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The site-specific performance Capel: The Lights are On increased public understanding of the importance of place and belonging and empowered people with learning disability to articulate cultural capital and heritage through creative intervention. It impacts on civil society and cultural life. It reached a diverse audience of first time and regular theatre goers, people with learning disability, and professional artists. Beneficiaries include its audiences, its participants and the wider circle of professional support, families, friends, and the community of Ceredigion. It facilitated better understanding of rural Welsh life. It temporarily re-opened a former focal point for community and cultural life. It revealed ability rather than disability by making equality between participants clear.
Research by Melanie Nind of the University of Southampton and her collaborator (Hewett) has had a national and international impact on the practice of professionals who teach people with severe learning disabilities. The Intensive Interaction approach is included in UK National Curriculum guidance, the Government's Strategy for people with learning disabilities, and it is used across education, psychology, social care and speech and occupational therapies. Nind's research has shaped the implementation of Intensive Interaction, and provided practitioners in Eastern Europe, New Zealand, and Australia with new data and concepts that help to inform practice to enrich the lives of a vulnerable population.
Our research on learning using mobile technologies has impacted on:
Our research into learning through digital technologies has increased the focus on the importance of learning processes and context. The research developed new models of strategic evaluation and learning framework analyses as well as a new concept of MEGAcognition. These have shaped the development, customisation and implementation of more appropriate digital educational resources, nationally and internationally. Our research has involved and influenced key national and international companies and groups. Its users have been policy makers and developers, as well as teachers and pupils in primary and secondary schools. The research has: 1) influenced policy and practice developments nationally and internationally (in UK government departments and the e-strategy agency, and in five major resource development companies and corporations with international reach); 2) increased awareness of and engagement in learning opportunities (in four local authorities); 3) built capacity (in three resource development companies and projects); 4) offered insights into ways to develop, refine and customise educational products for specific audiences (in six resource development companies and local authorities); 5) raised awareness and understanding of educational concepts to non-academic audiences nationally and internationally (through 35 public and private seminars and keynote sessions to national and international audiences); 6) raised awareness of learning and pedagogical practices (in six major resource development companies and corporations).
Impact is primarily economic and organizational, resulting from more effective leadership processes and practices by small firm owner-managers. The mechanism of impact was a programme known as LEAD (leadership, enterprise and development), which drew a significant community of owner-managers of smaller firms in Greater Merseyside into the Management School, to enable them to use research findings about managerial and entrepreneurial learning, leadership and business support in the running of their firms. The resulting impacts were on management practices and processes, and firm performances. Practitioners engaging with the University of Liverpool Management School (ULMS) LEAD programme experienced turnover increases averaging 21%. The beneficiaries are small firms, their employees and business support partnerships.
The Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education (TLC) project, which UWE researchers led the design of and played a key role in undertaking, informed policy debates on a range of issues including the quality of teaching and learning in Further Education (FE) settings. Several FE sector teacher training programmes (e.g. Cardiff University) have changed aspects of their content as a consequence of this research, for example to help trainees better understand and develop a positive learning culture in their classrooms. This benefits the trainee teachers and, as a consequence, the learning outcomes for the students they work with. Processes to enhance the practice of established teachers in FE have been implemented as a consequence of this research, for example, City of Bristol College's peer mentoring scheme improves the skills of lecturing staff and outcomes for learners. The project also produced a book that has been widely adopted by FE managers and tutors to help them better understand and enhance the learning context in contemporary college and adult education environments, resulting in more effective teaching and learning. On a wider level the research findings have influenced national policy debates on issues around the funding, practice, and management of teaching and learning activities across the post-compulsory education sector, particularly in further education.
A significant contribution has been made to: a) occupational health policy debates and widening public awareness about the connections between employment environments and disease, and b) compensation struggles and campaigns to improve health and safety in the contemporary workplace, as a result of oral history research on targeting the experience of asbestos and coal mining-related diseases. This has benefitted agencies, organisations and policy-makers involved in campaigning for disease victims and those individuals, families and communities who suffer from occupational diseases — including asbestos-related ones — within Scotland, the UK and globally. There has also been a wider public impact in terms of contributing to sustainable public and community heritage.
Our research into practices around learning resources has had a major impact on teaching in other higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK and internationally, on the policy of funding bodies, has been embedded in repository design, and contributed to public policy on transparent government. Our emphasis on socio-cultural factors has changed educational culture, leading to richer policy, by shifting debate from a view of resources as technological objects, to practices.Through shaping the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Higher Education Academy (HEA) programmes in Open Educational Resources (UKOER) and Digital Literacies, our research has had impact on professional services around open learning practices in over 90 HEIs, and had direct impact on digital literacy support in at least six. Our findings have informed a report to the Cabinet Office on 'Transparent Government'. Internationally, our work has prompted major repositories of resources in the USA, Estonia, the Netherlands and Australia to take a user-centred social focus in repository design.
Impact in this case study focuses on developing an inclusive culture; changes in academic development programmes; and influencing national policy on inclusive learning and teaching in higher education. While student diversity has increased over the last twenty years or so, teaching methods have changed little in response. This has had a knock-on effect on student engagement and success. Research outlined here has influenced how university teachers reframe their understandings and practices of teaching and engaging diverse students. This work has reshaped continuing professional development in university teaching in the UK and internationally and has influenced national policy on inclusive learning and teaching.
Established in 2002 in London Metropolitan University's Faculty of Computing, Gamelab UK is a research and innovation centre in interactive educational media. By `pushing the envelope' in production and development Gamelab has become the pre-eminent centre for the development of TV, and interactive media and games, for audiences and end-users with special education needs. Gamelab's impact includes over seven hours of television output for the BBC, eight BAFTA nominations since 2008 and a range of published, and highly innovative, games and interactive software for children, teenagers and young adults with sensory impairments, learning difficulties and other disabilities.