1. Celebrating and signposting to ARU Study Support Services
This session aims to celebrate best practice in how teams of academic and professional services staff work in partnership to support our students to achieve their best, whatever their level of study, or starting point. There will be an opportunity to understand more about the services on offer, and think about how best to signpost your students. Share examples of issues you encounter with students’ assignments and discuss FAQs. Attending will be Study Coaches, Subject Librarians, ARU Language Centre staff and others. Our goal is for greater understanding and dissemination of information about student support services across all our campuses.

2. Mapping Success: Engage Students by crafting an active learning community using Google MyMaps
Join us for an engaging session on utilising Google MyMaps to craft community learning experiences for students incorporating AI avatars. Discover how to integrate this versatile tool into educational settings to enhance experiential learning. Through hands-on activities and collaborative exploration, participants will learn how to create interactive maps tailored to their community's needs. Engage in audience participation by sharing your experiences and brainstorming innovative learning ideas. By the end of the session, you'll leave equipped with practical skills and creative strategies to empower students through immersive learning.

3. Incorporating AI in assessment
Final year students in the School of Psychology were required to use ChatGPT to prepare two assignments. This session describes the experience of this form of assessment from teacher and student perspectives, and considers the implications for future living with generative AI in higher education settings.

4. Engagement. What do we mean?
This session will seek to explore and problematise the term student engagement. We will set the context through a case study (PG Cert Teaching in HE), then we'll collectively define what engagement means, and share suggestions for improving student engagement.

5. Cracking the Code: Personalised Learning Powered by Collective & Artificial Intelligence
A presentation that introduces the future of education. The Modern Method of Education is conceptual educational theory where international cross-institution collaboration breaks down barriers and builds curricula and knowledge from culturally diverse perspectives. Through the use of innovative technology, collective teaching and learning enables diversity of thought empowering students to embark on a fully personalised journey of lifelong learning.

6. Why are they so happy? Reflecting on excellent MES results in Children’s Book Illustration
In tri 1 of 23/24 the module Illustration and Audience: The Paradox scored some of the best MES results in the university. After reviewing the MES feedback, an informal critical reflection of the approach to teaching was conducted to identify how these results were achieved. This suggested that they were due to the positive effects of establishing a strong studio culture, which allows for regular staff-student interaction, a collaborative group mentality, good communication and a balance between independent working and structured activities.

7. In at the Deep End: Education for Sustainability as an immersive experiential learning experience
Education for sustainability is holistic and transformational learning, engaging the head, heart and mind of learners. It addresses the ways in which learners think, the ways in which they do things and the ways they feel. In this presentation we provide some examples of the learning which took place as a group of staff and students took a deep experiential dive into the complexities of sustainable development as part of ARU’s International Community Experience Programme Sustainable Sainji.

8. Celebrating Live Briefs and identifying next steps
Live Briefs are a curriculum-based approach to engage students in a form of professional development by assessing their learning using current, real-world activities devised and presented by employer partners in collaboration with academic staff. We celebrate the work of academic colleagues who will share examples of good practice from Live Briefs they have taught. We will also introduce interdisciplinary Live Briefs which will facilitate students from different disciplines to collaborate on a work-integrated learning project. Attendees will be able to share their own ideas for interdisciplinary Live Briefs through a collaborative activity making Live Brief representations using Playmobil.

9. 360° Thrive: Mastering Video Creation & Integration for Dynamic Learning
Embark on an exhilarating journey of immersive learning at Engage! In this electrifying 30-minute session, we'll unlock the secrets of creating and editing captivating 360-degree videos using cutting-edge technology. Dive into the world of 360 cameras as we demonstrate how to capture the essence of any environment in stunning detail. Learn the art of storytelling through dynamic editing techniques that bring your videos to life. But that's not all – we'll show you how to seamlessly upload your masterpiece to Yuja for effortless integration into Canvas, revolutionising the way you engage learners. Get ready to unleash your creativity and transform education like never before!

10. Celebrating widening participation: how can we encourage equity in education?
Widening participation in higher education is something to be celebrated, but how can we best meet the needs of a non-traditional student body? Join us for an interactive workshop where we will explore student needs and barriers to success. By sharing experiences from ARU London’s diverse student body, and identifying actions that improved their student journeys, we will celebrate the resilience of our students and examine how our academic community can encourage equity in education.

11. Embedding Employability in the Curriculum
Both speakers are involved in sabbatical projects related to employability. Shell is an RA on a project led by Sebastian Rasinger evaluating extra-curricular activities with external partners, and Sarah is exploring ways of embedding employability in the curriculum. In this session we will briefly introduce some of our key findings. We will be asking participants to reflect on some of the barriers to students taking up internships and similar opportunities – and on strategies to address these barriers. We will then be inviting participants to try out a classroom activity designed to embed employability into a Level 4 English Literature module.

12. Celebrating your Research - how the Public Engagement Team can support you
The Public Engagement Team exists to facilitate many forms of engagement with the public. This includes but is not limited to:
- Running and promoting events such as the Cambridge Festival, Inaugural Lectures and Chelmsford Science Festival
- Supporting and advising academic colleagues who are running their own events
- Working with local community groups
We would like the opportunity to give an overview of the ways we can help to celebrate and communicate the research of our academic colleagues to the public.

13. "My culture, your culture, our story" - keeping EDI learning active for 500+ students online using peer learning
Learning about EDI and practising inclusively is essential for students in HeMS who are taking professional courses. This has traditionally been delivered online to over 500 students. As our students are themselves from a diverse range of backgrounds, we introduced peer learning in break out rooms for one hour during an Interprofessional Learning day. "My Culture, Your Culture, Our Story" celebrates differences, with active sharing of experience between peers and some sessions led by students. Impact has included greater understanding of peers as well as transferable knowledge for practice. Students said "lively, fun, interactive, informative, educative".

14. How you can create an interprofessional learning opportunity to increase student satisfaction
In response to the action following the last NSS (child nursing) outcomes, where the student voice scored 63%, especially relating to ‘staff have made the subject interesting’, we organised and delivered an innovative co-curricular activity. Listening to feedback from students who felt their child nursing identity is not clear within the course, the focus was ‘What happens after the death of a child’. We worked in collaboration with the medical school/ anatomy suite and external speakers. This day promoted interprofessional learning, aimed to provide a link to ‘real world’ practices for students and showcased a successful partnership within ARU and external agencies.

15. "You Can Auto-mate!" community
Introducing the "You Can Auto-Mate!" community, bringing together everyone in ARU - staff and students, to harness the power of technology to make daily work-related tasks easier. A community where the experts, amateurs and novices around the university can share best practices, ideas for simple automation and help each other where needed.

16. Supporting students' professional development and engagement with ARUCPD
The Faculty of Business and Law introduces ARUCPD, an innovative co-curricular programme designed to support students’ professional development. Accredited by ARU, not only enhances students' transcripts but also equips students with knowledge and skills essential for today's and future workplace.
ARUCPD's impact on employability and student engagement is undeniable and has been recognised internally and externally. With over 2500 participants in the first two trimesters of 2023/2024 alone, ARUCPD is attracting interest from students and staff across all Faculties at ARU.
Our workshop will explain the ARUCPD's framework and guide participants in designing their own student-focused professional development modules. The activity will also foster dialogue on how these modules can potentially be integrated within the ARUCPD programme in the future.

17. Empowering Your Students through Digital Fluency
Developing your student’s digital fluency will help them to engage in their learning and will develop their employability as an outcome of their learning experience. Using the Developing Digital Fluency Workbook, the session we give you space to develop approaches for integrating digital experiences into your teaching to foster fluency. The workshop will also introduce the researched-informed approach being taken by the project team as we work with employers, academics, students, and other universities to develop our understanding of digital fluency and its critical importance to student success.

18. Decolonising and diversifying STEM education: Insights from the Unlearning Away Days
Decolonising and diversifying higher education is a concept and movement aimed at rectifying historical biases, ongoing inequalities, and prevalence of Eurocentric perspectives within the sector. Its overarching objective is to cultivate a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable higher education landscape by challenging established paradigms. In this workshop, we will provide a forum for debate on decolonisation or diversification followed by reflections on what we learnt from the Race Equality Away Day offered in the school level in two different faculties (HEMs and FSE). These events were used to explore structural racism using relevant data for each School, followed by interactive presentations. This presentation includes some key learning points and reflections from our Race Equality Away Days to share good practices, stimulate thinking with peers across ARU and connect people to support continuation with work on enhancing inclusive practices.

19. International Cultural Competence
Research (Aisha, and Mulyana, 2020; Dagus, et al., 2024; Garside et al., 2023; Safari, McKenna, and Davis, 2022.) has shown that International students from different countries experience almost the same communication issues and culture shock. There is also a concerning mismatch between their expectations and experience in the UK. Evidence (Gopal et al., 2023; Noltensmeyer, Bloom, and Rush, 2024) has also highlighted the importance of preparing lecturers to facilitate adequate adaptation through cultural awareness, knowledge, and sensitivity. This interactive session is meant to raise awareness about cultural understanding and elements contributing to culture shock experienced by international students and highlight some strategies for coping mechanisms.

20. Our students' favourite learning experiences
The ARU Active Learning Network gathered case studies from ARU students to find out their favourite learning experiences, in the form of videos, written pieces and more.

21. Approaches to drive student engagement and success through innovative, inclusive, and impactful bespoke interventions: The development of the Centre for Student Success at Anglia Ruskin University
Established in 2023, the Centre for Student Success (CfSS) in the Faculty of Business and Law aims to improve student engagement, success rates, and inclusivity. Collaborating with different stakeholders across the faculty, the CfSS developed a method of targeted interventions at specific points of the academic cycle: students’ registration, weekly engagement, and the enhancement of personal development tutoring (PDT). Student engagement, whether online or on campus, was monitored weekly, and students were directed to the most appropriate support based on their circumstances. The CfSS monitored data and measured the impact of the interventions, and these findings will be presented to serve as guidance for other institutions to adopt.

22. Impact achieved and future prospects: an overview of FSE "Succeeding" 2024
"Succeeding" 2024 was the inaugural employability and careers event for Science and Engineering students. Attendees will gain insights into the event’s impact on student engagement and employability, and can use this knowledge to organise similar career-enhancing initiatives in their own contexts.

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