The Learning Development Project

When we think about our roles as educators, it is rarely about the content. While that is important, it is also besides the point if our students don’t feel connected to it or to us. Our jobs involve creating an environment that is welcoming and which challenges students to learn. Part of that is about making sure the students feel seen and acknowledged, through empathy and personalisation. A sense of belonging isn’t (just) about learning a student’s name; if you have a class of over 1000 students, like Lynn and Janis, then it’s simply not feasible. But it is about showing that you understand how they feel - even if that means having to unlearn what you think you know - and using the tools available to build personalisation into systems that can all too often feel impersonal. Too often it can seem like the technology drives the pedagogy. But data-informed pedagogy, driven from a place of intention, is powerful and empowering, for us and for our students. Look into what your LMS can tell you about student engagement, and see if you can leverage it to meet the students where they are. 

The resources we mentioned
King, S. (2000) On Writing: A memoir of the craft. Hodder. 

And the publication we talked about
Gribble, L. and Wardrop, J. (2025) 'What Personalisation at Scale Taught Us About Student Belonging', in Syska, A., Buckley, C., Sedghi, G., and Grayson, N. (eds), Transformative Practice in Higher Education Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Learning. Routledge, UK

If LD were a publication, what kind of publication would it be? For Josh Thorpe, the obvious answer is ‘comic book.’ Comics, like LD, bring a sense of friendly approachability, of informality, of something that exists between one thing and another – like third space. And like LD, comics can allow for a new perspective on an issue, acknowledging both the cognitive and the emotional experience of learning. When we create spaces where learning is fun and doable, we support student agency by building their learning literacy. Students all have a reason for being at university, even if they can’t articulate it, but when we assume that they put value on their learning, it makes it easier for us to talk to them about their learning goals - not just their assessment goals. The process, and not just the product. It’s exciting to figure out our relationship with knowledge, and to help students to do the same!
Bloomsbury have offered all of our listeners a discount on Josh’s fabulous book - just add the code AIlearndev20 at the checkout! 

The resources we mentioned
Arthur, R. (2025). Ultimate academic writing hacks. Bloomsbury.
Danvers, E. (2018). Who is the critical thinker in higher education? A feminist re-thinking. Teaching in Higher Education, 23(5), 548-562. 
Emily Danvers joined us in Season 3 Episode 3.
Gonsalves, C. (2026). The transparency trap: Generative AI and the rise of interpretive load. Review of Education, 14(1), e70139.
Kluge, or kludge - a makeshift solution that does the job, however inelegantly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kludge  
Louth Als, E. (2025). Focus: How to study in an increasingly distracted world. Bloomsbury.
McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding comics. HarperCollins.
Oakley, B. and Sejnowski, T. (2018). Learning how to learn. Tarcher Perigee.
OuLiPo - ‘workshop of potential literature’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo 
Ron Padgett: https://www.ronpadgett.com/ Josh mentioned his book ‘How to be perfect.’
Josh’s website: https://joshthorpe.com/  

And the publication we talked about
Thorpe, J. (2026). AI for students: creative hacks for academic success. Bloomsbury.

Learning Development, as a form of labour in higher education, is part of a complex ecosystem that has a huge impact on our professional identity. Our values, the expectations we have for our role (along with those our managers have for us), our positioning - structural as well as relational - within our institutions and the work we do, all contribute to the professional practice of learning development. Key to that practice, for Silvina Bishopp-Martin, is the language and the discourse surrounding it. How we talk about ourselves matters; how our institutions talk about us matters too. Yet we do have agency, even within institutional constraints. Language is a form of social action, and the first action we must take is to be part of the discourse, to speak the language of those we wish to influence. We have the capacity to do things differently and make our voices heard if we work collectively. Seek out the champions in your institution and build your networks!
The resources we mentioned
The ALDinHE Research Incubator event was held in May 2026 - watch out for the next one!
Fairclough, N. (1992) Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity. 
Fairclough, N. (2001) Language and Power. 2nd edn. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.  
Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing discourse: textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge. 
Fairclough, N. (2010) Critical discourse analysis: the critical study of language. 2nd edn. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. 
And the publication we talked about
Bishopp-Martin, S. (2026). A Case Study Analysis of the Discursive and Institutional Complexities Underpinning Learning Development Professional Practice in Higher Education. Available from: https://pure.canterbury.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/18336293/Thesis_-_Silvina_Bishopp-Martin.pdf

Why do we have exams? The idea of the memorisation and narrative regurgitation of facts being a measure of learning is, in many ways, quite absurd. The exam system can also be excluding of students with different linguistic, cultural and social capital from those for whom the system was originally developed (nearly 200 years ago, for Oxbridge candidates, if you’re interested). We know that authentic, practical assessment can remove some socially-embedded hierarchies, but changes to the operational mechanics alone will not resolve these issues of inclusion: the social space has to be changed as well, through our pedagogical dynamics, through our language and through our assessment processes. The awarding gap is all about what can be measured or counted, but inclusion is about how students feel in, belong to and navigate through the educational space. Students who feel included, to whom assessment can really speak, will do better and achieve more. When we aim for the transformative over the transactional, everybody wins. 
The resources we mentionedNazir, M. B., Johnson, K., Greenhalgh, J., Aston, L., & Pedley, N. (2026). Exploring student assessment literacy: how undergraduate students actualise and transform their assessment strategies. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (39). https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi39.1798 
An article that explores the relationship between intellectual knowledge and transmitted knowledge in Islam. 

And the publication we talked about
Nazir, M. B. (2025). Understanding inclusive assessment: how British Pakistani male graduates engage with university assessments. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, (36). https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi36.1478

When is ‘transparency’ not transparent? When it comes in the form of policy that carries different levels of risk for staff and students. For Chahna Gonsalves, the biggest issue with institutional AI policies is that it adds what she terms ‘interpretive load’ to students: the idea that they have to weigh up the risk of declaring their uses of generative AI in an environment that doesn’t adequately or explicitly set clear boundaries. For AI policies to be useful, they have to speak in pedagogical language to everyone, rather than punitive. It’s the quality of our feedback and the clarity of our expectations that counts, and staying true to the criteria we say we’re assessing. We’re looking for effort from our students so perhaps we can ensure that our own effort is clear too, in the form of understanding what these tools are capable of. And they are capable of much, but perhaps we need to embrace slow learning and failure as our dominant pedagogies in this new fast-paced world of instant gratification. Let’s all give ourselves a break and take the time to think!
The resources we mentioned
Illingworth, S. (2026). What UK university AI policies actually do: A study of 96 institutions. Available from: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/reports/what-uk-university-ai-policies-actually-do-a-study-of-96-institutions/ 

And the publication we talked about
Gonsalves, C. (2026). The transparency trap: Generative AI and the rise of interpretive load. Review of Education 14(1), https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.70139