Summary

Using effective learning strategies is essential for achieving academic success. However, students rarely receive any training on how to study independently and how to regulate their learning to enhance their learning performance. To maximise students’ learning performance and to prepare them to become lifelong learners, Imperial College has initiated a 'Learning How to Learn' training program for our student body. Student partner collaboration in the development of ‘Learning How to Learning’ programme is fundamentally important; your experiences as a student will be invaluable to making the training as useful as possible.

Student partners from Imperial College will

• Collaborate with a team of educational psychologists and teaching staff from Imperial College London
• Collect typical learning tasks from your Y1 courses
• Use your networks to explore what and how your peers study
• Support the development of training materials
• Participate in this project to suit your timetables, but must commit to a one-hour fixed weekly team meeting which will be determined based on your availability.

At the end of the project, you will gain a greater understanding of higher education environment in which you are studying, a deeper understanding of effective learning strategies and self-regulated learning, and hands-on experience in educational psychology research. Finally, you will benefit by developing professional skills such as self-sufficiency, responsibility, project management, teamwork, networking, and negotiation in an authentic workplace environment at the College.

Project Lead

Magda Charalambous (m.charalambous@imperial.ac.uk), Principle Teaching Fellow, Life Sciences

Luotong Hui (l.hui@imperial.ac.uk), Research Assistant, Life Sciences

Further Details/Experience Required

10 weeks part-time, Year 2 or above Undergraduates from any department, starting in Autumn term.  

14 positions available.  

Learning How to Learn recruitment ad

Summary

Digital health curriculum development is starting across Imperial’s medical school, including in our undergraduate primary care education unit.department There will be new digital health sessions in the next academic year. This is therefore an ideal time for a student shaper to get involved, as they will be able to make significant contributions to shape the curriculum. 

The student will be co-designing the overall approach for teaching digital health in four key areas: remote consultations, artificial intelligence, patient generated data and electronic patient records. Their expertise in their lived experience as students of unmet digital health teaching needs, as well as strategies for delivering such teaching, would be highly valued. Faculty will meet with the student regularly to ensure they feel supported in this partnership and the goals are being met.

The ideal student would have a curiosity about those four key areas of digital health, and be passionate about co-designing content that is engaging and accessible to our diverse cohort of Phase 1 and 3 medical students. It would be ideal if the student also had some content creation skills (such as digital/traditional artwork, video/podcast creation, data visualisation skills, basic to intermediate coding skills and social media engagement strategies). 

Project Lead

Viral Thakerar (v.thakerar@imperial.ac.uk), Patients, Communities and Healthcare GP Course Lead

Further Details/Experience Required

Nine weeks working part-time during term-time.  One position available.  

Co-Creating a Digital Health Curriculum recruitment ad

Summary

Generative artificial intelligence, as made available through tools such as ChatGPT, is likely to be used widely in educational settings, employment and wider society. Universities including Imperial and still determining how best to respond to this technology. During this project, the two student partners will collaborate with the staff partner to conduct some small-scale research tasks and to construct best practice guidelines regarding how artificial intelligence can be used ethically and appropriately for teaching and assessment at Imperial (and in STEMM subjects more widely). The student partners will help to co-design the research and will benefit from working on an area of topical interest across the sector. This project is most suited to student partners with interests in academic integrity, conducting research and using emerging technologies. There may be the opportunity for student partners to present the outcomes of this project internally and externally.

Project Lead

Thomas Lancaster (t.lancaster@imperial.ac.uk), Senior Teaching Fellow, Computing

Further Details/Experience Required

Undergraduate students from any department.  Full-time for five weeks during Summer term.  Two positions available.  

Teaching and assessment in an artificial intelligence world recruitment ad

Summary

Please note:  ViRSE expressions of interest will all be considered together – please submit one single form to the project that interests you most, rather than multiple applications for each ViRSE project you are interested in.  Please state which other (ViRSE only) projects you are interested in, within your 300-500 word statement on the form. 

The ViRSE (Virtual Reality Student Experience) project is developing a virtual reality platform to ease the development and deployment of ‘multi-player’ virtual reality into Imperial’s teaching across a range of departments and subjects. ViRSE is built on the Unity game engine, and all ViRSE applications (including these projects) are also built within Unity; code is written in the C# programming language. Students will not need to build a VR interface, write rendering code, or concern themselves with networking or administrative issues; these are handled by the ViRSE framework and the Unity engine. The development in this engagement will concentrate on the creation of a three-dimensional ‘environment’ specific to the project, and creating and testing the code necessary to make it function, and to interface with the ViRSE system.

All ViRSE student shaper engagements will commence with a two-week full time training course , which will provide the necessary grounding in the C# language, object-oriented programming, the Unity engine, the ViRSE platform, and 3D modelling tools. This course will take place on-campus July 3rd-14th 2023. In subsequent six project weeks the ViRSE student partners will lead on the development of the particular applications within Unity, in collaboration with the academic lead, and with the ViRSE team providing technical support and advice. These six project-development weeks are flexible in precise timing, but should take place over summer 2023, before the start of Autumn term of the 23/24 academic year.

• Bonebuilder with Alan Spencer (ad here: ViRSE Bonebuilder Spencer recruitment ad) 1 position available.
• Palaeoworlds with Alan Spencer (ad here: ViRSE Palaeoworlds Spencer recruitment ad) 1 position available.
• ExploVR with Chris Tighe (ad here: ViRSE ExploVR Tighe recruitment ad) 1 position available.
• Geomorphology with Dylan Rood (ad here: ViRSE Geomorphology Rood recruitment ad) 1 position available.
• Seeing what lies beneath- seismic reflection imaging and VR with Rebecca Bell  (ad here: ViRSE Seismic reflection imaging Bell recruitment ad) 1 position available.
• Virtual Reality multi-use building laboratory to explore crowd dynamics with Arnab Majumdar (ad here: ViRSE VR Crowds Majumdar recruitment ad) 3 positions available.
• Human-Robot Interaction in Virtual Reality for teaching Applied Robotics with Petar Kormushev (ad here: ViRSE Human robot interaction Kormushev recruitment ad) 1 position available
• Crystal Structure Tetris with Matt Genge (ad here: ViRSE Crystaltetris Genge recruitment ad) 1 position available
• Educational Platform for Beam and Truss analysis with Demetrios Venetsanos (ad here:  ViRSE Beam and Truss Venetsanos recruitment ad) 3 positions available

Project lead

Mark Sutton (m.sutton@imperial.ac.uk), Senior Lecturer, Earth Science and Engineering

Alan Spencer (alan.spencer@imperial.ac.uk), Senior Strategic Teaching Fellow, Earth Science and Engineering

Chris Tighe (c.tighe@imperial.ac.uk), Senior Lecturer, Chemical Engineering

Dylan Rood (d.rood@imperial.c.uk), Senior Lecturer, Earth Science and Engineering

Rebecca Bell (rebecca.bell@imperial.ac.uk) Senior Lecturer, Earth Science and Engineering

Arnab Majumdar (a.majumdar@imperial.ac.uk), Professor of Transport Risk and Safety, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Petar Kormushev (p.kormushev@imperial.ac.uk) Senior Lecturer, Dyson School of Design Engineering

Matt Genge (m.genge@imperial.ac.uk) Senior Lecturer, Earth and Planetary Science, Earth Science and Engineering

Demetrios Venetsanos (d.venetsanos@imperial.ac.uk), Principle Teaching Fellow (Student Experience), Aeronautics

Further Details/Experience Required

Two weeks full-time during Summer break (July 3^rd-14^th), followed by six weeks full-time (specific dates to be determined upon partner selection). 

Background/skill specifications are specific to each project; please see the recruitment ads above

Summary

We are looking for an enthusiastic, organised and self-motivated partner to collaborate with us to refresh and redesign the social programme of our summer pre-sessional English (PSE) courses. This is our first year back on campus after 3 years online! Our aim is to develop an exciting, sustainable, robust and student-centred programme collaborating with student social reps on courses; In 2024, the PSE students will run this programme entirely, using the guidance you develop.

You will have a good understanding of what it means to be a student in the Imperial community; as a student, you will also be better able to build the trust of PSE students! They are therefore more likely to tell you honestly what they think about the social programme as it takes shape. The CfAE staff have the expertise in developing programmes, so we can partner with you in this venture - mentoring, guiding, questioning and helping as needed. The ultimate decisions will lie with the students, as the programme is crafted by them for them.

We envisage you will research students’ needs and wants, create the resources and build the infrastructure including the social calendar. To achieve this, you will run focus groups for feedback and collaborate closely with imperial staff and student reps such as the International Office, the Student Union and PSE staff as well as outside organisations. Together, we will develop a handbook and guidelines for good practice so that PSE social reps can lead the programme in future years. This range of tasks will give you numerous opportunities to develop valuable curriculum design skills that are transferable to the workplace.

Project Lead

June Hammond (june.hammond@imperial.ac.uk), Teaching of English for Academic Purposes, Academic Services

Julie Hartill (j.hartill@imperial.ac.uk), Deputy Director, CFAE 

Further Details/Experience Required

One position available.  Any UG or Masters student; you must still be a current student for the duration of the project.  

7 weeks full-time during Summer break. 

Summary

The Imperial College Learning Analytics Project is a College-wide project that embeds the use of Learning Analytics into the College. ‘Shaping Learning Analytics’ is an invaluable stream of work feeding into the wider project and is advantageous for both staff and student partners.

We envision a future where reliable, safe, accurate data about our learners and their online behaviours are available to academics, educators, professional staff and students; enabling them to improve teaching and learning experiences through evidence-based evaluation, data-driven design and insights into learner behaviours.

The College aims to use learning analytics to offer an enhanced student experience, rather than most learning analytics systems which focus on predicting at risk students, streamlining and cost-reduction of services. The project will enable academic staff to identify patterns and trends to support students, review and evaluate teaching, make evidence-based decisions about enhancement, and facilitate high-quality staff-student interactions. Students will also be able to access their own personal learning analytics to reflect, gain insights into their own educational experience, and be empowered to improve their own learning. With our student partners, we will gather insights and co-design data tools and workshops for wider groups of students (to be conducted in the Autumn Term of 2023) in the following areas/outputs:

• Evaluation of and design of metrics through beta-testing of dashboards and data tools (potentially showing their own personal learning activity data)
• Potential to experiment, build and interact with a dashboard to answer specific questions with own learning data (depending on the skills and interests of recruited student partners and the progress and structure of data models at the time)
• Policy and procedures relating to data, privacy, and ethics
• Best practice guidance for staff and students for interpreting and using learning analytics
• Innovation and ideation of further Learning Analytics project outputs

This approach to working – co-designing and collaborating with students values the mutual expertise of staff such as data analysts who understand the data from a technical point of view, academic staff who use our systems in and out of the classroom for teaching and interacting with students to improve teaching and students who will represent their own values toward learning, teaching, support, and data/privacy.

Project Lead

Camille Kandiko Hawson (c.howson@imperial.ac.uk), Associate Professor of Education, CHERS

Charlotte Whitaker (c.whitaker@imperial.ac.uk), Learning Analytics Project Manager, Education Office

Further Details/Experience Required

Undergraduate students from any department or faculty.  Three positions available.  

Four weeks full-time during Summer break.  

 Shaping Learning Analytics recruitment ad

Summary

Our Stories will be a collaborative project between faculty and students, building a series of facilitated conversations between a member of faculty and a member of the student body. Conversations between faculty members and students who have volunteered to share their stories will be conducted and recorded. 

The conversations will focus on experiences of identity and inclusion. The aim is to foster a greater sense of community and minimise isolation and harassment experienced by minoritized groups. These are not medicine specific issues. This project is interested in hearing from anyone who might have felt unrepresented by mainstream culture, including for example members of the LGBTQIA community, neuro-diverse members of the community, those with disability and those who are racially minoritized.  

In addition, the purpose of this project is to evaluate the impact of the series of dialogues/conversations on students' and faculty's sense of belonging in the medical school, their understanding of diversity concerns, and their comfort level in discussing diversity issues.

Project Activities

You will work closely with an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Education Fellow, as well as the wider ICSM EDI team. You will be involved in co-designing of the audio-visual recordings, how the full interviews should operate, the content of the conversation and the preparation of briefing sessions prior to participant recordings. You will also be involved in the development of questionnaires and focus group questions for students.

You will develop skills in creativity, content creation and interpersonal communication. You will also gain experience in EDI, a deeper knowledge of sense of belonging and understanding the diversity of the student body and faculty.

Project Lead

Christopher Harvey (c.harvey@imperial.ac.uk), Senior Strategic Fellow, School of Public Health

Aneesa Fazal (a.fazal@imperial.ac.uk), Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Education Fellow, Faculty of Medicine Centre

Further Details/Experience Required

MBBS students in Phase 1.  Two positions available.  

Thirty three weeks part-time during term-time, from May onwards to the following May. 

Our Stories recruitment ad 

Summary

Across all STEM disciplines in UK Higher Education Institutes, academic professionals encounter multi-level barriers to their success. Several challenges disproportionately affect under-represented groups, such as women, resulting in a higher rate of their loss (“leaking”) from the academic pipeline before reaching more senior roles. This project is interested in examining student’s perceived barriers to an academic/profession career and how these change across the academic pipeline from UG to PGR. Most of the research into the leaky pipeline attempts to highlight, understand, explain, fix, and traverse the barriers, but very little is conducted from the student perspective, for example, when do the perceived barriers to an academic career become gendered?

Collaborating with students is at the heart of this project to co-develop a questionnaire, an ethics application, formulate a qualitative data analysis strategy and produce a recommendations report. We hope the project will highlight the perceived barriers of student cohorts and groups to enact change in education and equality, diversity, and inclusion actions and policies.

Project Lead

Josh Hodge (j.hodge@imperial.ac.uk), Senior Teaching Fellow of Quantitative Life Sciences, Life Sciences

Further Details/Experience Required

Life Science students.  2 UG students, 1 Masters part-time student and 1 PhD part-time student.  

A combination of term-time and full-time, between April and October.  

Perceived Barriers to Career Progression recruitment ad

Summary

Lambda Feedback is a web platform that hosts homework, with a focus on mathematical subjects. The platform hosts question content both in the browser and in traditional PDF format. Online step-by-step solutions are also provided and are particularly popular with students.  

In addition to content delivery, the platform provides automated feedback on student responses. The long-term vision is rich, timely, personalised, feedback to students at the time of doing their homework. 

The software is being developed within Imperial. This year is our first academic year in ‘alpha’ version which hosted 9 modules across 8 departments and 2 faculties, with over 1,000 student users. We are now working to widen the availability of the software and to improve the functionality. 

More information about the software can be found here: 

Article: https://teachingengineers.wordpress.com/2022/07/18/computers-make-us-human/ 
Presentation: click here 

We have 8 StudentShapers positions in summer 2023 each with the following purpose: 

• In partnership with an academic staff member, curate their content on Lambda Feedback. Key aspects include content transfer and editing; setting up automated feedback; improving the content.
• As part of the wider team of summer students, develop the software more broadly. Key aspects include documenting good practice, testing new features, designing new features, and designing a broader vision for the future software – for example curating positive learning communities on the platform, identifying key analytics to serve students and teachers, or developing study aids.

Essential skills and experience that we are looking for: 

• A passion for and knowledge of your own subject
• A deep appreciation for the student experience in your subject, and the key needs of students
• A keen interest in content management, including typesetting
  (markdown, LaTeX, images; learn as you go!) 
• A vision for digital education where software serves the needs of today’s students

Project Lead

Peter Johnson (peter.johnson@imperial.ac.uk), Principal Teaching Fellow, Mechanical Engineering

Further Details/Experience Required

Students from any cohort who study in the following departments: Aeronautics, Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Computing, Design Engineering, Materials Science, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Physics.

Eight weeks full-time during Summer break.  

Lambda 22-23 recruitment ad

Summary

Power asymmetries and inequalities within the GH field are increasingly recognised as problematic in the literature and in everyday practice. Yet, these are still not addressed through optimal self-reflexivity in most public health curricula. Power asymmetries manifest in the ways that we design and deliver GH curricula. There is a need for courses to support students to develop skills around reflecting on their own position within society and within the classroom, and how they may address the power relations that shape health inequalities as future global health practitioners or researchers.

We invite students to collaboratively develop a learning package which will be piloted in the coming academic year on the Global Health (GH) BSc and Master of Public Health (MPH) courses at Imperial College. The aim of the learning package is to support students to develop awareness of power structures and asymmetries that exists in global health and identify their position within these. This learning package will be co-delivered with student partners on the Global Health BSc and MPH (separately from the StudentShaper scheme).

Student partners in this project will work closely with course staff and other stakeholders. This provides an opportunity for candidates to acquire experience and skills in curriculum design, innovative education approaches and collaborative working, whilst being supported by a bursary. This scheme is relevant to any student who wishes to explore or develop their role in GH/public health education, or to contribute their views on a sensitive and increasingly debated topic in Global Health.

Project Lead

Dr Shyam Sundar Budhathoki (s.budhathoki19@imperial.ac.uk), Senior Teaching Fellow, School of Public Health

Dr Mariam Sbaiti (m.sbaiti@imperial.ac.uk), Senior Teaching Fellow, School of Public Health

Further Details/Experience Required

- 2 students/graduates of the Global Health BSc course for the schedule below:

• ½ day a week between 24 April-26 May (Part-time, £55 /week), and
• 5 days a week between 12 June and 14 July (Full Time, £365/week),

- 1 student/graduate from MPH course for the schedule below:

• ½ day a week between 24 April-26 May (Part-time, £55 /week),
• 5 days a week over 12/13/14/15/16 June (Part Time, £182.5/week)
• ½ day a week between 19 June - 28 July (Part-time, £60 /week)

SRP Learning package recruitment ad