptance, empathy…

It’s a big topic, involving a lot of areas.

The next question was “Why is it important?” My answer: Because everyone has something to bring to the table so we need to make space for them. Everyone deserves a chance to be there. Others said it’s about not being an outcast (and other things I didn’t catch quickly enough to write down).

Inclusion may mean different things to you depending on who you are, your context, etc.

Ben’s view: Inclusion is about recognising, respecting and learning from the “other”. It is important because everybody should have the same rights and opportunities. This strengthens social cohesion.

He then shared a view from the literature:

He said keywords were “process” and “removing barriers” and “all students” – not only valid for special educational needs but for everybody.

Equality/Equity, Inclusion, Diversity were the next terms that Ben wanted to unpack. What is the difference between equality and equity?

If you look up EDI/DEI online, sometimes E stands for equity and sometimes equality. But they don’t mean the same thing.

Equality is giving everyone the same thing
Equity is giving everyone what they need. Giving everyone the same doesn’t help because everyone doesn’t begin from the same place. Giving everyone what they need is what we should aim for. Focus is on fairness and opportunity.
Diversity focuses on acknowledging, respecting and celebrating differences. It focuses on representation.
Inclusion is the specific ways in which Equity and Diversity are realised. So the focus is on participation.

How can inclusion be understood in a language learning/teaching context?

Ben recently ran a course on inclusive practice and got students to say what it means to them in their context.

Ana from Quito, Equador: For her inclusion means removing barriers, not lowering expectations. Students face barriers related to different types of things – language, cultural, background – not only physical or cognitive challenges. It’s about trying to anticipate these barriers and try to allow students to understand what you are teaching them. It’s about flexibility as a teacher. It’s important to have different strategies and materials and supports that can help any students that don’t follow a certain way. It also means creating a classroom culture where everyone feels valued and safe. That’s the first step and the most important one. If they feel safe they will be able to take risks and participate and feel like they are being supported and heard. Once you make a safe space for them for the students to feel part of, then anything else can move on. Something we should talk about constantly among colleagues and promote constantly.

After playing the video, Ben underlined the “it’s about creating a classroom culture where everyone feels valued and safe” and that it is a continuous process. He chose Ana’s video to show us because she emphasises this.

It’s the space that you create with your learners that allows them the opportunity to participate. The most important ingredient. (Yesss! I agree so hard!!!)

Universal Design for Learning:

It’s a practical framework for inclusive practice in education in general, also appropriate for language teaching. 3 central ideas.

The idea of engagement: how do you get your learners motivated? How do you stimulate their interest?
Representation: how do you present th information to them so that they find it accessible?
Action and expression: how do they express themselves/show what they know?

These 3 ideas are a very good way to think of practical applications for inclusive practice.

UDI allows us to be people led rather than label led, allows for intersectionality. Ben’s approach is a holistic/whole person approach. Learner variability is the norm in class. You know they will be very different from each other as well as sharing things. We need to account for this from the outset in our methodology and materials. You get to know your students on a human level as people not jus as students and this can allow you to adapt your material to them. An inclusive approach must be seen as beneficial to all. Our goal is for everyone to feel connected and belong.

Tips and takeaways for the classroom

Best practice: include frequent breaks, allow more time/use silence, make it visual (use colour), chunk it (break down instructions, write them up on the board), review language/concept check more, vary activities, allow freedom to move.

Doing these things is already being inclusive. It’s not rocket science. But we may not understand it as being inclusive, the difference is in the way we frame it.

Offering choice
Building a community
Using and respecting learners’ own language
Developing empathy

The above 4 takeaways come from Ben’s book 30 ideas on inclusion in ELT. Some of the ideas talked about now come from the book.

Offering choice is fundamental. How can we offer students choice? Choice of discussion, choice of who to work with, choice of task/topics. This is about being flexible with students. Ben offers:

seating arrangements
project/presentations (poster, essay, video) – related to action/expression in UDL.
Roles (research, organiser, spokesperson). Responses to text (describe a personal connection, answer comp questions, summarise…).
Goals (identify personal goals and established ones) – this becomes apparent when you get to know students on a personal level.
Review and reflection (logs/journals) – we all do this in different ways (e.g. today some people will be making notes, typing, or just listening and processing). Give learners choice on how they reflect.
Choice board – students can choose which activity to do. Google choiceboards to find more examples.

Building a community: classroom contracts. Many are familiar with this. Inclusive pracice is not rocket science, but with familiar things we can give an inclusive twist. E.g. for adult learners, add things like listen carefully to other people’s opinions and do not interrupt. Do not jump to conclusions or make assumptions, be curious and ask questions. Respect the student if you disagree. When showing disagreement, criticise the idea not the person. Keep an open mind with the expectation of learning something new.

Using and respecting learners own language: It is important to acknowledge and respect learners’ language. A plurilingual approach is encouraged by the European Framework. How can we use it?

Activating schemata/brainstorming ideas can be in L1, then summarise those ideas/reformulate in English. This can save time. This may enable more sophisticated ideas.
Provide input in L1 and then learners respond in English.
Own-language moments (e.g. self evaluation, contrastive analysis).
Sandwiching – e.g. give the instruction in English, translate into L1, then give the instruction again in English. This way students get an ear for the important instructions.
Conduct an own-language survey: at the start of tern, ask learners to share languages they speak/understand, how the learned them, how they use them.

A way to get them to reflect on their own language/culture in contrast with others:

Developing empathy: One way to develop empathy is to tell stories. Ben tells us a story about Hong Kong island, working with teenagers from quite wealthy backgrounds who weren’t particularly motivated, there because their parents wanted them to be. They all had English names. A lot of them liked having English names, made them feel part of the English class. One day he had to do a substitution class in Kowloon, was reading out the register, one of them didn’t have an English name, he didn’t want one. The others started laughing at him for that. Ben stopped the class and said listen if he doesn’t want an English name, that is ok, we need to respect that choice. The next day in that class again, and this time the other students were all ok with it. He realised something imorant: when we talk about empathy, we don’t just mean between teacher and students, but also among students. He realised he had to make sure they valued him and his choice. That was 25 years ago.

This is focusing on a humanist idea of education in terms of the role of teacher and learner. In Evolve (coursebook), they have students from different countries who are the same level as the coursebook user. When the student does an activity, they watch a video of someone like them doing it. See example below:

Closing thoughts

(There was no time for inclusive materials part of the session, but there will be another webinar about that he will be doing soon!)

A holistic approach to learning: Put the learner first not the label.
EDIB (what does the B stand for? Belonging. Why is it important? Because it should be the end goal. The need for social connection and identification within physical environments. Not a declared end state but an ongoing practice. It is not bestowed. No one is in a dominant position. Belonging emerges from meaningful contribution to group. There is a focus on community. Move away from just thinking about differentiation and teh individual and focus more on the classroom as a community.
Inclusion must be seen as an asset for all. No tokenism.
Be flexible, curious and kind.
Many changes can be made for free. Big changes can be made with small gestures. Not change your methodology overnight. Just one little change can make a huge difference in the environment of the class. Gestures made by teachers, school ethos, and in what we as a society decide we want for our future.

Ben’s webinar about inclusion in materials (yes please!):

Audience Question: Do you have any tips for inclusiveness for students who are troublemakers?

classroom contract
A chapter in his book – calling out and calling in – what to do in these situations. He will also focus more on this in May. You need to call out a student and having a contract helps with this. The contract is made with the students so that if the student is not following it and is causing trouble, then you can remind them that they participated in making the contract. Students can call out each other in this way too. Quite a complicated area, maybe requires a webinar on its own.

I have a lot of thoughts about all of this, and they tie in with a lot of my thoughts around everything I’ve read about group dynamics in the last year. But reflecting on and processing all that is far too much to tack onto the end of this already lengthy blog post summary so I shall keep that for another time! Watch this space… 🙂

14/01/2026 by lizziepinard

Navigating the New Classroom Landscape – Sharing Experiences of Mixed Cohorts and Emerging Challenges (ELTC/USIC TD workshop)

On Thursday 8th January, I was able to participate in this session, which brought together ELTC teachers (both those who teach Academic English Skills and some who don’t!) and USIC subject teachers, as it had been moved online due to potential adverse weather conditions. (Would have had to call in sick if it had been F2F but could manage attending by computer with lots of hot water, hot drinks, paracetamol and tissues!)

The goals of the session were:

Addressing recent shifts in student demographics
Sharing collective “tried and tested” strategies
Producing a collaborative “Tips and Strategies” summary

We were given four scenarios designed to stimulate discussion, based on some specific areas of concern that teachers have reported, and put into groups to discuss them, and add ideas to a google doc. The format of the session was to spend a chunk of time discussing scenario 1 in small groups and then coming together for each group to share ideas in turn, and then going back into small groups to discuss scenarios 2-4 followed by a similar but briefer feedback plenary. As such, I also found the online format beneficial because when discussing in small groups, being in breakout rooms, I could only hear my group rather than a wall of noise from all the other groups talking simultaneously! Thank you, weather!

The scenarios are laid out below, and beneath each one I will share some of the ideas that came out of the discussions as well as my own thoughts.

Scenario 1: The “Dribbling” Effect (Attendance & Transitions)

The Situation: It is 10 minutes past the start of your session. Only half the class is present. Over the next 20 minutes, students “dribble” in one by one. Later, after a 10-minute coffee break, three students do not return for nearly half an hour, claiming they were “just using the restroom”.

Discussion Prompt: How do you manage the disruption of latecomers without stopping the flow of the lesson? What strategies can be used to ensure break times are respected?.

For context, in 2hr lessons, it is common to give students a 5 minute break halfway through the lesson and the lesson attendance policy is:

if students arrive at the start of the lesson, they are marked present
if they arrive within 10 minutes of the start of the lesson, they are marked L (does not negatively impact visa requirements)
if they arrive more than 10 minutes after the lesson has started, they are allowed in and marked U (absent for via purposes but has been seen by the teacher)
if they do not attend, they are marked absent (also absent for visa purposes but unseen by the teacher).

It’s a new attendance policy this academic year (used to be if students arrived more than 5 minutes after the start of the lesson, they weren’t allowed in) and has given rise to situations like that described in Scenario 1. There were lots of ideas but they all basically boil down as follows:

Before the class:
- Be aware of the students’ timetable – their previous lesson may finish just before your lesson.
- Set expectations from the start of the course, e.g. within a class contract, and be consistent thereafter.
- Plan for the issue – plan your lesson so that you don’t start on core material straightaway e.g. do review/standalone tasks initially.
In the class:
- Have a system in place for dealing with the latecomers – e.g. a buddy system set up from the start of the course which directs certain students to help certain other students to catch up if they are late.
- Have task instructions displayed on the board so that students can catch up independently. Such systems enable you not to have to interrupt the lesson repeatedly.
After the class:
- Follow up with the students in question to ensure there isn’t a welfare issue going on and to raise awareness of the importance of taking responsibility for arriving on time.

As for ensuring break time durations are respected:

Write the time students are expected back on the board so that it is clear
Have consequences (e.g. no break next time or not allowed back in class after the break)

My thoughts:

With my class this year on Wednesdays in Semester 1, they had a 9 -11 lesson and then my lesson 11-1. We negotiated that they would have a ten minute break and then we’d start the lesson at 11.10 (the cut-off time for attendance being marked such that visa requirements are not affected). I think that’s fair, as no one can concentrate for 4hrs in a row with no break. Even a 10 minute break is minimal.

The other 11-1 slot (Thursday) is their first class for the day and they tend to be on time if they are going to attend. On the other hand, I need a few minutes to set up the lesson (get the computer going etc) and I’ve found that on Thursdays they respond well to scanning a QR code and carrying out a review task while they wait, though something paper-based works just as well. The key is making sure whatever it is won’t take too long, so that it doesn’t end up displacing something more important.

The timetable will be slightly different this semester, so there will be some renegotiation of how things will work. I tend to think treating the students like people and developing a positive and inviting learning environment at the start of the course will hopefully mean that problems are less likely to arise. One tricky thing in our context is that our module is often seen as less important by students than their subject-specific modules. This means that when the stress piles on, it is the first thing to ‘give’ as far as the students’ motivation and capacity are concerned. I think all we can do is do our best to make the relevance of the material clear, make our lessons as engaging as we can and beyond that just accept that the students are people rather than taking it personally.

Scenario 2: The Ideological Clash (Difficult Interactions)

The Situation: During a seminar discussion on global systems, a student begins pushing a specific ideological agenda, suggesting the inherent superiority of their own political or religious system. The comments are culturally insensitive and clearly make other students in the room feel uncomfortable or upset.

Discussion Prompt: How do you intervene to maintain a safe learning environment while handling “unpopular” viewpoints? How do you redirect the conversation back to academic inquiry?

The suggestions usefully group into the three categories used in Scenario 1:

Before the class:
- Make sure that the global community is highlighted at the induction stage, including policies regarding tolerance, equality, diversity.
- At the start of a course, in the classroom, make expectations clear regarding acceptable behaviour and respect for others (again, a class contract can be a vehicle for this).
- Plan to use frameworks to ground any discussions (e.g. case studies, theories).
In the class:
- At the start of the activity, remind students about expectations regarding communication in diverse groups.
- Intervene early and calmly, using professional language to defuse the situation.
- Reiterate the importance of academic objectivity and supporting views with evidence – this is something students in our context need to develop skills in: views should be evidence-based rather than unsupported or dismissive in order to be academically valid.
- Point out that while free speech is part of academic culture, expressing views which marginalise, insult, discriminate or intimidate people is not acceptable.
- Emphasise the importance of clarifying misunderstandings and apologising to maintain positive relationships.
After the class:
- Check in with any students who were upset during the class to make sure they are ok.

My thoughts:

I think this is one where building and maintaining positive group dynamics goes a long way to avoiding such issues arising. Students need to both see the other students in the class as people and be seen as people by the others in the class. If that can be achieved, then they are much less likely to do or say things that might upset others and if they do it will be unintentional and therefore more easily able to be resolved. So, it’s important to have your strategies for how to handle it but equally important to try and ensure that it is unlikely to arise in the first place.

Scenario 3: The Wall of Silence (Engagement)

The Situation: You have set up a collaborative task. In the physical classroom, several students sit in silence, refusing to engage with their peers or the task. Simultaneously, your online students have their cameras and mics off and are not responding to prompts in their breakout rooms. No one has completed the preparatory work assigned outside of class.
Discussion Prompt: What teacher-led strategies can reignite engagement in both F2F and online environments? How do we address a systemic lack of out-of-class preparation?

For this prompt, the thoughts and ideas put forward can be grouped nicely into two categories: considerations and responses. In that, there can be different reasons for the type of behaviour described above and we need to keep that in mind in order to respond effectively to it.

Considerations:
- What is the reason behind the silence? Silence does not necessarily equal disengagement or defiance or insolence or unwillingness to do tasks.
- How long has it been since you asked the question or given the instruction? Students may still be processing what you are saying or figuring out what they need to do for the task.
- What stage of the course is it? Early in the course, we may still be setting expectations and the students may still be adjusting to a new learning style.
- Perhaps they have done the preparation but are shy to speak up?
- Or, it could be a lack of understanding that is behind their silence.
- Perhaps it could be due to personal issues or other external factors. It might be that they are having trouble with their group.
- Might there be unmet special educational needs at play?
Responses: There are lots of levers we can pull in a situation like this. No single one is lightly to be a silver bullet solution and different ones may work better on different days with different students. As with the previous two situations, the early weeks of the course are important for acclimating students to the new learning situation.
- Online
  - Establish expectations for audio and camera use at the start of the course, provide easier practice opportunities and follow up.
  - Use Google docs so there is an output to provide a focus for collaboration but praise participation not only output so that the process is recognised as important rather than only the product.
  - Use commenting on Google docs to show that you are monitoring their participation.
  - Group students strategically to maximise the chances for participation. Use polls.
  - Encourage students to share answers in the chatbox.
  - Provide sentence starters to scaffold production.
  - Nominate – students like to be recognised as individuals and are likely to respond better if you treat them as such.
  - Give thinking time – be comfortable with the silence of cognitive processing.
  - Spend time building rapport at the start of each lesson e.g. getting students to switch on their cameras and say hi.
- Face to face
  - Give thinking time.
  - Check understanding of the task and provide repair instructions where needed.
  - Follow the think, pair, share format to build up participation.
  - Gently encourage students to participate.
  - As with online lessons, nominate students.
  - Spend time building rapport at the start of the lesson e.g. warmers.
  - Give students study tools and tips to support their participation (e.g. suggest that they research concepts online to help their understanding).
  - Using gentleness and sensitivity, encourage a culture of not having to be “right” so that students are more confident to participate.
  - Assign specific roles within groups so that students know what they need to do.
  - Create an information gap: have groups carry out different tasks which they then need to share with each other.
  - Recognise students’ time constraints and workloads – where possible integrate activities into lesson time rather than expecting students to do too much (in addition to all their coursework) outside of class.

My thoughts:

I think this is a scenario where there are a multitude of influencing factors. Therefore, curiosity is important rather than automatically assuming the worst. I also think that some of the factors can be mitigated to some extent again by developing and maintaining positive group dynamics such that students are comfortable working with one another and expressing their ideas to one another. As such, I highly recommend reading Sandy’s blog post about group dynamics as well as Dornyei and Murphey’s Group Dynamics in the Language Classroom (unaffiliated link) on this topic.

Scenario 4: The “Second Screen” Distraction (Low-level Disruption)

The Situation: The class is technically “on task,” but you notice a constant hum of whispering and giggling in L1 (first language) in the back row. Several other students are completing the work, but they are constantly toggling between the lesson and multiple tabs on their laptops (social media, shopping, or messaging).

Discussion Prompt: How do you address the “split attention” caused by devices without banning technology entirely? What are effective ways to pivot students away from L1 whispering and back to the whole-class activity?

This has become an issue mainly since the pandemic, as during the pandemic we switched to digital learning materials rather than a printed workbook and since the pandemic, we have had a period of readjustment to the physical classroom (with initial discouragement towards using paper because of infection risks). While now we are able to use the same range of activities as before the pandemic, our core materials are still all digital. Students all bring a laptop or tablet to their lessons.

The ideas resulted from the discussion prompt were mainly a mixture of considerations and responses, which were divided predominantly between pre- and in-lesson responses. So I shall use those categories to group them:

Considerations:

Technology
- screen-based translation tools can be part of the problem, by creating a constant pull on students’ attention.
- The development of AI which may or may not be used for unfair means is another draw.
Multitasking
- students may think they are skilled at multi-tasking but a multi-tasking test (such as the gorilla test) may surprise them.
L1
- This is another resource for students and is not necessarily problematic/suggestive of inattention/disruption.
- Students may be on task while speaking in L1, especially as academic tasks are complex and involve complex cognitive processing which may be easier to achieve in L1.
- If they are disrupting other students’ ability to concentrate/carry out a task or preventing students in their group from carrying out a task then it may be problematic.

Responses:

Before class:
- Plan to have students use pen and paper for tasks which require deeper focus e.g. brainstorming, note-taking, short exercises, reflection activities. That way there will be less temptation to get distracted during these shorter, more demanding tasks.
- Plan clear outcomes and timings for activities.
- Think about where L1 use might be beneficial and where using English is essential so that you can guide students accordingly.
- Plan a variety of tasks and interaction types to maximise student engagement.
- Design tasks that require purposeful use of devices (e.g. Google Jamboard, collaborative writing in shared documents, live polls, vocabulary searches, timed grammar challenges) so that technology supports learning rather than distracting from it.
- Adapt lessons to be as screen-free as possible, including movement, writing on whiteboards, spoken communication.
- Think about whether you will need individual copies of a handout or whether one between two or three or four would work better. (This can save on printing and encourage collaboration!)
In class:
- Monitor actively so that students are encouraged to stay on task and so that you have a better idea if they are on task or not.
- Highlight that giving full focus is a sign of respect (caveat: this should not require them to be looking into your eyes, which may be uncomfortable for neurodivergent students)
- Ensure that instructions regarding use/non-use of technology for a given task are clear. E.g. “Close your computers for this task./Phones down for this task.”
- In lessons where this is relevant, make it clear to students initially that there will be an ‘open’ period of the lesson where they will be able to work on an assignment (which could include work for other modules if this is more urgent) IF they are able to achieve the lesson aims/complete all the lesson activities first.
- Be clear about timings and keep these snappy so that there is less temptation to get distracted.
- Use humour: say that you will confiscate phones to sell on ebay to raise funds for teachers or have a bell jar of liquid with an old phone in it to show what will happen if phones are used at the wrong time. Suggest that students don’t need to be there if they have more important things to discuss but they will of course be marked absent if they leave.
- Use another language: speak to students using another language so that those who don’t speak it can feel how it is not to understand what is going on.
- Use whiteboards/running dictations/post-it notes etc to get students moving.
- During longer tasks, accept that students will take brain breaks and that’s ok.
- If students are using AI inappropriately, emphasise the importance of acquiring the skills and understanding the lesson content.
- Change the groups around so that students work with different classmates (mixing up language backgrounds where possible).
- Make it clear where L1 use is and isn’t acceptable. Rather than trying to keep it out of the classroom for the whole lesson, isolate time frames/parts of activities where students should use English only.
- Allow space for L1 e.g. let students use L1 in task preparation and encourage English only in task execution.

My thoughts:

During my last observed lesson (we have an annual lesson observation where we get feedback on our teaching), my line manager suggested I could have used paper for a particular activity rather than the digital document, and it might have worked better. And I’ll be honest, I was like “oh yeah, so I could have!” – since then, I have been making a conscious effort to think about what format to use for different activities, what could be more engaging, and have been doing a lot more that is paper-based/mini-whiteboard-based/main whiteboards-based. In my last lesson, we had a laugh when I brought out some A3 paper, to the effect that it wouldn’t be an AES lesson without some A3 paper!! (That has been an experiment this year, using different paper sizes!) It definitely keeps the lesson moving better.

I think as with many things, what you do ahead of the class thinking/planning-wise has a big impact on how the lesson unfolds and what issues arise, and gives you more flexibility for dealing with known potential issues. I also think that getting students to close their computers when not in use is important so that there isn’t that physical barrier between them and the other students, and there is space for paper etc to bring them together.

Lots of ideas and lots to think about. This was a great workshop to do at the start of a semester!

Do you experience any of the issues discussed above in your context? Do you have any suggestions not mentioned above? Please do comment and share, I’d love to hear from you!

They show a group of students working individually and a group of students working together. The students are a mixture of genders and nationalities. There are five students in the first picture and four students in the second picture.

Pictures above are both free stock photos!

05/10/2025 by lizziepinard

A getting to know you activity that worked!

Last week was the first week for the September cohort and in my first face to face lesson with my new group, I did a substantial getting to know you activity.

Step 1: the name game

The first step was getting them better acquainted with one another’s names (also indispensable for me getting their names down off the bat!) – I did my old reliable standby in which I start with “My name is Lizzie and I like running” and then Student 1 says “This is Lizzie and she likes running. I am X and I like y.” Student 2 says, “This is X and s/he likes y. This is Lizzie and she likes running. I am A and I like b. And so it goes on. With 15 students, it was a good challenge! And by the end of it, I knew all their names and they knew more names than they did before.

Step 2: the interview

I gave each student a sheet of paper with some questions printed on it. The questions had gaps in so that the students could complete them with their own ideas provided they fit grammatically. They were free to discuss their ideas together as they did it. Once they had done this (preparation), I moved them around so they were working with a new partner. With that partner they asked and answered questions and made a note of their answers, knowing they would be reporting to the whole class subsequently.

Step 3: the reporting

Before starting this stage, I gave each student a piece of paper with a table on it – one column for student name and one column for notes. Each student took a turn to introduce their partner. Those who were listening had instructions to write each student’s name in a new row and in the notes part, they had to note down anything in the report that was the same for them. So for example if the report said “Student x’s favourite animal is a dog” and the listener’s favourite animal was a dog, they’d write down “his/her favourite animal is also a dog!”. The purpose for this part was two-fold: one, give them a reason to listen, two enable them to find things in common with everyone in the class (useful for helping them on the way towards becoming a cohesive group).

Step 4: Filling in the gaps

Once they’d finished, they might have gaps next to some students’ names (either because they had missed what was said or because there was nothing in the report which was the same for them). The final part of the activity was for them to fill in those gaps. They had to do this by approaching the students for whom they had gaps and finding something in common with them so that they could write it in the gap.

At the end of the final lesson of the week, I had them complete short reflection handout (What I learnt this week… Good things for me this week were…because… Bad things this week for me were…because… Next week I would like to…) – prompts adapted from Dornyei and Murphy’s Group Dynamics in the Language Classroom. And the most commonly repeated good thing was around making friends and getting to know new classmates. This activity was a part of that.

It was a 2hr lesson and I think it probably took somewhere in the realm of 1.5hrs in total. There wasn’t time for a lot else in the lesson (just my sequence where they brainstorm ideas for studying effectively while they are at the college, I feed in a few more that I feel are important and often missed, and then introduce them to mindfulness meditation using a short video which explains what it is, how to do it and the benefits of it. Then we do an example one together. In future lessons we will start the lesson with that short meditation to give them time to draw breath after rushing in from their previous lesson.). Obviously the length of time it takes corresponds to the number of students.

If you try it, let me know how it goes! 🙂

Further reading

My thoughts:

Session plan:

G – Goal

P – Progress

S – Success

My thoughts:

First presentation: How Gen AI reshapes perceived academic writing ability in EAP contexts by Dr Elhadj Moussa BenMoussa (University of East London)

Why does this matter to EAP?

Focus on Gen AI literacy.

Second presentation: “Student practices and experiences of Gen AI: developing a practice-oriented heuristic for GenAI literacy” by Julio Jiminez, Katherine Mansfield and Richard Paterson from University of Westminster.

Findings:

Key themes:

Ideas shared:

My thoughts:

Terminology:

Paul and Kate’s principles: a holistic view

Neuroinclusive practice: removing the barriers

Part 1: Quick wins

Part 2: long term strategies

Creating a clear lesson structure

Explicit classroom delivery and instructions

Setting the right environment:

Resources:

Context and collaborative development:

Manchester Case Study

Southhampton Case Study

Key considerations and shared findings

Discussion/Questions

My thoughts

Truths and myths about the brain

Neuroscience and learning

Four brains in the classroom

The Social Brain

How to nurture the social brain?

The Language Brain

Nurturing the language brain:

The Learning Brain

Nurturing the learning brain:

The Teaching Brain

How to nurture the teaching brain:

Four pillars of learning:

Scenario 1: The “Dribbling” Effect (Attendance & Transitions)

Scenario 2: The Ideological Clash (Difficult Interactions)

Scenario 3: The Wall of Silence (Engagement)

Scenario 4: The “Second Screen” Distraction (Low-level Disruption)

Step 1: the name game

Step 2: the interview

Step 3: the reporting

Step 4: Filling in the gaps