Happy New Year 2024 from the Teaching Matters team! As is our yearly tradition, we return from the winter break with our “Top 10 posts”, where we list the ten most read posts of 2023 based on WordPress statistics showing the number of views per post. We also survey the most listened-to podcast episodes, and highlight some Teaching Matters-related successes.
2023 was another stellar year for Teaching Matters. We hosted series on Student Voice, 20 Years of Enhancement, Moving Forward with ChatGPT, Embedding Enterprise in the Curriculum, Showcasing the Edinburgh Futures Institute, 10 years of MOOCs, as well as our regular annual series showcasing the Teaching Awards, Learning and Teaching Conference, and Student Partnership Agreement projects. We have also continued to receive incredible art work from our hugely talented art student illustrators, composed five ‘5 things’ newsletters, nurtured our relationship with THE Campus, and produced seven podcast episodes.
ChatGPT- related blog posts featured heavily in 2023, which is understandable given the unknown impact of the advance in Generative AI, and the challenging implications for teaching and learning. We were delighted that blog posts on kindness and care for our students, and each other, featured highly. And, on a hugely positive note, we are receiving more and more one-off blog posts from colleagues who have heard of Teaching Matters and seek us out to publish their work. These are happily published on the next available Monday slot, as ‘extra’ posts, which are out with our scheduled series. We continue to delight in providing this collegial platform for our staff and students to share their voice and practice to an international audience.
And at the top of the list is….
This engaged reflection by Amy Aukland, PhD student, on Professor Gert Biesta’s Learning & Teaching Conference 2023 keynote talk, ‘How much research does teaching need? A case for thoughtful teaching’, has been viewed over 2000 times! Amy thoughtfully and critically summarises the Professor’s provocation that teaching might need to steer away from research agendas that breed effectiveness, towards developing trust in students’ complex learning processes, which are not always neatly measurable. In other words, Prof Biesta asks: how can we bring more thoughtfulness into our teaching?
In second place comes Dr Vasileios Galanos’ informative and entertaining post about the stakes of generative AI software in higher education. He reflects through pop culture analogies and real-world examples on how to incorporate such technologies in the classroom, whilst questioning ways to transform our teaching that value the human component of learning – such as creativity – that generative AI still cannot mimic. Spoiler: it requires disrupting our teaching and assessment practices.
3. Welcome to the March-April Hot Topic: Moving forward with ChatGPT.
In third place, at no surprise, is the introductory post from the Chat GPT series, which we ran in March-April. In this post, Teaching Matters’ editors and Professor Tina Harrison provide an overview of what generative AI means for higher education. The post highlights resources for understanding how this technology is here to stay and why the higher education system needs to make do with it.
4. Generative Artificial Intelligence – ban or embrace?
It seems that our readers enjoyed the Chat GPT series, because the fourth place goes to another post from our March-April series on the topic. This one, written by Prof Tim Drysdale and Prof Adam A. Stokes, from the School of Engineering, reflects on the ethics of such technology emerging in our pedagogical spaces, and on the tenuous relationship educators ought to have with it. They suggest that banning AI technologies might not be the most constructive approach if we truly want higher education to be a space that adequately prepares students for the real world.
5. Welcome June-July’s Hot Topic series: Showcasing the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI).
In fifth place stands the introductory post of another breakthrough series that shared writings and reflections on the Edinburgh Futures Institute’s (EFI) first year of operation. In this post, Mike Bruce, an Education Development Manager in Edinburgh Futures Institute, offers a succinct analysis of EFI’s innovative teaching models, and discusses some of the challenges encountered during this inaugural year; a great read for those wanting to learn more about EFI!
This year, we received many brilliant ‘extra posts’. In sixth place, we have an insightful reflection by Teaching Fellow Dr Omar Kaissi on embedding the notion of ‘mattering’ within his teaching practice as a way to support the mental wellbeing of his international students.
7. Walking the talk and creating a kinder place to work and thrive.
Drawing from her talk at the Learning and Teaching conference in June 2023, Dr Jane Hislop reflects on how to push back (gently) against the competitiveness and rougher edges of academic culture. She shares suggestions for promoting kindness and compassion in the classroom. This post, along with Omar’s, confirm that mental health and wellbeing were, and continue to be, themes that are of high importance for colleagues at the University.
8. Student creativity at the centre of the new biology curriculum.
Another ‘extra post’ made it to the top 10 list! In this one, Dr Elise Darmon, Fizzy Abou Jawad, and Prof Heather McQueen, from the School of Biological Sciences, take us on a journey of finding and promoting creativity in the classroom. Inspired by research which revealed that creativity was seriously lacking in the science curricula, the authors share how they sought to embed creativity in their new first-semester first-year biology course by giving students the opportunity to engage in various activities: from writing science-based haikus to developing their own events throughout the course! Prof Heather McQueen also delivered a keynote talk at this year’s Learning and Teaching Conference.
9. How enterprise education became my passport to global citizenship.
In ninth place sits a very inspiring post written by Farai Munjoma. Farai shares his journey of entrepreneurship that began with selling chicken in his farming town of Zimbabwe to founding an innovative platform that provides free educational resources to millions of children. This post belonged to a newly explored theme around embedding enterprise in the curriculum, a series that was co-curated by Christina Starko from Edinburgh Innovations.
And last (but not least), Dr Vasileios Galanos’ second part of his blog post on Chat GPT made it to the top 10 list. In this one, he offers a proposal of a counter-Turing Test that can assist teaching in non-ChatGPT-able ways. For more reflections on how to grapple with Chat GPT in our learning and teaching spaces, check out a podcast series we ran in parallel to the blog series, which features conversations with University experts on the matter: Irene Xi (Masters student), Lara Dal Molin (PhD student), Vassilis Galanos (Teaching Fellow) and James Stewart (Lecturer).
Top 3 Teaching Matters Podcast Episodes:
Our podcast has now been streamed in 27 countries, with over 12,000 plays. Although we are not a conventional podcast, in that each episode has the potential to be co-created in a different format depending on the needs of the contributors, we strive to be a platform for sharing diverse voices and views on learning and teaching. 2023’s top 3 podcast episodes were:
Our most popular podcast of 2023 is a conversation between Dr Emily O’Reilly and alumnus, Andrew Strankman, from the School of Biomedical Sciences, about podcasting in education. This is the second in a two-part conversation facilitated by Teaching Matters’ Eric Berger, which allows Emily and Andrew to consider the ‘whys, whats, and hows’ of podcasting through the lens of their PTAS-funded research project on educational podcasts.
In second place, is the first part of the conversation between Dr Emily O’Reilly and Andrew Stankman, where they introduce us to the specifics of their podcasting in education project, which surveyed a diverse cohort of students enrolled onto two online MSc programmes. Talking through the project’s origins, methods, results, their discussion attends to how podcasting can revitalise how we exchange knowledge in the classroom, both online and otherwise.
Thirdly, the first episode of our four-part generative AI podcast series makes it to the list! This episode features Vasileios Galanos, who situates generative AI historically by diving into word origins, the history of Generative AI, the hype around GPTs and their implications, and what the future holds for this technology.
And finally…some Teaching Matters-associated successes…
Teaching Matters’ colleagues (past and present) published a paper about working with colleagues to produce our podcast episodes: Empowering student producers: co-creating a learning and teaching podcast.
PhD student Apple Chew, who wrote a blog post for the Student Partnership Agreement 2022 series, Community building with the IMPS Sports Day, won the the sparqs’ 2023 Student Engagement Awards in the category ‘A new initiative in partnership’.
And our Deputy Editor, Josephine Foucher, submitted her PhD thesis!
Wishing you all the very best for 2024 – Happy reading!
Jenny Scoles
Dr Jenny Scoles is the Editor of Teaching Matters. She is an Academic Developer (Learning and Teaching Enhancement), and a Senior Fellow HEA, in the Institute for Academic Development, and provides pedagogical support for University course and programme design. She is currently a Fellow at Edinburgh Futures Institute, and a Visiting Fellow at Edinburgh Napier University. Her interests include student engagement, interdisciplinary and professional learning, and sociomaterial methodologies.
Joséphine Foucher
Joséphine is doing a PhD in Sociology at The University of Edinburgh. Her research looks at the intersection between art and politics in contemporary Cuba. She supports Jenny Scoles as the Teaching Matters Co-Editor and Student Engagement Officer through the PhD Intern scheme at the Institute for Academic Development.
