Campus by Times Higher Education

Campus podcast: The tricky relationship between assessment and learning

Assessment is a cornerstone of most modern education systems, and yet is it strictly necessary? If it is, what purpose should it serve and, thus, how should it be designed and delivered?

In seeking to answer these questions, we put assessment under examination. In this podcast episode, the nature of institutionalised education, how assessment can better serve learning, the impact of grading, and compliance all come under scrutiny.

We speak to:

Susan D. Blum is a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. An award-winning author and educator, she has written and edited 10 books including a trilogy critiquing the way university teaching is delivered with the latest, Schoolishness: Alienated Education and the Quest for Authentic, Joyful Learning, coming out in 2024.

Catherine Wehlburg is president of Athens State University and president of the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (AALHE).

Josh Eyler is director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and clinical assistant professor of teacher education at the University of Mississippi. He has written highly regarded books on the science of learning with his latest, Failing our Future: How Grades Harm Students and What We Can Do about It, published in 2024.

More insight on assessment in higher education can be found in these Campus spotlight guides: 

• The evolution of authentic assessment
• AI and assessment in higher education
• The great assessment rethink

Campus podcast: Why we need interdisciplinarity in teaching and research

Complex problems cannot be solved if examined only through a narrow lens. Enter interdisciplinarity. It is now widely accepted that drawing on varied expertise and perspectives is the only way we can understand and tackle many of the most challenging issues we face, as individuals and as a species.

So, there is a growing movement towards more cross-disciplinary working in higher education, but it faces challenges. Interdisciplinarity requires a shift of mindset in an academy built upon clear disciplinary distinctions and must compete for space in already overcrowded curricula.

For this episode, we speak to Gabriele Bammer and Kate Crawford to find out why interdisciplinary research and teaching are so important and how these leading scholars are encouraging more academics and students to break out of traditional academic silos.

Gabriele Bammer is a professor of integration and implementation sciences (i2S) at the Australian National University. She is author of several books including ‘Disciplining Interdisciplinarity’ and is inaugural president of the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity. To support progress in interdisciplinarity around the world, she runs the Integration and Implementation Insights blog and repository of theory, methods and tools underpinning i2S. Gabriele has held visiting appointments at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center at the University of Maryland and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany.

Kate Crawford is an international scholar of the social implications of artificial intelligence who has advised policymakers in the United Nations, the White House, and the European Parliament on AI, and currently leads the Knowing Machines Project, an international research collaboration that investigates the foundations of machine learning. She is a research professor at USC Annenberg in Los Angeles, a senior principal researcher at MSR in New York, an honorary professor at the University of Sydney, and the inaugural visiting chair for AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her award-winning book, Atlas of AI, reveals the extractive nature of this technology while her creative collaborations such as Anatomy of an AI System with Vladan Joler and Excavating AI with Trevor Paglen explore the complex processes behind each human-AI interaction, showing the material and human costs. Her latest exhibition, Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power 1500-2025, opened in Milan, November 2023 and won the Grand Prize of the European Commission for art and technology.

More advice and insight can be found in our latest Campus spotlight guide: A focus on interdisciplinarity in teaching.

Campus: Pros and cons of AI in higher education

How should universities manage the rapid uptake of artificial intelligence across all aspects of higher education? We talk to three experts about AI’s impact on teaching, governance and the environment. 

These interviews – with a researcher, a teaching expert and a pro vice-chancellor for AI – share practical advice, break down key considerations, and offer reasons for vigilance and optimism. 

We talk to:

• Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and a cooperating faculty member in the computer science and engineering department at the University of California, Riverside, whose article “Making AI less ‘thirsty’: uncovering and addressing the secret water footprint of AI models”, co-written with Pengfei Li and Jianyi Yang, also from UC Riverside, and Mohammad A. Islam of UT Arlington, has drawn attention to water consumption of AI data centres
• José Bowen, an author and academic who co-wrote Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024) 
• Shushma Patel, pro vice-chancellor for artificial intelligence at De Montfort University in the UK. 

For more Campus resources on this topic, see our spotlight guide Bringing GenAI into university teaching.

Campus: A brighter future for academic publishing

Learn about new models in academic publishing that could better serve academia by helping scholars get their work into the public sphere more readily, removing financial barriers for authors and readers and underpinning better research practices.

We speak to two academics about the challenges associated with the dominant commercial academic publishing model and how they are seeking more effective ways to enable researchers to disseminate knowledge.

Paul Ayris is pro-vice provost for library services at University College London and chief executive of UCL Press which he founded 10 years ago as the UK’s first fully open access university press. The press produces a range of open access monographs and edited collections, student textbooks and academics journals and is now home to UCL Open Environment, the only multidisciplinary open science journal focused on all environment related topics.

Philipp Koellinger is a professor in social science genetics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and co-founder and CEO of a tech start-up DeSci Labs which hosts DeSci Publish, a pre-print network where scientific research is published, validated, and curated without paywalls or publication charges.

Campus: The benefits of citizen science and community-engaged research

Citizen science, in which researchers work alongside members of the public to collect or analyse data, brings multiple benefits, extending the capabilities of research teams and aiding public engagement. But there are still sceptics who question its validity as a research model. Find out why concerns are often misplaced and hear some of the ways enthusiastic amateurs have helped advance human knowledge.

On the broader question of public impact, hear how universities could provide a framework that supports academics to carry out more community-engaged research, designed to serve the public good.

On this episode, we talk to:

Chris Lintott, professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford, presenter on the BBC’s The Sky at Night program, author and co-founder of citizen science platform Zooniverse. He explains how his interest in citizen science was sparked and why he believes it is such an effective model.

Neeli Bendapudi, president of Penn State – Pennsylvania State University – discusses a new coalition of university leaders from across the US and Canada who are working with funders, government agencies and others to develop a roadmap for the future community-engaged, public-impact research.

For more insight into the global higher education sector, visit Campus. 

Campus: Social artist Helen Storey on working on the boundary of fashion and science

For this episode, we talk to British social artist, designer and researcher Helen Storey about a career that has taken her from runways to scientific collaborations to refugee camps in the Middle East and Africa.

Storey is a professor of fashion and science at the London College of Fashion in the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the University of the Arts London (UAL). In May, she donated her 30-year Helen Storey Foundation Archive of about 2,000 digital and physical pieces to UAL. In this interview, she details her journey – how she transitioned from award-winning commercial fashion designer to working with scientists on projects that, among other explorations, translate the first 1,000 hours of human life into textiles – and how she hopes the archive will benefit students.

Storey, who was awarded an MBE for Services to Arts in 2009, also shares insights from her humanitarian work, from creating Dress 4 our Time to becoming the UNHCR’s first designer-in-residence, and how these experiences are now intertwined with her work at UAL.

The conversation covers what the arts and science bring to each other, the value of the tactile, and how art can be a conduit for people to connect with overwhelming issues such as climate change, plastic pollution and global displacement.

For more insight into the global higher education sector, visit Campus. 

Campus: What Indigenous knowledge brings to higher education

Indigenous knowledge has historically been marginalised or actively excluded from higher education. However, universities around the world are now recognising that First Nations’ wisdom and culture can enrich education and are giving these communities a greater voice. Of course, with deep-rooted issues such as decolonisation and lack of parity to be addressed, there’s still a way to go.

In this episode, Indigenous university leaders – in Canada and New Zealand – explain how their institutions support First Nations’ participation in higher education. First, we talk to Angie Bruce, a Red River Métis woman who is vice-president (Indigenous) at the University of Manitoba. Prior to taking up her post, Angie had extensive experience working with First Nations, Inuit and Métis people in public sector organisations. She discusses the historical and systemic barriers to Indigenous involvement in Canadian higher education and what institutions can do to break these down.

We also meet Te Kawehau Hoskins, who is pro vice-chancellor (Māori) at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. A professor in Māori and Indigenous education and philosophy, her research interests are Indigenous Māori political philosophy and practice, Indigenous–settler relations and Treaty practice. She tells us about her journey into higher education and how spaces on campus allow First Nations and non-Indigenous students and faculty to come together in a meaningful way. 

For more advice on how to amplify Indigenous voices in higher education, visit Campus. 

Campus: What makes an award winning academic, university or project?

Learn from the winners in three very different THE Award categories how they developed the strategies and projects that saw them take home a trophy in 2023 – and how these have evolved in the 12 months since.

We speak to:

• Roderick Watkins, vice-chancellor of Anglia Ruskin University, which was named 2023 THE University of the Year
• Mark Brown, a professor in evolutionary ecology and conservation at Royal Holloway, University of London, who won Outstanding Research Supervisor of the Year
• Joanne Pledger, a senior lecturer in astrophysics, and Ruth Spencer, a senior lecturer in dance, both at the University of Central Lancashire who, with colleagues, worked on the Into Our Skies: Space in Schools project, which took home the award for widening participation or outreach initiative.

Campus: Educating our way out of the climate crisis

With world leaders gathered in Azerbaijan for the COP29 climate change summit, this week’s podcast focuses on universities’ role in advancing sustainability and reducing carbon emissions.

As centres of teaching, research and innovation, universities are uniquely positioned to educate on environmentally aware leaders and help find ways out of this crisis.

We spoke to two academic experts in this space to find out how they and their institutions are driving action on climate change.

Tripp Shealy is associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. His research looks at how climate and environmental issues are handled in land development and construction.

Liz Price is deputy pro-vice chancellor for sustainability at Manchester Metropolitan University and a professor of environmental education. She is responsible for driving sustainability across education, research and partnerships and developing Education for Sustainable Development, Carbon Literacy and Net Zero skills at the university.

For more inspiration and advice on how to advance efforts on climate change within your own inspiration, take a look at our latest spotlight guide: A greener future for higher education.

Campus: Two vice-chancellors on maintaining quality and financial stability within a university

Universities are public service organisations, educating and researching for the broader societal good. Yet in many countries, the UK and Australia among them, public funding for these institutions has been stripped back forcing them to take a more strategic, commercial approach to generate the income needed to support their work.

How can institutions balance social responsibilities against the need to maintain sound finances? How can they improve the quality of teaching and research while driving efficiency and streamlining spending? And how can they remain competitive in an ever-changing global higher education sector?

We spoke to two vice-chancellors about how they navigate these challenges.

Alex Zelinsky has been vice-chancellor of the University of Newcastle, Australia since 2018. He is a computer scientist and systems engineer by background who has previously worked in government as Australia’s chief defence scientist.

Anton Muscatelli has been principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow since 2009. He will be retiring next year after leading the university through a period of impressive growth. An economist, Anton was chair of the First Minister’s Standing Council on Europe and a member of the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisers until 2021. He has been a special adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee on fiscal and monetary policy, and has advised the European Commission and the World Bank.