Increasing the Impact of Scholarship at the eSTEeM Annual Conference

18th April 2024

A huge thank you to everyone who attended and participated in this year’s eSTEeM Annual Conference, which took place on the 10-11 April. Over 100 face-to-face delegates gathered at Walton Hall with a further 70 joining the event online, all of whom were treated to a bumper programme of high-quality scholarship.

This year’s thought-provoking keynote was delivered by Dilly Fung who opened proceedings with her presentation on how we as scholars can contribute to the strategic development of higher education institutions and develop scholarship to increase its impact on teaching and ourselves.

Day two featured a workshop which explored how scholarship projects can have influence on a wider sphere at school, faculty and university level. Attended by key university stakeholders, it allowed colleagues to consider ways we can overcome the barriers to implementing what works.

The conference also saw the launch of its very first peer-reviewed conference proceedings; the aim of which is to allow authors to publish short papers relating to their eSTEeM scholarship projects in a supportive environment.

Now in its 7th year, we were delighted to present the eSTEeM Scholarship Projects of the Year Awards, which celebrate excellence in eSTEeM projects over the past year. Many congratulations to the following four project teams –

Highly Commended

Title: Black student experience and attainment on S112: improving a level 1 STEM module; Closing the Awarding Gap: Listening to our Black Students

Team: Louise MacBrayne, Jennie Bellamy, Angela Richards and Elaine McPherson

Title: Measuring the Impact of the Learning Design and Course Creation Workshops

Team: Tom Olney, Mark Endean, Duncan Banks, Daphne Chang, Lin Lin and Bart Rienties.

Winners

Title: Enabling distance design students’ wellbeing

Team: Nicole Lotz and Muriel Sippel

Title: Virtual internships in open and distance learning contexts: Improving access, participation, and success for underrepresented students

Team: Diane Butler, Andrew Potter, Catherine Comfort and Kristen Reid

Best Poster Presentation

The best poster presentation prize went to Paul Piwek, Cecilia Domingo and Richard Walker for their poster titled – Agile development and implementation of a TMA catch-up activity for Stage 1 students.

We would like to say a special thank you to our six Student Ambassadors, Imane Dazzazi, Yaw Buadu, Meng-Chin Tsai, Albert Dellor, Abolfazl Amiri-Hezaveh and Parth Kulkarni, who provided invaluable support and assistance to each of the parallel and plenary sessions. Also huge thanks to Lauren Healey from MarComms who assisted the eSTEeM Team throughout the two days.

Recordings of the sessions and the PowerPoint presentations will be available via the conference website shortly.

Images by Henry Ransby: Top right Professor Dilly Fung. Bottom right the winners from the 13^th eSTEeM Annual Conference receiving their awards - top left: Elaine McPherson, Angela Richards, Louise MacBrayne and Jennie Bellamy; top right: Nicole Lotz with Vic Nicholas; bottom left: Andrew Potter and Diane Butler with Vic Nicholas; bottom centre: Daphne Chang, Duncan Banks and Tom Olney with Vic Nicholas; bottom right: Paul Piwek with Vic Nicholas.

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