This conference paper presents Learning Development as transcending remedial and deficit notions of academic support. A Learning Developer based at London Metropolitan University, presents a case study that illustrates the values and impact of Learning Development and Praxis.
 This research project piloted a Problem Based Learning (PBL) methodology in the curriculum area of Social Work. The project worked in collaboration with social work students, lecturers and university partners between 2019 to 2021. This session may be of particular interest to those working with students in the social professions and work based learning courses.
 Key challenges and implications for practice:
 
 Subject specialists seeing the Learning Developer role as one of ‘fixing students’.
 Potential of Problem Based Learning as part of accredited Social Work courses.
 Integrating Learning Development; embedded vs bolt on quick fixes.
 Learning Development as scaffolding reflective writing practice.
 
 The project overcame these issues with a reach that rippled across six north east London Local Authorities as part of a Teaching Partnership. It has also been included as a topical issue for reflection, titled: ‘Promoting Positive Father Involvement’ as part of modules in practice learning. Both students and staff engaged in a workshop programme that scaffolded a dialogue between them, addressing issues of father engagement as part of practice.
 Students were able to synthesise themes of theory, policy, legislation and its application to practice. As a result, some students developed substantial case studies at both level 5 and 6, and these even informed their later dissertations and research projects. This demonstrates the social value and wider impact that Learning Development has had on improving outcomes for not only students, but fathers, children and their families.

For the learning developers, operating within the third space in higher education (between academic-faculty positions, and professional/learning services and administration) brings its rewards through supporting students and staff to succeed. However, well-documented challenges, such as uncertainty around own professional identity; own place in the institutional culture and infrastructure; entitlement to CPD; and career progression trajectory (Silvey, Pejcinovic and Snowball, 2018; Obexer, 2020; Clark, 2021). Learning Developers who often are employed as both academics and professional services may find themselves grappling with finding ways to capture and evidence impact of their activity on their students’ academic and broader experience and proving their worth to their institution and the sector on the whole (Riggio, 2020). Our institutions may feel like worlds of academic standards and managerial constraints, neither of which helps reinforce the feeling of empowerment and belonging among learning developers.
 Everyday leadership, as a position and behaviour of choice, can help navigate these challenges, at individual, institutional and LD community levels. Everyday leadership has links with a stronger sense of empowerment, self-fulfilment and belonging – to the collective LD community, and to the institution (Drury, Evripidou, and Van Zomeren, 2015). Everyday leadership implies influence, and therefore, impact. In this session, we applied our thinking from Cashman (2017) and Whitelaw (2020) and define leadership as extending your energy into “things that matter” (Whitelaw, 2020. NP), to create value for others. Everyday leaders are all individuals, notwithstanding of their status, who “influence others to achieve shared objectives for the good of the collective” (Riggio, 2020, NP). Our participants also explored, and reframed their activity from the angle of everyday leadership – such as influencing peers and students, mentoring peers, initiating or leading a project, speaking up, acting as an active bystander. Finally we referred to broad themes from the ALDinHE Leadership Community of Practice. Participants shared practice and came up with a range of everyday leadership ‘expressions’ which are meaningful to them, within the context of their value and purpose; empowerment and belonging; influence and impact. Participants were encouraged to commit to one new everyday leadership action/ behaviour.

Critiques and polemics calling for ‘doing away with study skills’ as an ineffectual ‘Tinkerbell’ mirage that plays into neoliberal, deficit, anti-academic agendas have appeared both in academic scholarship and the higher education press (see, for example, Richards and Pilcher, 2021, 2023; Wingate, 2006). Often originating from outside the learning development community, misinformed and misdirected, these criticisms gain traction with senior leadership and academic colleagues, and cannot be ignored, avoided, or dismissed if we are to promote our ethos (and preserve our jobs). So nearly right in many ways, but for the wrong reasons, they come too close to the mark to shrug off. Yet there has been very little response—let alone rebuttal—from the learning development community, individually or collectively. Robust critique is fair and demands a reply: ‘rising above it’ is not a scholarly response. Any reluctance to engage in outward-facing debate is surely a problem given that there is so much at stake for students and for ourselves. Are we going to let them talk about us like this? Questions: Are they right? Can you prove it? How will anyone know?

For many, the word ‘inclusion’ has not only become emptied of meaning but also sets up a problematic contradiction. To be included depends on the willingness of those who hold this power to allow entry. Being allowed entry doesn’t change the power relationships but merely allows access to already ‘existing cultures, structures and practices’ (Biesta, Wainwright and Aldridge, 2022, p.1). For disabled people and minoritised groups, the problem of equity and participation in education is one that runs deep and, for many, extends right the way through their educational trajectories. What’s overlooked and not recognised is the invisible work of being disabled. Similarly, and to paraphrase Donna Williams (1996), from the start, disabled people have been judged from the outside, by their appearances, rather than from the inside and according to how their disability is experienced. This mini keynote opens up a space to discuss the problems inherent in inclusion and what this means for disabled people and other minoritised groups. Questions: Inclusion has been co-opted into HE’s performativity agenda; does this create more problems than it pretends to solve? How do we acknowledge and understand the invisible work of being disabled? As practitioners, how can we create a more authentically democratic environment for disabled people and other minoritised groups in HE?

Drawing upon a section of the co-created Learning Development (LD) Manifesto (ALDinHE, 2018), in this workshop we invite participants to come and be creative – and imagine beyond what Learning Developers do now into what they may do in the future, inspired by the metaverse. The metaverse is a science fiction hypothetical iteration from the book ‘Snow Crash’ (Stephenson, 1992) set in a near future where the global political structure has collapsed (!), a tiny number of super-corporations control most aspects of life, and the rich spend their time in the metaverse (Ball, 2022). Today the metaverse is the Facebook-owned platform Meta, which Mark Zuckerberg (2021) explains as “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it”. Rather than our current 2D, screen-based internet, the metaverse will be a 3D virtual space, accessed by either a VR headset or AR (augmented reality) glasses, which superimpose a layer of digital information on top of the visible world. What impact might this have on LD practices, knowledge and beliefs? The metaverse is highly contentious, and we invite Learning Developers to take the challenge and look to possible futures and their potential value to the sector. The educational possibilities of the metaverse will build from the UNESCO (2022) ‘Reimagining education’ discussion paper. There is also a need to focus the conversation on the ethics of the metaverse (Fielding, 2021), to consider how we can embed safety, privacy and inclusion at the core. It is fair to argue that these values closely align with LD, yet in the metaverse there is the potential for violence, harassment, isolation and bullying. How can we promote and enhance equality, diversity and inclusion in this space? We will invite participants (who will work in teams) to co-create a #Take5 blogpost with us from our mapping and debates. No technology is needed for the session, and no previous knowledge of the metaverse Our manifesto What does Learning Development do? It contextualises, embeds and maps knowledge, and contributes to learning gain It teaches how to learn and scaffolds learning It widens opportunity, not participation; it can trouble what we mean by participation It infiltrates throughout the university and operates in a 3rd space, connecting and collaborating with the wider community It works with the hidden curriculum It legitimises the different forms of knowledge our students have It levels the playing field and widens the academy

Abstract
 Higher Education institutions across the world hold a moral and, in many cases, legal responsibility to make their educational offerings accessible and inclusive. Typically, universities may rely solely on checklists of recommendations, which although a key component of developing equitable and inclusive teaching, often fall short of accounting for the multifaceted range of attributes a holistic definition of inclusivity entails. This paper posits that there is a need for better understanding of potential implementation barriers, coupled with guidance and support for both practitioners as well as policy makers. Research reported in this paper presents an analysis of UK equality legislation as it relates to Higher Education and a range of institutional support documentation. This documentary analysis is used to explore, with practitioners, the opportunities for and barriers to implementing recommendations for inclusive learning at a highly selective, science focussed institution. The paper concludes in twenty-two recommendations for inclusive practice and offers them as a tool for others to use in the pursuit of developing more inclusive education, while giving readers the opportunity to learn from the experiences of the those from the research institution.

This paper explores how video games can enhance learning in the higher education Humanities classroom through play and critical discussions. Through the observation of two case studies, it aims to highlight important concepts and considerations and serve as a platform for future research and debate. The first case study utilised Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization (Firaxis Games, 2008) and involved first-year History students. They were encouraged to take part in critical assessment and discussion by pairing gameplay with lecture content featuring the same moments in history they experienced in the game. This led to the students being able to better challenge historical narratives through holistic reflexive engagement. The second case study used GreedFall (Spiders, 2019) to encourage students to question historical inaccuracies and utopian diversity. Through connecting gameplay to module outcomes, students unconsciously adopted a critical eye which indicates how the game can be used to debate race, Western imagination, and imperialism. We conclude that gaming in the classroom is an engaging way to deliver content and it enables students to develop critical and reflexive thinking within playful spaces. As such, this article focuses on the students studying the humanities and discusses the video game as a medium to identify and analyse ideologies, and gaming as a way of developing reflexive critical thinking and analytic skills.

Living Labs provide stakeholders with authentic and spontaneous environments in which innovations and technologies can be developed. This paper highlights the use of Living Labs as an educational teaching and learning environment. We give four current examples of practice and present a conceptual framework for pedagogic design and development of experiential learning activities and assessment in a Living Lab environment. Examples are based around current higher education undergraduate and postgraduate taught assessments and activities. We highlight how Living Labs, particularly campus-based examples, are an excellent opportunity for education providers to provide realistic experiences for students that promote empowerment, inclusivity and sustainability where activities and results can be spontaneous. Learning in a Living Lab environment provides the opportunities for students to develop applied skills, work in a transdisciplinary manner and co-create and collaborate on data sets. These activities are associated with potential increases in student attainment and receive positive student feedback. Living Labs introduce opportunities for interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and cross-cultural working and provide an excellent base for education for sustainability.

Are we done with generative AI yet?', a colleague has mooted in a recent conversation. After the initial trepidation caused by the perceived grave consequences of GenAI for higher education, the volume of institutional and individual responses to the challenge descended on us like a weighted blanket, bringing a sense of comfort and gently reducing our stress levels associated with the quiet revolution we never thought we'd have to deal with. Among the many analyses, commentaries, and interventions, Russell Group universities issued their set of 'principles on the use of generative AI tools in education' (Russell Group, 2023) providing some much needed, if vague, guidelines for the sector. Meanwhile, international Learning and Teaching colleagues crowdsourced 'Creative ideas to use AI in education' (Nerantzi et al., 2023) , and the very active Facebook group 'Higher Ed discussions of AI writing' became for many a platform offering unmatched levels of emotional and specialised support including examples of authentic in-class tasks that engage GenAI ethically and real exchanges with students responding to them, as well as classroom policies and syllabi, alongside sharing collective hopes and individual frustrations. With the new semester now bubbling with possibility, we thus seem relatively confident we can meet its challenges while anticipating just about anything in terms of consequences.

The final year dissertation is an important part of an undergraduate degree which delivers a wide range of subject-specific and transferable skills. It plays a significant part in students’ learning development and overall experience of university. Finding the right project is emotionally important to students and may underpin their subsequent motivation and engagement. Little is known, however, about how students make this important choice. This study aimed to learn more about students’ experiences of choosing a dissertation, how their choice processes varied and whether their choices worked out well for them. It surveyed 150 undergraduates in natural sciences at a UK university, asking a mix of qualitative and quantitative questions. Findings indicate that students value a range of factors when choosing their dissertation, most prominently interest in the subject and approach but also their existing familiarity with the area, the perceived benefits and demands of the work and staff support. Multivariate analysis suggests a variety of choice processes are in operation, with some students valuing content factors and others trading these off against relational ones. With hindsight, 91 respondents (60.7%) felt their choice process had worked well and 87 (58%) would choose the same way again. A subset, however, had felt unprepared to choose, and some of these were particularly unhappy with the outcome. The implication for learning development is that helping students learn to make conscious and informed choices and making dissertation modules student-centric is likely to significantly improve engagement and learning, especially for the less confident.