A little while ago we started a small reading group for colleagues in the Learning and Teaching Development Service to share ideas and discuss current issues and publications related to learning and teaching in Higher Education.
We set ourselves a couple of parameters to encourage engagement, as we had tried a journal club previously to not a great deal of success.
This time we decided to limit ourselves:
to things that could be read or digested in around less than half an hour
to try too keep the readings short and digestible
to keep the discussion sessions to 30 minutes
to use small groups for discussion of themes, impressions etc
Listened to Inventions in Sound: where the poet Raymond Antrobus explored the art of translating sound for the eye, looking at the poetic possibilities of closed captions.
Our next group will explore microcredentials by looking at the recent QAA quality compass paper – which way for micro credentials.
This will be the first meeting of a slightly expanded group which includes colleagues from FMS TEL .
We have one person running the group for 6 months (Me!) and I look after collating suggestions which come in from anyone who wants to suggest something. I try to have a range of different types of materials and cover a range of learning and teaching related viewpoints as our group has people who work in policy, practice, pedagogy, quality assurance, data and governance, professional development and all the intersections thereof.
Last time we listened to a radio programme about closed captions, which really made me think about how we approach captioning in HE. Some great ideas resulted from the session and it certainly got us talking!
Inspera users (and those interested in the system) are invited to the Inspera On Campus 2026: Innovate & Engage event on Wednesday 16th September, 13:00-16:30. This event will take place in person in the Henry Daysh Building.
This year’s event has two key focusses:
Sharing applicable updates to the system with our users that will be available from the new academic year.
Opportunity for users to take part in Inspera-led discussion sessions with other Inspera users across our University.
If you’d like to join us, please sign up to attend the event using the Elements booking form. This will enable you to keep up to date with communications about the event and assist with our planning. The full agenda will be released in later this month with details of the new features we are adopting.
Improvements have been released to Canvas assignments that use SpeedGrader and Rubrics. Visually it will look slightly different, but all previous functionalities will remain, with some additional features available.
Guidance for how to use these can be found on Canvas Assignment page of the Learning and Teaching website
Details of the improved functionalities are as follows:
SpeedGrader
The Document Viewer will load much faster, which is particularly beneficial to modules with large cohorts of students, where there is a long list of assignment submissions.
When navigating through the submissions via the drop-down menu, an eye icon will appear to indicate which submission you are currently looking at in the Doc Viewer.
The assignment submission status now appears in SpeedGrader, allowing you to flag a submission as Excused, Late, Extended etc.
When using Sections to mark, the process of selection the section has been improved. It is less fiddley to click on the right section, as the section menu remains visible until you click apply. It is also possible to look at multiple sections at the same time.
Canvas Rubrics have a few improvements that will help with the usability when creating rubrics and marking submissions.
It is now possible to alter how the rubric is viewed. There is the classic view you will be familiar with, alternatively you can choose to have the rubric displayed horizontally or vertically.
You can now import and export Rubrics, including exporting completed rubrics, that have been used to mark assignments.
Rubrics can be created and stored in draft status, and you can archive old rubrics when they are no longer required.
There are also improvements to the students view when submitting an assignment. As before, the submission page clearly displays the due date, the link to the Assignment Brief (which is added when the assignment is set up), the number of allowed attempts and the rubric is visible if one has been attached. A new feature is the Progress status bar, which will update when the student has submitted their assignment and then again when feedback has been released. When the student is looking at their Grades and Feedback, if a Rubric has been used, this will be displayed by default, clearly indicating the levels the student has attained against each criterion.
Up to date guidance on these improvements are available on the ASK website and more details can be found on What is Assignment Enhancements?
Conversations about assessment, active learning, partnership and artificial intelligence filled the room on 6 June as more than 67 colleagues came together to launch the new Leading Edge Curriculum (LEC) Communities of Practice.
Inspera have developed a new digital drawing tool which has increased functionality beyond the existing drawing tool. In terms of what is new, the new tool allows you to enable the drawing tool at a question level, rather than at a test level. Colleagues can choose what questions they wish to enable the drawing tool on for their students to use in their Inspera digital exam.
The new Digital Drawing Tool is now available to use on Inspera as of Friday 27th February 2026.
Within this blog post you can find out how you can enable the new drawing tool on your Inspera exam questions in your question sets and the functionality available within the tool.
Within Inspera, the standard exam set up is a secure locked-down exam environment where students are only able to access their Inspera Digital exam. They are unable to access internet search engines, their own notes or other applications.
Web pages and PDF documents can be ‘allow listed‘ so that they can be accessed securely within an Inspera Digital Exam. Allow listing of web pages or documents is completed while creating your Question Set.
The resources (when allow listed) are made available for students in locked down Inspera Digital Exams. A network filter ensures students are not able to navigate away from the page specified. All links, except allow listed resources, are blocked.
This blog post has been created to share some best practice around allow listing use in order to ensure the best experience for our students.
Colleagues in the Inspera Digital Exams Team of the Learning and Teaching Development Service (LTDS) invited colleagues from Inspera Assessment to visit Newcastle University for the third year in a row to host an on campus event with our users.
Fiona Orel and Ishan Kolhatkar visited Newcastle on Wednesday 5th November for this year’s ‘Inspera: Sharing Best Practice’ Event.
Our Inspera users were invited to come along to find out updates about using Inspera at Newcastle and upcoming features on the Inspera roadmap. The event is a great opportunity for colleagues to learn about how they can enhance their use of Inspera and ensure best practice. The Inspera Digital Exams Team arranged for some demonstrations on features and functionality listed in the agenda below.
The agenda included:
Welcome and Introduction – An update from the Inspera Digital Exams Team and update from Inspera Assessment around their Roadmap
Inspera demonstration – Rubrics Functionality, Manually Marked Multiple Attempts Assessments and Feedback Release Features
Questions and Discussion – Colleagues submitted their questions for Inspera to answer.
We’d like to share an important update about how student engagement data is presented in NULA. The metric previously labelled ‘Attendance’ has now been renamed to ‘On campus engagement’.
This change is now live in the system.
Why we’ve made this change
The ‘Attendance’ metric in NULA shows a student’s engagement across all in-person, timetabled sessions available to them in their active modules — including both monitored and non-monitored activities.
Because this metric reflects more than just formal attendance, we felt that ‘On campus engagement’ better captures the full picture of a student’s participation in scheduled learning opportunities.
What this means for staff and students
Students will notice only a label change — from ‘Attendance’ to ‘On campus engagement’. There are no changes to the underlying data or calculations.
We’ve updated this terminology consistently across:
We’ve also expanded our messaging to students to make it clear that the on campus engagement metric is not a formal attendance record and will not impact academic records.
What this looks like
In the student interface:
In the staff interface:
Supporting student understanding
We will be communicating this update through our student channels, but if students come to you with questions, please feel free to use or adapt the message below:
Your ‘on campus engagement’ in NULA shows the opportunities available to you to take part in all timetabled events in your active modules. This gives you a clearer picture of your overall engagement and can help you notice any gaps so you can make informed choices about how you learn.
Please note that ‘on campus engagement’ data in NULA is not your formal attendance record and will not impact your academic record.
The system is designed to give you real-time insights that support your learning and any conversations with your personal tutor or support teams. It is not used in a punitive way.
If something does not look as expected, it may be due to data processing delays or how activities have been recorded.
For more information, please visit the NULA pages on the Academic Skills Kit website.
In the Gradebook Settings of the Canvas Gradebook area, a View Hidden Grades indicator option is available. This will allow Teachers and Admins to see an icon marking any grades that have not yet been posted to students.
This will help you quickly identify which grades are hidden from students, reducing confusion and ensuring more accurate communication about grade visibility.
This feature is available for use from 25th September 2025.
How do I use this feature?
To use this feature, you would navigate to the Gradebook area of your course in Canvas.
You would then locate the ‘Gradebook Settings’ by selecting the settings option (cog icon) in the top right corner of the screen. Once here, you will navigate to the ‘View Options’ tab where you will be able to select the ‘View hidden grades indicator’. This enables the hidden grades indicator within the Gradebook of the particular course you are in.
The gradebook settings area in Canvas Gradebook where you can enable ‘view hidden grades indicator’.
What does the feature look like in action?
In the Gradebook, an orange indicator displays which grades have not been posted next to each grade where this is applicable.
An orange dot shown against a grade in the Canvas Gradebook to indicate the grade has not been posted.
Find out more
You can find out more about the functionality of the Canvas Gradebook on the Canvas Course Navigation website, under the heading ‘Grades’.
As we begin the new academic year, NULA has introduced a range of new features and enhancements in the staff-facing system designed to make learning analytics more accessible, informative, and useful. These updates build on feedback from colleagues and aim to provide clearer insights into student engagement, easier navigation of the system, and more practical tools to support tutoring conversations.
Metric help pop-over
To make NULA’s metrics clearer and easier to interpret, a new metric help pop-over has been introduced. This feature provides quick, accessible explanations of each engagement metric—such as attendance, Canvas activity, submissions, and days since last activity—along with the data sources used to calculate them. By simply clicking on the hotspot icons in the student list or student overview pages, staff can see detailed guidance without leaving the page.
Student attendance grid view
The student attendance grid in the student overview has been upgraded to give staff more flexibility and clearer insights. Instead of a fixed 30-day snapshot, colleagues can now filter attendance by a date range, with a simplified table view, making it easier to spot patterns that matter in student conversations.
Tiers
The new Tiers feature makes it easier to filter and navigate student data by School, Faculty, or course. Depending on their role within the system, this means staff can quickly focus on the level of detail most relevant to them, whether looking across a whole Faculty or drilling down to a single course. Tiers also pave the way for more granular engagement metrics, giving a clearer picture of how students are engaging.
Student Engagement history
The student engagement history on a student overview page has been enhanced to give staff greater flexibility when reviewing patterns over time. You can now apply date range filters to focus on specific periods and choose to view individual data sets—including attendance, submissions, or Canvas engagement—separately. This makes it easier to spot trends, identify changes in behaviour, and have more informed conversations with students about their engagement.
These updates improve NULA’s usability and provide staff with clearer, more flexible insights into student engagement. Additional features and enhancements will be introduced throughout the year, continuing to expand the system’s capabilities and support for staff and students.
The Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Awards aim to raise the status of education at Newcastle University by rewarding individuals and teams who have made a marked impact on the student’s educational experience.
The 2025 winners have now been announced, with five winning submissions out of a very competitive field of nominations.
Congratulations to the 2025 winners of the Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Awards:
Dr JC Penet
School of Modern Languages
Dr JC Penet receives his award for his innovative and sustained contributions to the field of Modern Languages, in particular within the School’s Translation and Interpreting Section. In recent years, Dr Penet has successfully built a profile as an influential scholar and practitioner in translator education that has benefited Newcastle University, but also students and colleagues more widely through his engagement with coaching and mentoring practices. The awarding panel were impressed with how the winnings from Dr Penet’s previous Vice Chancellor’s award were used to reinvest in training that has led to the development of Translation and Interpreting Studies within the School of Modern Languages.
JC told us “I’m truly honoured to receive the Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Award for a second time. This recognition means a great deal to me, as it reflects my unwavering commitment to co-creating, with our fantastic students and brilliant professional services colleagues (Careers, LTDS), experiential learning opportunities that make education more authentic and situated by connecting students with real-world industry practice. It’s a privilege to support students in developing the critical, analytical and reflective skills they’ll need to thrive in their future working lives. I’ve also found it incredibly rewarding to see how my research into emotional intelligence in translator training has contributed to their growth and wellbeing. Too often, education begins from a place of deficit. It doesn’t have to—and I’d like to believe that my work, both as an educator and a life coach, is helping to challenge this. Change and innovation are never easy, but what a joy it is to help shape empowering learning experiences that allow students to rediscover just how creative and resourceful they truly are.”
Bridging the Gap
Academic Services – Library
Pictured: Lauren Aspery, Liv Jonassen and Sara Bird
The Bridging the Gap Team, who have representation from the Library, the Learning and Teaching Development Service, as well as Undergraduate and Postgraduate Interns, receive their award for their engagement with local schools, prospective students, academic colleagues, and our own first year students, in order to support new students transitioning into their university studies. The awarding panel noted that all of the university’s values are well embedded in the team’s approach, and that the project has visibly strengthened the Newcastle University transition offering. There is also a real possibility for opportunities and expansion for individual, international, and mature students in the future.
The team fed back to us “We are delighted that our ongoing commitment to combat the challenges faced by students transitioning into university has been recognised by this award. It is testament to the meaningful and compassionate collaboration that took place throughout Bridging the Gap, the expertise and dedication of our project team, and the hard work of the talented and insightful students we partnered with, without whom none of this would have been possible.” – Lauren Aspery, Project Co-ordinator
“This award celebrates the long-term partnerships that have formed as a result of this work, and our collective commitment to make our university accessible for all students. Sharing expertise across teams has enabled us to provide high-quality, bespoke support for students who are struggling with their studies in those early stages, setting them up for success in the future.”- Liv Jonassen, Academic Skills Team Manager
“It is a privilege to be acknowledged for our contribution to supporting and empowering students to succeed. Having these resources means we are greater equipped to support students with all of the essential study skills they need to complete their A-Levels and transition smoothly into their degree studies with confidence, furthering our mission to provide equity of access to higher education.” - Sara Bird, Education Outreach Officer
Loyola Study Abroad Centre
International Office
Pictured: Grace Baker and Dina Schwartz
Loyola Study Abroad Centre, part of the International Office, receives their award for significantly enhancing the educational experience of both students and colleagues at Newcastle and Loyola University, Maryland, through its innovative programme of dedicated support. It is evident the team have gone above and beyond to ensure Loyola students are happy during their time at Newcastle. The panel also acknowledges that this huge team effort has been working together for the benefit of the two institutions for 30 years, and that this award is a recognition of that group effort and the history of the centre. In addition, the project’s civil engineering accreditation is very innovative and offers a model for future collaborations
Grace explained “The relationship with Loyola University Maryland is a special and enduring partnership – celebrating 30 years in 2025. I’ve been the Center Manager for ten of those, and it is a role that never grows tired: watching students’ personal transformation each semester, providing support and structure to see them flourish. We’ve also developed innovative programming, which is possible when you work with a forward-thinking partner like Loyola, who also deeply care about the opportunities an international education brings. Thank you for this award, and a special ‘thank you’ to every school and team across the universities that contribute to the success of the Center.”
Initial Teacher Education
School of Education, Communication & Language Science
Pictured: (Left to Right) Fiona Hepton, Christian Kitson, Andrew O’Sullivan, Fred Clark, Jon Haines, Susan O’Hagan, Hayley Hands and Chris Blakey
The Initial Teacher Education team from the school of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, receive this award for successfully leading a rigorous, three-year reaccreditation process following the DfE ITE Market Review (from July 2021 to July 2024). This process required all ITE providers to develop detailed curricula for student teachers and school-based mentors, ensuring that training systematically and consistently drew upon the latest high-quality research on teaching and learning. The team’s leadership resulted in a successful reaccreditation, affirming the University’s status as a leading provider of ITE.
The team commented the following;
Fiona: “We are incredibly proud that the Initial Teacher Education Programme has been recognised with this award. It’s a testament to the dedication of our team and partner schools in preparing the next generation of outstanding teachers for both primary and secondary education. At the heart of our work is a deep commitment to supporting trainees as they begin their journey into the profession, ensuring they are well-equipped to make a meaningful impact in classrooms across our region and beyond. At a time when the education sector faces significant challenges in teacher recruitment and retention, the success of our ITE provision is more important than ever. We are proud to be playing a vital role in attracting and nurturing passionate, skilled teachers who are so urgently needed in our schools.”
Jon: “We are delighted to be recognised for our work in enhancing the quality and reach of our initial teacher education programmes at Newcastle University. As the lead partner in a growing collaboration with Durham University, we are extending our impact even further across the region and are proud not only to deliver training that meets the rigorous standards set by the DfE and Ofsted, but also to provide our local schools with some of the very best Early Career Teachers.”
Fred: We are deeply honoured to receive the Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Award, which recognises the sustained commitment, innovation, and impact of our Initial Teacher Education programmes. This achievement is a testament to the extraordinary dedication of our team, our partner schools, and our collaboration with Durham University in preparing the next generation of outstanding teachers for both primary and secondary education. From navigating rigorous reaccreditation and inspection processes to expanding our regional reach, our team has consistently demonstrated leadership, resilience, and an unwavering focus on quality and equity. We are proud to be shaping a diverse and passionate teaching workforce that is making a real difference in classrooms across our region and beyond.
Business in Action Team
Newcastle University Business School
Pictured: (Left to Right)Jo Clark, Dr Lucy Hatt, Cian O’Sullivan, Jaclyn Wright, Keira Iveson and Steven Sadi. The award will be presented at a winter congregation ceremony.
The Business in Action team, from Newcastle University Business School, receive this award for their transformative work designing and delivering an immersive, experiential learning module for our MBA that bridges the gap between academic theory and real-world practice. The awarding panel found their student-centered offer, and the active learning approach taken, has had an exceptional impact on student learning. The panel also commended the team’s work developing a supportive and collaborative environment for both colleagues and students to flourish within; an approach already being adopted by other programmes within the school.
Jo told us “I am delighted that the work of our team of colleagues has been recognised with the Vice Chancellor’s Education Excellence Award. The Business in Action module, a transformative experience for our MBA students, ensures students have an opportunity, working on live consultancy projects, to apply their academic skills and knowledge in practice. Working together with external learning partner organisations we bring real challenges and business experiences into the classroom. We ensure that this experience benefits not only our students, but also our enthusiastic learning partners, a range of businesses and charities with whom we work on an annual basis, such as, PWC, Lloyds Bank, Aqua Consulting, Charity Groundwork North East and Cumbria and Northumbrian Water. These strategic learning partnerships are made possible by the effective teamworking between our academics and external relations colleagues, plus, alumni relations and careers advisors. Business in Action is both an enjoyable and rewarding experience, so we find that our learning partners are pleased to return year on year to engage with business school MBA students.
Effective team work, internally and externally, underpins all of this activity making it my pleasure to lead the Business in Action, MBA module. This year we were delighted that colleagues from the School of Engineering were able to join us for final presentations. We are looking forward to extending the benefit of working with Newcastle University students by taking an even more collaborative, interdisciplinary, approach in our work with external learning partners in 2026.”
The panel, chaired by Ruth Valentine, PVC Education, were greatly impressed by the wide-ranging impact, variety of initiatives, and creative approaches to teaching and student support demonstrated by all the awardees.
