Developing an inclusivity audit for higher education
Katie Stripe1
1 Imperial College London, London, UK
Corresponding Author:
Katie Stripe, Central Education Office, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2AZ, UK
Email: K.Stripe@imperial.ac.uk
Abstract
The delivery of inclusive education and the provision of content that is representative of a diverse student body is a key strategic aim of many higher education institutions. However, while there may be many checklists, design support documents, and benchmarking statements that suggest inclusive outputs for education, practical options for updating existing content are rarely discussed. This paper offers an approach, based on the theories of inclusive education and learning design, to audit existing materials. This framework was developed as a collaboration between staff partners from a range of backgrounds and student interns to produce an output that is both pedagogically sound but relevant to, and informed by, student needs. This project does not seek to provide a score or make judgements, but to share good practice and find areas where targeted intervention could be made without the need for full scale curriculum review or a full redesign of teaching.
Keywords
inclusivity, higher education, student partnership, learning
design, underrepresented students
Introduction
This paper seeks to outline the development of a process that allows data to be gathered on a set of markers which, on some level, represent aspects of inclusivity in the delivery of higher education (HE). There are a myriad of toolkits, processes, and methodologies for inclusive education design; Universal Design for Learning, ABC Learning Design, Lincoln Education Toolkit, and the Advance HE self-evaluation framework to name just a few (CAST, 2018; May & Thomas, 2020; Young & Perović, 2022; Zhu & Sterling-Morris, 2021). However, these tools tend to focus on the development of new content, and HE has a lot of legacy content, some of which has existed for years, and the workload to update and redesign all of it would be immense. This tool was born from a desire to find areas where inclusivity wins could be made and thus implement targeted changes which benefit the students without placing undue pressure on staff. University teaching employs hundreds of people in a multitude of roles often with the only centrally imposed structure being the requirement to use a central Learning Management System (LMS). The first step in diversifying and updating an existing curriculum or making it more inclusive is understanding what the current situation is. To do this, a repeatable methodology for collecting data on how inclusive an existing degree programme was designed by working in partnership with student interns. The project defines programme inclusivity by combining pedagogical theory with the student voice. The result is a framework with which to audit the content and structure of a course of study against a range of markers relating to inclusive practice in teaching and learning. The aim is not to provide a score, or for the tool to be used as a compliance metric, but to highlight areas of good practice that can be shared while allowing for targeted interventions in other areas.
Context
Providing an inclusive offering that is representative of, and appropriate for, all students is a legal requirement (Equality Act, 2010) and public sector bodies including universities must be compliant with accessibility legislation (The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018, 2018). Furthermore, to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education” is one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, n.d.). Nevertheless, research suggests that the legislation is not well understood by those in teaching roles and while many may be confident that they are inclusive of gender, high numbers report a lack of confidence in inclusion when it comes to gender reassignment and disability (Stripe & Ntonia, 2023). Simultaneously, there is limited practical advice or institutional level oversight of inclusivity particularly with respect to frontline delivery.
Institutions are also beholden to ranking systems and benchmarking schemes like the Race Equality Charter (REC) and Athena Swan which look at student experience in relation to race and gender (Advance HE, n.d.). Additionally, institutions will be increasingly under pressure to produce tangible results against action plans set out by the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and Access and Participation Plans (APPs). These are often high level and look at pipeline challenges, equity of opportunity, and strategic planning. They do not necessarily look at the details of what is being taught, how it is delivered, and how students respond to it.
Inclusive education is a key aim of Imperial College London’s teaching and learning strategy (Imperial, 2023b) but institutionally, there is a long way to go in terms of equality. The total percentage of female students is 43% but in some departments, it is as low as 20% (Imperial, 2023a). This is replicated across the sector with HESA data showing similar percentages with engineering and computing students being predominantly male (Higher Education Statistics Agency, 2023). This data on gender is readily available but does not give the full picture of educational equity. Furthermore, looking simply at who is enrolled also misses the very real issues around who graduates and with what grades. The ethnicity awarding gap is a known issue in the sector (Dickinson, 2024) and needs to be addressed throughout HE and not just increasing the numbers of certain demographics enrolling in some disciplines.
These issues are largely historical and not the fault of any single institution but they are complex, and the data can become a self-fulfilling cycle if students do not see themselves represented in their institutions. The foundations of HE were designed for a certain demographic; the first women’s college at Oxford was created seven centuries after the university itself was founded (University of Oxford, n.d.). The first Black graduate from Harvard enrolled over 200 years after the institution was founded (Harvard, n.d.). In 2024 universities are open to all, but this context, and the tradition that allows the inequities to perpetuate needs to be understood.
The desire to address some of the structural issues is there and supported from many different directions. The Office for Students (the university regulator in the UK) works with the sector to make sure all institutions have an APP to show what work is being done to improve access for minoritised groups and provide action plans for future change (Office for Students, 2023). Institutions which accredit degree course are also playing their part, with the Institute of Physics requiring all accredited programmes “have a clear commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion” (Institute of Physics, 2022, p. 5) and a similar statement can be found in the documentation for accredited engineering programmes (Engineering Council, 2020). This potentially has a more direct impact on the actual delivery of education than other schemes, but it is not clear what can and should be done to achieve ‘a clear commitment’. This project therefore aims to start that process, seeking ways to assess inclusivity of content, structure, and process to find practical, data informed, solutions to address any issues that arise. The results of this work can then be used on charters and accreditation reviews to prove commitment and could prove key for many institutions as the sector grapples with the need to make education more inclusive.
The project
This work builds on the learning design framework set out by Stripe and Simpson Bergel (Stripe & Simpson-Bergel, 2023) which draws heavily on the learning design methodologies of Gagné and Kemp (Gagné et al., 1992; Kurt, 2016) and borrows elements from web and user experience design where consistency and clear structure are key. It also seeks to build on the work of Stripe and Ntonia (2023) which presents a set of recommendations for inclusive teaching and learning. This work is based in part on a review of inclusion toolkits and highlights some of the gaps to be filled such as a lack of practical advice and the objective review of content.
The pedagogical aspect from the projects described above is well embedded; however, an understanding of what students need/want and understanding the specific requirements of individual departments meant that collaboration was vital. Through an institutional staff-student partnership scheme (Imperial, n.d.) a collaboration was formed with staff and students from three departments, representing three faculties. Mechanical Engineering (Faculty of Engineering), Physics (Faculty of Natural Sciences), and Biomedicine (Faulty of Medicine). Two students and a staff member from each discipline were recruited to provide subject-specific knowledge and departmental support during and after the project.
The departments were chosen for their differences in subject matter and teaching approaches, in order to make the output as flexible as possible for future use. Students applied to join the project and were selected based on a pre-defined application process. The roles were open to anyone from the participating departments with an interest in inclusive teaching and learning who were in their third year of study or above (this included postgraduate students). There were no criteria for application that required students to be from minority groups although it was a feature of many of the applications. All students on this scheme were given bursary payments for their work.
Staff partners, who are all working on EDI improvements for their departments, have a range of teaching, learning design and industry experience and all have experience in educational research.
This project set out to:
· devise a set of questions and a method for collecting data on the inclusivity of a programmes of study;
· use that methodology to collect pilot data which could be used, in collaboration with the staff partners to make changes internally; and
· refine the questions and methodology, using lessons learned from the pilot to produce an output that can be used internally, and as a template for other institutions to build on.
The project secured institutional ethical approval for the dissemination of the process and the questions; however, the data gathered in the pilot phase is to remain within the institution.
The process development process was as follows:
· Defining inclusion and what it means for the student experience;
· Drafting an initial question set;
· Collection of pilot data; and
· Review and update to create a final question set
Defining inclusion
At the heart of this project is the idea of making education more inclusive. However, there is no single definition of what that means. To make education equitable there needs to be an understanding of who students are and what barriers they face. One way to define inclusion is to define those who are typically excluded, and/or underrepresented. Using a combination of the markers used for contextual admissions and the protected characteristics of the Equality Act (2010) the following list of characteristics for minoritised students was developed and used throughout the project.
1. From a low-income/working class background
2. With a disability or health condition (disclosed or otherwise, acute, or chronic) including mental health issues, neurodiversity, and pregnancy
3. First in their family to enter higher education
4. Care experienced
5. Caring responsibilities (including children)
6. From a marginalised gender in your given field
7. Identify as from the wider LGBTQ+ community
8. From an ethnic minority
9. From a religious community
10. From a different generation to the majority
Contextual admissions and widening participation schemes use specific markers and it was important in this project to represent a wide range of students, so these characteristics are designed to be broad. ‘From a different generation’ was added to this list because mature students are not common at our institution and therefore could be seen as a minority group. International students were not classified as an individual group as there are confounding factors around the concept of ethnic and religious minorities. It was decided that students should be able to self-identify with any of the characteristics regardless of fee status or country of origin. However, for future iterations, it is recommended that students who speak English as an additional language should be included as they have a specific set of needs which, in a multinational society, need to be considered.
Another point of discussion was where to include pregnancy, and while it is not typically considered a ‘health condition’ the decision was made to define ‘disability or health condition’ as anything requiring regular medical visits. An argument could be made for disability and health condition to be separated, or for them to be classed as chronic or acute. However, this is provided as a suggestion that a list should be made, not as a definitive that applies globally.
Initial questions
The starting point for developing the questions was heavily influenced by Universal Design for Learning principles and by toolkits like the ‘Inclusive Curriculum Health Check’ (UCL, 2018). These focus on asking questions of those delivering education; for example, does your course “offer individualised and peer feedback?” which is measurable with an objective answer and something which could be included in this audit. However, “Develop students’ critical thinking and awareness of different perspectives” is less objective. A lecturer may think they develop critical thinking, but a student may not. This issue of repeatability and objectivity was a key feature to be addressed by this project. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, these toolkits are written by professional educators and approach the scenarios in an academic way which is why the element of student partnership was critical. The student interns broadened the topic of ‘inclusive education’ to cover things that were beyond the classroom and added questions to the first iteration which covered learning spaces, buildings, and social activities. These questions were subsumed into a data collection framework that covered three areas. The initial question list proposed to collect data in two ways. Firstly, questions with discrete answers were designed and presented via spreadsheets so the same questions would be answered in relation to every module, key to the repeatability of the audit.
Secondly, a survey was designed to ask questions which would require a more in-depth answer, or to gather data that expanded on the binary questions. The student characteristics defined above were key to the survey in order to establish if any groups have issues in certain areas.
Pilot data collection
The survey was distributed to all students in participating departments via staff contacts and the relevant newsletters. Programme data were collected in groups whereby a single sheet was collected for each department covering facilities, community, and general process that are carried out at a department or programme level. A sheet was then filled in for each module. First and second year modules only were audited for practical reasons relating to time and the student intern’s year groups. Then, for each module the content was assessed in groups. Groups of content were defined as a series of sessions delivered by the same person; for example, a lecture series or a set of tutorials. This grouping was done as reviewing individual lectures and/or seminars would have been extremely time consuming and therefore prohibitive in the long-term. An overview of these groupings can be seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Overview of data collection groups
Analysis was carried out on the pilot data, and outcomes provided to the relevant teams, for the development of responses at a departmental and an institutional level.
Challenges
As can be seen from Figure 1, a number of the question categories crossed over between department/module/content, which made an overview analysis difficult. This and other challenges which are outlined below were addressed through discussion and iteration to define the final output.
Definitions
One of the questions relates to availability of glossaries, which are important for inclusive teaching because they give everyone a shared understanding of what is being discussed by providing a reference point for acronyms and common jargon (CAST, 2025; Stripe & Ntonia, 2023; W3C, 2018). In addition to this, they share a definition of words which could be interpreted differently; this challenge manifested within the project when the student interns shared vastly different ideas about what certain types of teaching meant in their departments. Consequently, defining teaching types has been added to the data collection process. Once collected this information can be fed into templates to help students know what to expect from different teaching scenarios.
A similar issue occurs when defining the roles and responsibilities of people within teaching teams like technicians, course coordinators, teaching fellows and academics and the terminology relating to pastoral issues and tutoring. This is not something which can be captured by the process outlined here but may be highlighted through the process and should be considered at an institutional level.
An institution may never agree on what exactly the term ‘seminar’ means, and there will never be a sector wide consensus on what exactly a personal tutor does. Nevertheless, explicitly providing the information at a programme level will help to clarify what is expected of whom, and when.
Clarity and consistency
Language is always challenging, and forming questions that are meaningful – but could still be answered consistently and objectively by different people – was key. Clarity of information was covered in a number of questions in the pilot phase. However, clarity is very subjective therefore hard to make repeatable. To some extent, information on clarity and expectations can be collected through survey data using questions like ‘is it compulsory? yes, no, and unclear’. Final audit questions have been rephrased to remove references to ‘clarity’ and instead use the term ‘consistency’ which is easier to audit. This is linked to templates (where they exist), both within the LMS and in the use of slides.
It also became apparent that while trying to be objective in auditing their own programmes, students found information ‘clear’ because they are used to it and they know where to find it. A similar issue arose in relation to expectations, particularly around what level of reading, pre-work, or homework is expected. These two issues combined highlighted the need for this work to be carried out by a PhD student or similar – someone who has enough knowledge of the content but no familiarity with the way the course is delivered.
Representative content
‘Examine the profile of authors’ and ‘use representative materials’ are listed by Stripe and Ntonia (2023) as ‘wicked challenges’ so fully addressing this was, while important, never an anticipated outcome. An attempt at collecting useful data in this area was attempted by collecting named theories/theorists that are taught within the curriculum. This was difficult during pilot data collection as even when theories are based on the work of an individual there are already moves within teaching not to use names; whether this is helpful in the long term is unclear. However, there is still value in collecting this data to provide information to projects such as the ‘Inclusive Physics Curriculum Project’ (Physics Education Group, n.d.), which promotes physicists from a range of backgrounds.
Unanswerable questions
Some questions, however valid, could not be answered by this project as it could not be asked in an appropriate way. Sense of belonging is improved if you are taught by people you relate to, and with an increased sense of belonging there are more positive outputs, i.e. grades and satisfaction with the course (Kahu et al., 2022). Therefore, exploring the demographics of teachers and role models is important in inclusive education. Yet, there is limited data and while there is a desire to know this information, the student interns felt it would be inappropriate to ask staff to self-identify against a set of characteristics, and even more inappropriate to make assumptions based on visible data. Some of this work will come about with charters like REC and Athena Swan but there is still work to be done, particularly on representation for hidden minorities such as those from the LGBTQ+, disabled, and working-class communities.
The profile of authors in reading lists is also available to some extent using the tool developed by Price et. al (2022) which gathers information from ‘Web of Science’ and returns information on the geographical spread of paper authors. However, this relies on information being in a specific place which is why the question “is your reading list in Leganto?” is asked. This method has its own challenges as it does not cover the range of multimedia sources, such as video or podcasts, which should be encouraged for an inclusive reading list. Overall, what it is important for an audit is to highlight is the consistency of presentation of reading material; the ability to return data on the geographic spread of the authors is a bonus but the data needs to be analysed sensitively.
Accessibility
This tool does not explicitly cover the accessibility of content and the reasons are complex. Unfortunately, many of the questions relating to accessibility require data that is extremely hard to access. Nevertheless, the question ‘is a course inclusive if it is not accessible?’ is more than valid.
As already mentioned, collecting information on content at the level of a single lecture is an overwhelming amount of work. To create an accessible, and therefore inclusive, programme certain accessibility points need to be met. Captioning, alt-text, and correctly structured documents are perhaps the most important; however, the collection of this data is not currently possible with the tools available to most institutions. Tools like Blackboard ALLY (Anthology, n.d.) which review documents and provide an accessibility score can provide some data, but this only covers content that is added to the LMS. It also cannot, at a high level, tell you which documents are inaccessible – they would need to be identified, individually, using staff log-in details.
What we can do within a tool like this is check for the use of templates, which if well designed should provide accessible content; check that captioning is in place on recorded content; and provide training and resources for those in front line teaching roles. This is now a matter of legislation and therefore should be managed at an institutional level with support being provided across the board. Templating is the first step, and wider use of tools like ALLY are key.
Buildings, space, and social activities
Space and environment are important to a sense of belonging (Ahn & Davis, 2020) and the student interns placed high importance on their learning spaces. These questions have been removed from the audit as they are not within the control of programme teams and extremely hard to quantify at a departmental level, yet this area offers good subjects for further research into inclusive learning spaces.
Related to campus spaces, and movement between teaching spaces, is the question regarding how long students have to move between lectures and if that time is enough for their needs; for example, mobility, accessing food and water, or taking prayer breaks. Particularly with programmes that have high numbers of optional modules, student timetables can vary immensely even within a single course, so it is hard to gather overarching data on this. This issue also relates to days/hours when students need to be on campus and how far in advance timetables are known. Some of this is addressed within the survey but there is not enough information to make definitive statements. Therefore, it is suggested that this is something which needs consideration at an institutional level.
Social activities and the less formal interactions between staff and students are also important to creating an inclusive atmosphere (Magwaza & Ferry, 2023) and, like space, of high importance to students. This also falls outside of the remit for most programme teams, but the lines become blurred when it comes to the disciplinary societies that are run by the Student’s Union but supported by departments and teaching teams. Due to its importance, these questions have been removed from this audit but passed on, with initial data, to the Student’s Union to help make social events and societies more inclusive.
Outputs
Discussion of these challenges and iteration of the original questions resulted in a final question set which should be applicable to all programmes within Imperial and flexible enough to be adapted, following similar processes to those outlined here, for the needs of other institutions.
The final set covers data at four levels:
· Survey – delivered to all students in the participating department.
· Programme – this is information that covers all students, all teaching materials, and departmental processes for a whole course of study (inclusive of different streams within a large programme).
· Module – each module within a programme viewed as a whole, but within the context of the programme, as outlined in the programme level questions.
· Content – an individual piece of content such as an online learning package or a group of content such as lectures or seminars within a module delivered in a series by a specific person. Viewed as an individual piece or series but within the context of the module.
This information is collected across these levels is covered by six themes:
· Structure – covering the way content and information is presented and managed.
· Teaching – areas relating to the delivery of education.
· Pastoral – information and resources for non-academic related issues.
· Resources – strongly linked to teaching and related to the resources that accompany the course and the teaching.
· Extra-curricular – professional and study skills, careers advice, academic English support etc.
· Representation – who is shown in content and how.
These categories link across the levels of collection in order for analysis to be done and comparisons made. The links between the questions and the categories can be seen in Table 1. Full question lists can be found in the appendix.
Table 1. Categories of audit questions by level
|
Survey |
Programme |
Module |
Content |
|
Structure |
Structure |
Structure |
Structure |
|
Teaching |
Teaching |
Teaching |
Teaching |
|
Pastoral |
Pastoral |
Resources |
Representation |
|
Resources |
Resources |
|
|
|
Extra-curricular |
Extra-curricular |
|
|
|
Representation |
|
|
|
What is missing?
This audit focuses on education and student experience, of which assessment is a significant part. Nevertheless, this project has taken a light touch approach to looking at assessment. The reasons are two-fold. Firstly, inclusive assessment is a subject in its own right and should be treated as such, but secondly, there are more restrictions from a process and quality assurance perspective that need to be considered and therefore this is politically not a project that could be done in the same way. However, there is scope for a similar framework to be developed to look at the inclusivity of assessment.
The audit also makes no mention of Generative AI in respect to teaching, and while there are definite inclusion issues relating to it, the software and the associated policy are changing and developing so rapidly that they could not be included. However, issues around access are something that should be considered and included in a future audit depending on institutional approaches to provision.
What is next?
This audit is just a start. For our institution it is the beginning of understanding the structures that are used and finding or developing ways to enhance those structures and make taught content more representative. The tool is being used by early adopting departments and initial results suggest that the question sets work although a full evaluation of how well will not come until full data sets have been collected. One thing that has been raised is that the process of collecting and managing this data needs to be owned by the institution and not by individual departments. This is partially an issue of resource, but also of consistency and the need to maintain the set-up of the data collection.
For other institutions, these questions could be used for the same reason, or as the start of a completely different project. In either case there needs to be a desire for change, and a willingness to look critically at the status quo. In terms of evaluation, the process outlined here is working institutionally and hopefully will produce some publishable data in the future. For others, the process and the subsequent evaluation will be different but hopefully our work will help remove some of the initial challenges.
Conclusion
This work was conceived by a professional learning designer and very much attempted to find a method for defining how inclusive a curriculum is. However, nothing ever ends where you expect and one of the key findings from this work was to listen to the students and what they value within their environment. As professional educators we can, and should, be able to define toolkits that make teaching more inclusive, and it was heartening that the student interns appeared to trust that we would do that. What they brought to the table is a different view of education, one that is not just a process of sharing skills and information but one that reaches into the environment, social situations, and the fabric of our institutions. Education is a process, it has a structure, and it has content. All of these things must be considered holistically when considering inclusive education. This work has created a list of questions which combine the knowledge of the teaching professions with the values of the students. It presents a way of collecting data on the here and now. Where is there consistency? Where can we find good practice? Where can resource be most usefully invested? However, this data is nothing without a plan for the future; this work and our challenges is offered as a starting point but anyone wishing to do so must consider, when they create it, what they will do with the data. Otherwise, what is the point?
Acknowledgements
This project would not have been possible without the input and hard work of the student interns, Alimat, Eshaan, Gabriel, Jasmine, Lucy and Malaika. These students were paid for this work and have not played an active role in the writing of this paper as it has been written outside their period of employment and for the majority of them during their final exam period. Nevertheless, they have been integral to this work.
As was the support of the staff partners Kirsty, Chloe, and Issy. As well as a cast of many other colleagues and friends but particularly Bryony who organised way more than she needed to and fixed my punctuation and poor sentences. Thank You.
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Appendix
How inclusive is your curriculum – survey questions
This survey was developed as part of a Student Shapers project and is part of a larger piece of work that aims to assess the inclusivity of teaching content across Imperial. The aim of this is to help teaching teams make targeted interventions to improve their content. This survey is completely anonymous and should take no more than 15 minutes to complete.
1. What programme are you enrolled on?
2. What year are you in?
3. Are the following resources useful? (Yes/No/Not Provided/Not Provided but would like) (Resources)
a. Contextual course overview
b. Programme handbook
c. Contextual module overview
d. Module handbook
4. How clear is the following information provided by your programme? (very clear/somewhat clear/somewhat unclear/very unclear) (Structure)
a. Times and locations of teaching sessions
b. The types of teaching session (i.e. what is expected of you)
c. Assessment deadlines
d. Assessment marking criteria
e. Who should be contacted for information?
5. Within your department do you know how to: (Yes, Yes but its challenging, No) (Structure)
a. Report an issue
b. Provide feedback
c. Raise an issue about another student
d. Raise an issue about a staff member or teaching materials
6. Please provide any comments or additional information regarding the previous questions.
7. Are the following resources useful? (Yes/No/Not Provided/Not Provided but would like) (Teaching)
a. Pre sessional material
b. Post sessional material
c. Learning outcomes
8. Is module workload manageable? (Yes/No) (Teaching)
9. Is an appropriate amount of content covered per session? (Too much/Yes/Not enough)
10. Are workload expectations realistic? (Yes/No) (Teaching)
11. Please provide any comments or additional information regarding the previous questions.
12. Do you know who to contact if: (Yes, Yes but its challenging, No, NA) (Pastoral)
a. You are struggling with academic work
b. You have personal issues that are affecting your studies
c. You have a disability or health condition
d. You would like help with your mental health
e. You need financial help
f. You need to apply for mitigating circumstances
13. Please provide any comments or additional information regarding the previous question.
14. Are the following resources useful? (Yes/No/Not Provided/Not Provided but would like) (Resources)
a. Glossary
b. Past papers
c. Exemplars for written work
d. Mark schemes/rubrics
e. Panopto recordings
f. Reading lists
g. Discussion boards
15. Please provide any comments or additional information regarding the previous question.
16. Are you provided with enough support for the following: (not provided, not enough, enough, too much, not relevant for me) (Extra-curricular)
a. Academic skills development
b. Professional skills development
c. Academic English
d. Careers support
e. Social activities
17. Do you find there are enough social activities that are suitable/inclusive for you? (Yes/No) (Extra-curricular)
18. Please provide any comments or additional information regarding the previous questions.
19. Do staff use inclusive language (non-gendered, non-stereotypical)? (Yes/No) (Representation)
20. Do staff engage/interact with everyone? (Yes/No) (Representation)
21. Do you feel represented by your course? (Yes/Partially/No) (Representation)
22. Do you feel that your course is inclusive to students different from you? (Yes/No) (Representation)
23. Please provide any comments or additional information about representation within your course.
The information in this question is being collected to allow us to gather information on if the survey answers are related to different groups or characteristics. This is completely anonymous. If you are not comfortable filling in this question, please leave it blank.
24. Please select all of the following that apply to you (select multiple):
a. Low-income/working class background
b. Disability/long term health condition (disclosed or otherwise) - including neurodiversity, mental health issues
c. Short-term health needs/condition - pregnancy, fractures
d. First-generation to attend higher education
e. You are a care leaver or have spent time in local authority care
f. You have caring responsibilities (parent, child, sibling, grandparents etc.)
g. You received free school meals during secondary and/or post-16 education
h. You are of a minoritized gender within your field/course
i. You identify as part of the wider LGBTQ+ community
j. You are an ethnic minority within your cohort
k. You are from a religious community
l. You are an international student
m. You speak English as a second or additional language
n. None of the above
Programme audit questions
1. Does the programme have an information homepage? (Yes/No) (Structure)
2. Is the following information on the information homepage? (Yes/No/Provided Elsewhere) (Structure)
a. A ‘contextual overview’ of the whole programme (to aid with decision making on optional modules)? (Structure)
b. A list of important course dates? (Structure)
c. A programme handbook? (Structure)
d. A mechanism for giving course feedback? (Structure)
e. Is it anonymous? (Yes/No/NA)
f. A mechanism for reporting issues? (Structure)
g. Is it anonymous? (Yes/No/NA)
h. Is there a named contact for questions about the programme? (Structure)
i. Programme level learning outcomes. (Teaching)
j. A named member of staff for pastoral queries? (Pastoral)
k. Resources/signposting for (Extra-curricular)
i. the careers service
ii. the library
iii. the Centre for Academic English
iv. the Graduate School (if applicable)
3. Does the programme have the following? (Yes/No/NA)
a. A consistent format for presenting modules? (Structure)
b. A course glossary? (Resources)
c. Student-run shared resources? (Resources)
d. Specific content/modules for (Extra-curricular)
i. professional skills/professionalism?
ii. study/academic skills?
iii. Practical skills (lab/workshop)?
Module audit questions
1. Does the module page follow the programme template? (Yes/No/NA) (Structure)
2. Do session(s) of the same type follow a consistent format? (Yes/No/NA) (Structure)
3. Are professional skills integrated into the module? (Yes/No/NA) (Extra-curricular)
4. Is the following information provided on a module home page? (Yes/No/Provided Elsewhere) (Structure)
a. Is there a contextual overview of the whole module? (Yes/No) (Structure)
b. Is this provided prior to enrolling on optional modules? (Yes/No/NA) (Structure)
c. Is there a module handbook? (Yes/No) (Structure)
d. Is this provided prior to enrolling on optional modules? (Yes/No/NA) (Structure)
e. Is there a list of important module dates? (Yes/No) (Structure)
f. Is there a named contact for questions about the module? (Yes/No) (Structure)
g. Module level learning outcomes? (Yes/No) (Teaching)
h. An explanation of what type of teaching will be conducted? (Structure)
5. Are the following things provided within the module VLE page (Yes/No/Provided Elsewhere)
a. Past/practice papers and/or exemplars for each assignment? (Resources)
b. Mark schemes/assessment rubrics provided for each assessment? (Resources)
c. A module glossary? (Resources)
d. Links to session recordings in Panopto*? (Resources)
e. A reading list? (Resources)
i. Is it in Leganto*? (Yes/No/NA)
f. A general discussion board? (Resources)
i. Is it moderated by staff? (Yes/No/NA)
*Panopto is the institutional lecture capture software, Leganto is the institutional reading list software
Content audit questions
1. What format is this content (ppt, latex, video, etc) (Teaching)
2. Is the content provided in multiple formats? (Yes/No/Not consistent) (Teaching)
3. Are there learning outcomes for the session(s)? (Yes/No/Not consistent) (Teaching)
4. Are there instructions on how you should interact with staff in the session(s)? (Yes/No/Not consistent) (Teaching)
5. Are there instructions on how you should interact with other students in the session(s)? (Yes/No/Not consistent) (Teaching)
6. Are there instructions on how to raise a question within the session(s)? (Yes/No/Not consistent) (Teaching)
7. Do the sessions have pre-session work? (Yes/No/Not consistent) (Teaching)
a. Are there instructions on what to do? (Yes/No/NA/Unclear)
b. Is it compulsory? (Yes/No/NA/Unclear)
8. Do the sessions have post session work? (Teaching)
a. Are there instructions on what to do? (Yes/No/NA/Unclear)
b. Is it compulsory? (Yes/No/NA/Unclear)
9. Are named theories are discussed? (Yes/No) (Add to separate document) (Representation)
10. Are people used in the materials? (Yes/No) (Representation)
a. Are gendered pronouns used in examples? (Yes/No/NA)
b. Are an equal range of genders represented? (Yes/No/NA)
c. Are a range of ethnicities represented in content/images? (Yes/No/NA)
d. Are a range of career options represented? (Yes/No/NA)
11. Comments on representation