Past Learning & Teaching Enhancement Programmes

Enhancing the Accessibility of Teaching Materials for Education Students

Faye Hendry and Alyson Young, and student assistants

School of Education

Initial Teacher Education programmes at the University of Aberdeen combine taught classes and school-based placements in order to prepare students to become qualified teachers. We have a diverse range of students including many with specific learning differences and additional support needs. As much of our teaching is in person and interactive, and involves a range of concrete materials and resources (such as PowerPoint presentations, handouts, printed readings, concrete materials, mindmaps, posters, etc.), a key goal is to ensure these materials are accessible for all students, particularly those who are neurodivergent and/or have specific learning differences such as dyslexia. This is important for the students’ learning, but also as a pedagogical modelling tool so that students can subsequently emulate and utilise these inclusive approaches to resource-creation in their own teaching practice. This is why this project aims to collaborate with students through participatory action research to gather feedback on our current materials and how accessible students find these, and to work with them to create new materials and guidance for tutors about their use.

LTEP Project Report 2024-25

Breaking the silence: Exploring help-seeking behaviours among health professionals in training.

Dr Louisa Lawrie, Dr Anita Laidlaw, Professor Amudha Poobalan, Dr Kathrine Gibson Smith

School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition

This study explores the perceptions, barriers, and facilitators of help-seeking among health professional trainees, including students from Medicine, Dentistry, Health Psychology, and Physician Associate programmes. Previous research highlights that medical students often avoid seeking help for mental and physical challenges, even when necessary (Sheldon et al., 2024). This is concerning given their heightened vulnerability to mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, burnout, and suicidal ideation, compared to the general population (Aljuwaiser et al., 2023). Fear of stigma, discrimination, and being perceived as "unfit to practice" are key deterrents to help-seeking in medical students (Shahaf-Oren, Madan & Henderson, 2021). However, there is limited research on whether similar patterns exist across other healthcare and professional disciplines. By examining help-seeking behaviours in students from diverse fields, this study seeks to uncover whether these challenges are discipline-specific or influenced by broader cultural and professional factors. Using semi-structured interviews with approximately 20 purposively sampled participants across study stages at the University of Aberdeen, the research aims to identify how professional identity, academic experiences, and disciplinary cultures shape attitudes towards help-seeking. Analysis will be guided by the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF), providing a nuanced understanding of the drivers behind these behaviours. Findings will inform strategies to promote well-being and self-care, offering actionable recommendations to foster supportive educational environments and enhance mental health resources across disciplines.

LTEP Project Report 2024-25

Virtual Café: enhancing Online PGT student experience & inclusion

Dr Janet Kyle, Dr Caroline Franco, Dr Leone Craig, Dr Shelley Farrar

School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition

Online postgraduate students have highlighted a need to improve the quality of their interactions and enhance their sense of community. This project aims to evaluate and develop an online student hub (virtual café) to support a geographically and culturally diverse postgraduate learning community who typically study in the evenings and weekends whilst juggling work and family commitments.

Our key question is “Can a virtual café bring together and build our students’ sense of place and community voice within the University of Aberdeen?”. This directly addresses University of Aberdeen’s education principle 2 (community building) and contributes to our current strategy to widen online learning across the University.

This project will evaluate our virtual café pilot scheme to better understand our student experience, its potential impact and to identify future development needs, with the aim to further strengthen and enhance learning for online students.

LTEP Project Report 2024-25

Translation Software in Higher Education

Dr Sandie Cleland, Dr Zeshu Shao

School of Psychology

This project aims to investigate the use of translation software by students who have English as an Additional Language (EAL). We know that many of our EAL students use translation software to aid their academic writing and to translate lectures and academic materials; however we do not have a clear picture of how translation software is used and the impact that it has on education. While translation software has potential as a useful tool to enhance students’ academic English skills, there are situations where its use could raise questions around academic integrity. This project aims to better understand both staff and student’s views of the benefits and potential pitfalls of translation software across a range of disciplines and institutions. The findings of this project can inform guidelines for students and staff on the appropriate and effective use of translation software, and ultimately contribute to recommendations on the factors that Higher Education institutions should consider when developing codes of practice around translation software.

LTEP Project Report 2024-25

Building My Skills: Preparing for Success in Higher Education

Dr Heather Branigan, Dr Jacqui Hutchison, Dr Sally Middleton, Anna Johnston, with support from Debbie Marr, Amy Stevenson and Hannah Agnew (North East College Scotland)

School of Psychology with support from Access and Articulation and NESCol

This project aims to develop student-led resources focusing on transferable skills, for the purpose of supporting student transitions from college to Higher Education (HE). The School of Psychology has a clear focus on transferable skill development across our programmes, and this project aims on extend this support to students pre-entry, preparing students to succeed in HE. With support from LTEP, we will hire a student intern who will (1) talk with students at college and university to scope out useful resources, and then (2) develop student-generated resources that will focus on development of an identified transferable skill. This resource will be combined with existing resources and other support materials currently in development and will be compiled into a set of resources to support transitions and outreach.

LTEP Project Report 2024-25

Developing resources and tools to support students' use of AI technologies in their career learning and development.

Tracey Innes, Professor John Barrow, Ghina Elkasti, Rhona Gibson, Julia Leng, Kate Robertson, Matthew MacCulloch

Careers and Employability Service

This project will explore students’ use of AI in relation to their career learning and development, building understanding of the benefits and challenges students face in its use and exploring how it impacts on their career readiness and confidence. Findings will be summarised in a report and used to inform the development of a suite of tools and resources to support students and graduates to develop the skills and insights needed to be able to benefit from and avoid the pitfalls of using AI in their career development and learning.

LTEP Project Report 2024-25

A Course feedback Evaluation: achievement of intended learning outcomes, clarity of assessment instructions and grading processes in Work-Based Learning (ACE:WBL)

PI: Heather Morgan

Team: John Barrow, John Cavanagh, Emily Cleland, Stuart Durkin, Caroline Franco, Toni Gibson, Tracy Innes, Alan Macpherson, Zaib McNeilly, Yaji Sripada 

Schools: SMMSN, Engineering, LLMVC, NCS, Social Science and the Careers Service

This project will deliver a qualitative evaluation of the most recent course runs of elective work-based learning (credit bearing and non-credit bearing) at both undergraduate and postgraduate taught levels across multiple Academic Schools and Professional Services to further explore course feedback (beyond course feedback forms and informal mechanisms) on the achievement of intended learning outcomes, the clarity of assessment instructions and grading processes (especially the use of [new] rubrics).

We want to recruit students who recently completed a work-based learning course at the University of Aberdeen in 2023-24 and undertake interviews with them to gain in depth understanding of their views and experiences of the intended learning outcomes and assessment instructions/templates/rubrics.

Between 13 and 20 qualitative interviews will be completed to derive actionable feedback from analysis/recommendations so that we can improve all our courses for 2025-26, as well as informing developments of other courses and sharing good practice for work-based learning courses across the University, i.e. creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) around all work-based learning courses in 2025-26 and beyond. We will develop a cross-disciplinary ‘practical’ resource to sit alongside the University’s work-based learning policy. We also intend to continue to share our scholarship activities externally.

LTEP Project Report 2024-25

Staff’s views of embedding intersectionality: the pathway to an inclusive education

Dr Leone Craig, SMMSN, Dr Samantha May SSS, Ms Susan Elphinstone, SMMSN, Dr Louisa Lawrie, SMMSN, Mr Theodore Williamson, DHPAH, Mr Samuel Bennett, SMMSN

School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition

Intersectionality is how race, gender and other individual characteristics, such as disability, cultural and social background, overlap and intersect with one another to create our unique, individual and diverse identities. The University of Aberdeen’s vision is to be “Open to All”, but some students face additional challenges because of their background or personal circumstances. Understanding these intersections is crucial to building a more resilient and inclusive learning community.

This project follows on from “Open to All” and “Deep Dive” events that supported inter-school collaborative initiatives among students and staff and shared best practices to improve student achievement. Further to this, we previously received funding for the first stage of qualitative research with students, which focussed on their understanding and experiences related to intersectionality and how this has influenced their learning. This identified potential gaps in the current knowledge and understanding of intersectionality across the University and underscored the need for in-depth understanding of both student and staff perspectives to move this body of work forward.

This project therefore aims to explore staff experiences and understanding of intersectionality across the University and its impact on teaching and learning. By doing so, we aim to identify any challenges, barriers and facilitators staff encounter when teaching a diverse student population and determine what resources (e.g., guidance, training, workshops) may be needed to support staff and students. This is important because it will help us to better understand how we can optimize learning environments to enhance the quality of education for all students and to support diverse learner journeys (QAA Scotland Enhancement Theme).

Developing Geo-maths resources to improve students' skills and self-efficacy

Dr Amy Gilligan, Dr Morgiane Richard

School of Geosciences

Geology is an inherently quantitative subject. Undergraduate students require mathematical and quantitative skills to be able to succeed in their current degree, be able to undertake future study, and be competitive in seeking employment opportunities. Many students report being worried about maths, and statements such as “I can't do maths” are common in many classes.

The aim of the project is to identify mathematical topics relevant for Geology degrees and develop Geology-specific maths resources on these topics to support learning of students in Geosciences degrees, enhancing their skills and self-efficacy with respect to maths. We will work with student interns to co-create the geo-maths resources. It is hoped that the creation of geology-specific maths resources will also help students construct meaning in the material: it will help them to see why it is useful, rather than being abstract and “scary”.

Enhancing the Effectiveness and Experience of Student Assistants in Teaching and Research Projects

Dr JP Mynott, Faye Hendry, Prof Amudha Poobalan, Dr Joanna Wilson-Scott, Dr Jacqui Hutchison, Prof Steve Tucker

School of Education

Student Assistants (sometimes referred to as interns) have been, and continue to be, key members of a number of student-focused research projects across the University of Aberdeen. This research project aims to explore: how student assistants are used; the work they do; what the interns' perceptions of this experience are; whether the internships enhanced their academic work and/or employability opportunities and how the experience of student assistants might be enhanced in future.

A Scoping Network - Ethical Engagements in Creative Practice Research and Teaching

Professor Suk-Jun Kim, Dr Jo Hicks, Dr Matthew Machin-Autenrieth, Ms Pauline Black, Dr Thomas McKean, Dr Frances Wilkins, Dr Isabel Segui, Dr Bárbara Barreiro, and Dr Helen Lynch

School of Language, Literature, Music, and Visual Culture

Despite a growing emphasis on research governance and ethics in higher education, ethics is often a difficult and confusing topic of discussion in practice-based research and creative arts practice as well as in the teaching context. Furthermore, there is a lack of resources that practice-based researchers (research staff and PGR/PGT students) and lecturers in creative arts and practice-based disciplines can refer to when engaging their research and teaching or supervising their students.

The aim of this networking initiative is to examine issues surrounding ethics in creative arts practice and practice-based or -led research and teaching in Scottish higher education. It strives to create a space in which a more constructive dialogue between institutional responsibilities that aim to promote ethical research practice in general and perform gate-keeping exercises through approval processes and training programmes on the one hand and disciplinary and interdisciplinary discourses where consideration of ethics are deeply embedded in the ethos of their practice.

The project will run two scoping workshops: the first scoping workshop (in February 2023) will invite staff and PGR/PGT students at the University of Aberdeen who are engaged in practice-based research or teaching in creative practice disciplines, and also those who are involved in conducting institutional ethics approval processes and exercising university ethics policies; and the second scoping workshop (in April/May 2023) will invite a panel of several researchers from other Scottish HE institutions in similar disciplines and examine the key objectives the project.

Developing supportive postgraduate communities

Dr Kirsty Kiezebrink, Heather Morgan, Leone Craig, Toni Gibson & Andrew Maclaren

Feeling part of a community whilst undertaking a university degree is critical to enable student to achieve their full potential. Conversations with our postgraduate students in 2021-22, (where our numbers grew fivefold), we identified a need to feel more connected, less anonymous. We aim to develop a programme of activities, in partnership with students, aimed at enhancing students' sense of community and developing key skills identified by students as important. We will use a 'experience-based co-design' approach (Robert et al, 2010 ) at all stages from the design of the potential intervention through to the evaluation of the implementation. T intervention will consist of a programme of events incorporating team building activities, transferable skills development and programme of discipline-specific training events, including debates on hot topics. A key question for resilient learning communities is “How do we ensure that we are able to support our diverse learning communities?”. This initiative is aimed at not only supporting the diversity of the community but actively celebrating this diversity and encouraging students to gain confidence in sharing their own experiences and views with the wider community and learning together through a series of peer support workshops

Developing the resilience of Advanced Entry students through evaluation of support for staff and students

Dr Jacqui Hutchison, Dr Heather Branigan, Dr Sally Middleton, Georgina Leeves

School of Psychology, Access and Articulation

QAA Scotland identify resilience as a key skill, and evidence suggests a connection between resilience and transitions (e.g., from FE college to university) with resilience being a key factor in successful student transitions. This project aims to enhance the academic resilience of Advanced Entry students (i.e., students who have completed the equivalent of their first year(s) of study at a further education institution before entering into L2 or L3) by building on our previous work in this area.

A primary outcome of this project is to run a workshop for University of Aberdeen staff (academic and professional services) and other individuals involved in supporting Advanced Entry students across the sector. The workshop will involve sharing findings from our previous work in this area, as well as generating cases of good practice throughout the academic community and developing an institutional Community of Practice. A second outcome of the project will be to evaluate our new student toolkit containing resources for Advanced Entry students, via a student survey, to ensure the toolkit is sustainable and fit for purpose.

This project will work in collaboration with students to guide academic practice and support the resilience of all Advanced Entry students.

Staying in and getting on: Developing strategies to support widening access students in their medical studies

Dr Katie Gibson Smith, Prof Colin Lumsden, Dr Kim Walker, Dr Amudha Poobalan, Dr Anita Laidlaw

Centre for Healthcare Education and Innovation

The Gateway2Medicine programme has been established with the aim of supporting those from non-traditional, and less privileged backgrounds, to pursue a career in medicine. However, the disadvantages facing these students do not simply disappear once they enter medical school and hence, it is important to understand how widening access students may be best supported over the course of their undergraduate studies to ensure that they are not only retained, but also progress within the profession.

This research aims to address this evidence gap and to develop an evidence-based and theory-informed intervention strategy to support widening access students' resilience and retention in the MBChB. Workshops will be undertaken with students and educators to assist in the development of a support strategy. The research will generate evidence to inform the student experience specifically in relation to identifying the mechanisms via which widening access students may be best supported throughout the MBChB.

Supporting international PGT students to overcome language barriers

Dr Sandie Cleland and Dr Zeshu Shao

School of Psychology

International students consistently report language barriers as a source of stress, not least because the skills required to pass language admissions requirements are not the same as the skills required for effective academic writing. For postgraduate taught (PGT) students this issue may be compounded by the fact that they only have a brief time to acculturate to a new education system. The current project aims to understand the language barriers experienced by international PGT students, and to evaluate awareness and use of academic writing support services at the University of Aberdeen. The first phase of the project will use qualitative methods (focus groups guided by a semi-structured interview schedule) to understand the perceived language barriers affecting the experience of international students at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Glasgow. The second phase of the study will use questionnaire methodology combining both quantitative and open-ended questions to establish University of Aberdeen international PGT students' awareness and access of language support services. A key objective of this project will be to foster collaboration both internally (e.g., academic schools and central support services) and externally (with the University of Glasgow). The end goal is to use this knowledge to develop more general guidance on how to support international PGT students to overcome language barriers early on in their programme of study.

Addressing and Enhancing Language Support for International PGT Students - Survey Results

Using video to build reflection and resilience during practicum placement assessments

Dr John Paul Mynott, Faye Hendry, Katrina Foy, Lorna Stewart

School of Education

This project aims to explore the experiences of students using video as part of their student placement assessment and to what extent video supports student-led reflection on practice.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) department at the University of Aberdeen introduced video as a tool for observing student teachers' practice on placement, at a time when in-person visits to schools were not permitted. Using a situational analysis approach to grounded theory, this project will explore questionnaires and focus groups with students about their perceptions and experiences using video within their placements and the impact this had on their own reflections on practice as a means to consider how using video to support students in placement can be developed in future.

Evaluating learning and teaching experience of taught postgraduate students

Dr Zeshu Shao, Dr Clare Kirtley and Dr Mirjam Brady-Van de Bos

School of Psychology

This project aims to investigate how postgraduate taught students develop essential resilient skills to efficiently overcome academic and personal challenges, anxiety, and pressure by evaluating their learning experience and expectations. In particular, we will use a mixed methods approach including questionnaires and focus groups to explore how postgraduate taught students' academic resilience is related to their educational background (e.g., their previous knowledge and skills and education systems), academic and personal challenges (e.g., changing of education and living environment, cultural conflicting, language barriers, mental health issues, etc.), and their learning expectations (e.g., reasons for pursuing a PGT degree, plans for future employment and study, etc.). The outcomes will be applied to guide academic practice to support resilient learning in postgraduate taught (PGT) students.

Faye Hendry, Dr John Paul Mynott, Dr Colin Christie, Alan Grieve & Gordon Stewart

School of Education

This project aims to systematically evaluate a series of skills inputs delivered in tutorials with first year undergraduate education students, and, subsequently, to co-construct and develop enhanced materials for these inputs in collaboration with a group of students.

Over the past few years, tutors have developed and taught short inputs on academic skills (usually 20-30 minute mini-workshops) in weekly tutorials with first year undergraduate education students. The purpose of the skills inputs is to build the students' skills and to improve attainment in essay-based assessments by improving confidence and resilience in undertaking assignments at Higher Education level. Using an action research model, we will ask students to review the inputs and then work with them to co-construct enhanced inputs which will improve attainment and confidence further.

Dr Amudha Poobalan, Dr Leone Craig, Dr Fiona Campbell, Dr Rosa Lopez, Prof Andy Welch, Prof Steve Tucker and Dr Donna Maccallum

School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition

Provision of timely and effective feedback to students is crucial as it informs them how to improve their future assessments. Using assessment rubrics is one way of providing transparent and standardised feedback to students. However, there are inconsistencies in how these rubrics are used by staff and students.

Our project aims to enhance students' learning by assessing how students and staff use standardised assessment rubrics as a framework to write assignments and provide constructive and useful feedforward, respectively.

In collaboration with School of Psychology, we will use an exploratory mixed methods study design to conduct focus group discussions (UG students, PG students, PG online students, and staff) and will follow up with a questionnaire survey. By understanding how feedback is provided by staff and used by students, we will identify how we can improve feedback and feedforward practices to enhance student learning

Dr Cheryl Dowie, Dr Julie Ross, Professor Abbe Brown, Dr Amudha Pooblan

Business School, School of Law, School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition

Intersectionality is how race, gender and other individual characteristics, such as: disability, cultural and social background, overlap and intersect with one another to create our unique, individual and diverse identities. By creating a reflective space for both students and staff, intersectionality issues can be understood better and addressed within the wider ambit of other equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives, providing more opportunities for all to succeed.

The aim of this project is to work as an interdisciplinary team to encourage analytical reflection and co-create resources for students and staff on respecting intersectionality and developing inclusive practice that, in turn, will nurture resilient learning communities.

This project follows on from work already started through the regular “Open to All” and “Deep Dive” events. These events support inter-school collaborative initiatives among students and staff, share best learning practices, encourage ideas to improve student achievement and develop sustainable student-staff support networks to assist in attaining the University's shared objectives and goals.

Corina Weir, Dr Heather Morgan, Dr Kay Penny, Moses Ikpeme, Dr Samantha Donnelly

School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition

Teaching and supporting students to openly reflect on the difficulties and successes in their learning can help students to adapt to challenging setbacks, cope with stress related to their studies and establish active coping strategies; crucial processes in building resilience (Brewer et al., 2019; Lapina, 2018; Walsh et al., 2020). We will gather data on students' views and learning needs, in terms of reflective thinking and writing, with the aim of developing a tailored programme of activities to support students in reflecting on aspects of their MSc research project. Following this, we will evaluate the activities to continually improve the support offered every year to students, with the goal of supporting their resilience in coping with difficult situations which can arise as part of everyday research.

Dr Amy Irwin, Dr Ceri Trevethan, Dr Heather Branigan, Dr Joy Perkins

School of Psychology

Although resilience has elements linked to internal characteristics, (e.g., self-confidence, optimism), it is also a dynamic capability - one which includes ways of thinking and acting that can be learnt and supported. Universities can facilitate resilience learning through the curriculum (e.g., the LTEP funded micro-credential course currently under development Building Resilience - From Surviving to Thriving) and through informal activities designed to encourage student participation and community building.

Recent findings from the Mind Mentally Healthy Universities Project (Mind, 2020) highlight that despite the growing provision of mental health resources and services at UK Universities, the majority of students do not engage with standard support services and resources.

This project will build a bank of student-generated content relevant to the concept of resilience in a variety of accessible formats (podcasts, vlog, blog, testimonial, images) to explain resilience and illustrate activities designed to support resilience. This resource will be made available across the University for inductions, workshops, student messages etc. This content will be evaluated through student feedback via online survey using thematic analysis.

This project will also produce a series of student-led “Resilience Walks” as a distinct activity designed to enable students to form small groups, take part in a guided activity and form connections with both peers and the city of Aberdeen. The resilience walks will be evaluated by an intervention style study where resilience and wellbeing levels will be self-rated and recorded prior to and after each resilience walk.

Dr Evelyn Jannetta and Dr Ceri Trevethan

School of Psychology

This project involves the development of a small pilot study designed to explore the learning needs of educators in the University of Aberdeen who deliver aspects of reflective practice in current credit-bearing undergraduate and taught postgraduate courses. The initial outcome will be the development of a pilot online toolkit designed to enhance resilience in a community of learning through encouraging engagement in reflective practice. The toolkit will contain information, practice examples and tools for reflective practice for participants to use at their own pace based upon their needs in reflective practice. The pilot toolkit will be hosted on the university virtual learning platform with the aim of facilitating a community of peer support and learning. It will be evaluated through gathering participants' experience in focus groups for staff and for students respectively.

Dr Heather Branigan, Dr Jacqui Hutchison, Dr Sally Middleton

School of Psychology, Access and Articulation

This project aims to enhance the academic resilience of advanced entry students (i.e., students who have completed the equivalent to the their first year(s) of study at a further education institution before entering into L2 or L3).

We seek to support this group of students by:

1. Exploring existing support across the university through a staff survey
2. Developing student-led content to provide peer support for advanced entry students

A main outcome of this project will be the development of support materials, by students for students. These support materials will be multi-modal, to provide choice and encompass the varied experiences of advanced entry students. Another key outcome from this project is to develop examples of best practice from the existing support structures throughout the UoA. Findings from the staff survey will be communicated with central and support services as appropriate.

By building on previous work to understand articulation students' experiences, this project will work in collaboration with students to guide academic practice and support the resilience of all advanced entry students, including those transitioning from further educational institutions and other universities.

Dr Jason Bohan, Dr Heather Branigan, Dr Jacqui Hutchison, and Dr Clare Kirtley

School of Psychology

This project has two aims; one, to help develop a resilient learning community through high quality assessment and feedback and secondly to address the sometimes negative student perceptions of assessment and feedback as evidenced via the National Student Survey (NSS) 2021.

In collaboration with the School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition, this project will investigate student and staff perceptions of timely and effective feedback in relation to a range of assessment practices. A mixed methods approach will be utilised using questionnaires and focus groups to explore student and staff perceptions and experiences of assessment and feedback practices for undergraduate, postgraduate and online students

Janice Montgomery

Careers and Employability Service

This research project is designed to investigate the work experience needs of care-experienced students across all years and disciplines at the University. It builds on previous research undertaken by the Careers and Employability Service in 2021 which indicated that care experienced students clearly recognised the need for work experience but were uncertain about how to access those internships and placements and lacked confidence to apply.

The purpose of this research is to better understand barriers which might exist to participation and in the long term, to develop connections with firms and organisations in and around Aberdeen, to provide a structured pilot work experience programme for this particular group of students. Gaining deeper insights into the challenges facing care-experienced and estranged students will enable targeted and appropriate opportunities to be put in place to overcome barriers and build future resilience.

Dr Amy Irwin, Dr Ceri Trevethan, Dr Heather Branigan, Dr Joy Perkins

School of Psychology

The concept of student resilience is thought to encompass multiple behavioural and psychological components. Enhancing resilience thus requires a broad approach - encompassing a range of cognitive, emotional and behavioural factors - such as internal factors (e.g. self-esteem, psychological wellbeing), psychoeducation, practical coping strategies and behavioural responses.

The current project brings together academics with a range of research expertise, including mental health, applied psychology, graduate attributes and metacognition, to develop a brand new zero credit online course to enhance student resilience at the University of Aberdeen.

The course content will be a mixture of pre-recorded lectures and practical activities based on experiential learning. The content will be informed by two funded student internship projects, the first will conduct a scoping review to identify relevant tools and activities for inclusion in the course, the second will recruit students to take part in focus groups to evaluate potential course content and consider student resilience needs at Aberdeen.

Dr Heather Branigan, Dr Jacqui Hutchison

School of Psychology

This research project aims to develop insight regarding resilient learning communities by understanding the experiences of articulation students (i.e., students who have completed the equivalent to their first year of study at a further education institution, e.g. HNC/HND).

In this project, we will conduct focus groups with articulation students to investigate their perspectives of the transition to university. Undergraduate students from across the university are invited to take part and share their experiences.

By developing understanding of articulation students' experiences, we aim to produce insights in relation to promoting academic resilience within this group of students, guiding academic practice and support as well as future work in this area.

Prof Nir Oren, Dr Matthew Collinson, Prof Ben Martin, Dr Murilo Da Silva Baptista, Dr Morgiane Richard

School Natural and Computing Sciences and Centre for Academic Development

In STEM disciplines, and disciplines where mathematics are used extensively, the typesetting system LaTeX is widely used to write teaching material. LaTeX produces high-quality advanced mathematical content; however, it generates PDF documents that cannot be processed correctly by text-to-speech software. To be in line with accessibility regulations, recommendations are that course material be converted to HTML format.

There is currently no technology that can achieve a complete and error-free conversion; therefore, manual correction is almost always necessary. In this LTEP project, we are investigating which conversion method is most efficient for converting existing lecture material in the School of Natural and Computing Sciences. Our results will inform the creation of staff guides which we will share with all LaTeX users at the University. We also aim at documenting the performance of the text-to-speech Chrome add-on, ChromeVox, in reading MathJax mathematics.

Tracey Innes

Careers and Employability Service, Directorate of People

Resilience is cited as the most highly required skill over the next five years according to Institute of Student Employer (ISE) members surveyed in 2020. This project explores employer insights and student perceptions of resilience in the context of employability. Employer insights across a range of employment sectors and student perspectives from across a range of stages and disciplines of study will be captured. Together, these insights seek to bring to life what resilience means and to understand questions and challenges around the topic of resilience in the context of employment.

The project output will be development of a Resilience Employability Toolkit for students and graduates.

Dr Lyn Batchelor

The Qatar Campus of the University of Aberdeen

The Bridge Between is project for students, by students that will hear the voices of our Arab students enrolled on both our Aberdeen and Doha campuses. The project will provide a framework to aid the development of resilient Arab learning communities at both campuses and roll out to support wider international students based in Aberdeen.

We are motivated by findings of a survey conducted by the Qatar Campus Student Representatives which revealed the wide-spread occurrence of anxiety, mental health concerns and depression among the undergraduate student body. Contextually, the middle east region traditionally stigmatises mental health issues, while British universities encourage conversations about mental health. This could raise difficulties for individuals.

Arab students welcome the connection between the two campus and are especially curious about the mental health stigma in their neighbouring homelands. Most heartening for them was that they were going to be heard and heard by someone “like them”.