Authored by Elisabetta Lando, Miranda Melcher and Dom Pates from City St George's, University of London and originally posted here.
Smart glasses powered by AI and AR are gaining renewed interest in education, with potential for hands-free, guided, and immersive learning. City St George’s educational technologists ponder if the best use of this technology should be in targeted use cases only and even used Ms co-pilot to help produce this blog.
As a relatively new member of staff at Birkbeck, one of the valuable experiences I've had has been participating in the recent cross-institutional networking led by Sarah Sherman and Julian Bream from BLE. Through sensibly arranged introductory meetings, I've had the opportunity to connect with colleagues from City St George's and SOAS, exploring shared interests in project management and learning analytics respectively.
What made these sessions particularly meaningful for me was discovering
how much we have in common. Despite working at different institutions, we're
often dealing with similar challenges, implementing comparable systems, and
working toward parallel goals. It's reassuring to realise that you're not alone
in facing obstacles, and even more valuable is learning how others have
approached (and in most cases resolved) similar issues.
For someone who values networking and knowledge sharing and who is still
finding their feet in a new role, these connections have been very helpful. The
meetings provided not just practical insights but also a wider perspective on
how our work at Birkbeck fits within the broader landscape of higher education
and particularly within the BLE. Hearing how colleagues at City St George's
approach project management, or learning about SOAS's practices in learning
analytics, has given me perspective and helped me understand my own work
better.
A similar type of collaboration, which was also organised by the BLE, had proven essential in the past for me in a prevuios role (and to others involved). This was when a system we all used was suddenly decommissioned with little time to find a replacement. Working together across institutions was vital in overcoming this challenge. That’s why I think this new scheme lays the groundwork for establishing ongoing collaboration on a wider scale. Rather than each institution working alone and potentially repeating the same mistakes, we have ways to share knowledge, compare approaches, and learn from each other.
The value of these connections goes far beyond the initial meetings: they represent the beginning of a community of practice that will prove beneficial for years to come. Finally, this exchange of ideas can only strengthen our practice and benefit our institutions, and I hope this scheme continues and expands.
Tim Spring, Academic Services Librarian at Birkbeck, shares his personal reflections and takeaways following a communications workshop he attended as part of the BLESS group.
Back in July, the Bloomsbury Library, E-Systems &
Services Group (BLESS) ran a workshop focusing on developing a communication
strategy for libraries. Sarah had invited Philip Pothen, a communications
consultant for Higher Education, to come and run this session for us.
I came into this session as a member of Birkbeck's former
Communication and Marketing Group for the Library but I have to confess, my
experiences left me feeling quite cynical about ‘Comms’. I never had much
interest in the strategic or structural idea behind it all – more of a ‘get it
done’ type than a ‘develop a strategy’ type. After all, it’s just
communicating, how hard can it be? I do it all the time!
Well, it turns out, there’s a lot more to think about than I
realised.
We had a mix of colleagues from different institutions in
attendance, including Birkbeck, SOAS, and the Tavistock & Portman NHS
Trust. I think it’s fair to say that most of us in attendance didn’t have much
experience in this area but were keen to learn some ideas about how we could
improve or develop our comms strategies.
A lot of ground was covered in a very short time, and we
definitely could have gone for much longer but here are some of the key ideas
that came up.
What encompasses a comms strategy?
We put together a list of words and ideas trying to define
what is communication and some of its key characteristics, and what is the
wider context of the library (why does it exist, what are we there to do)? Some
of the ideas that came from this included:
· Communication is about making a connection with our users.
· Communication we disseminate should be trustworthy and values driven
· Communication is a two-way street. Who is receiving information and how? Why?
· A library service is often at the heart of an institution, and is a significant factor in successful outcomes, whether that be student attainment, academic research, etc.
During this discussion, Philip made an interesting point
that often libraries are not as confident as other departments when it comes to
communicating about our impact and services, which is certainly true from my
experience! How can we use an effective comms strategy to improve this?
Understanding our audience – who are they? What do want
to say? How do we reach them?
For this section we split into small groups and discussed
who our audiences are. Unsurprisingly, we came back and had a mammoth list
including examples like undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers, lecturers,
professional staff, students with disabilities, healthcare professionals,
international students, senior management, etc etc.
Some topics for further thought that also came up included:
· What kind of communication do we need for different audiences?
· What do we call our audience – Members? Users? Something else?
· How can we build partnerships with stakeholders to advocate for the library?
· Do we need to make more efforts to be visible in places where our audience are at the expense of other areas?
By Zirguezi - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30927010
Let’s take the University Vice-Chancellor as an example. Her
‘Power’ would be very high up the Y-Axis, but ‘Interest’ might be somewhat
low-to-middling. Communication to these users might be in the form of an annual
report. A lecturer might be somewhere in the middle of the chart. Maybe they
could receive some sort of termly/monthly update, regular support through
emails etc. The list goes on, but this sounded like a great exercise to help
identify who our audience is, but also how we might want to
communicate with them.
Blue Sky Thinking!
The final exercise we had time for was a bit more
light-hearted and idealistic focusing on ‘blue sky thinking’. Imagine we didn’t
have any resource constraints – what would we do to improve our communications?
You won’t be surprised that most ideas involved more money…
· Hire specialist staff to work on library communications.
· Pay students (generously) to take part in surveys, focus groups, etc. to identify where we could improve services.
· Mandatory library induction for staff and students as part of corporate induction.
· Various brochures, leaflets, bookmarks, etc. to promote the library at events and high-quality digital marketing. Professional images and graphics, etc.
Whilst these ideas aren’t likely to suddenly happen in the
imminent future, it was a pleasant exercise to end on, and who knows? If we
ever find ourselves in a situation where we can afford to try any of these, at
least we already have some ideas in mind!
We wrapped things up shortly after and even though I’ve
tried to summarise what we went over, there was just so much content, I’ve
missed a lot out! Overall, it was a very productive session and I thought
Philip did a great job guiding a group of ‘amateurs’ in this area and we all
came away with something useful.
Now for the actual hard part – implementing all of these ideas!
Linda Amrane-Cooper, Laura Brammar and Jessica Hancock presented at the July meeting of the Bloomsbury Academic and Researcher Development Group BARDG to share their proposed Academic Career Stage Framework.
What is the Academic Career Stage Framework?
The Careers Service at UoL has been using a Careers Stage Framework (Brammar, Wade & Weaver, 2025) with students for several years. This approach helps students to self-categorise into Career Starters, Career Developers, and Career Changers. This enables targeted careers and employability support with the most relevant resources for the stage in their career that they are currently at.
The Careers Service wanted to adapt this into a Framework that might support all staff involved in academic work at Higher Education Institutions, which led to discussions with colleagues within both the School of Advanced Study (SAS) and the Centre for Online and Distance Education. We have now adapted the Careers Stage Framework into an Academic Career Stage Framework. This Framework also involves three stages: Academic Career Starters, Academic Career Developers and Academic Career Enhancers. It also acknowledges the three key strands of academic work colleagues are generally involved with: Learning and Teaching, Research and Scholarship, and Leadership and Management.
Because of the significant variations in people’s career backgrounds before entering academia (e.g. coming from a research or doctoral background, or transferring from professional practice), and the different careers paths that people might choose or be required to focus on, colleagues might be at very different stages in each strand. For example, someone might have worked as an accountant for many years, leading large teams and projects, so be at ‘Enhancer’ stage for Leadership and Management but be at ‘Developer’ stage for Learning and Teaching (perhaps having taught in HE for 3-5 years), and ‘Starter’ stage for Research and Scholarship, not having completed any research previously.
The Framework can therefore be used to explore relevant resources for each stage and offer some guidance on what kinds of experiences or qualifications may be beneficial in moving towards the next stage.
The initial proposed Framework is below (select the image to enlarge the view):
How will the Academic Career Stage Framework be used?
Our aim is for the Academic Careers Stage Framework (ACSF) to be the basis of a digital toolkit. This toolkit will support the career and professional development of academics, and teaching and research communities across UoL and Federal Partners. The toolkit will enhance student experience and outcomes, by supporting all academics (widely defined as all those involved in the academic areas of activity, and includes professional services staff involved in teaching and supporting student learning for example) to systematically improve their practice through reflective professional development.
We are now at the stage of the project where we are gathering feedback from relevant stakeholders, including BARDG.
How has BARDG contributed to the development of the Academic Career Stage Framework?
We were grateful for the useful comments and suggestions made during the BARDG meeting. If you weren’t able to attend, and would like to offer feedback, please do so here: https://forms.office.com/e/yCnvCcVrJb
We had some useful feedback around particular resources that might be beneficial to include in the Framework, and about how to ensure that it aligns with other professional frameworks that people involved in research or learning and teaching might be using already.
We also had some valuable discussion around training and career development in HE in general. Three key points emerged from this:
The framework needs to work not just for those colleagues who are on ‘academic contracts’, but for everyone who is involved in the three strands of academic activity. There are many professional services colleagues who are active in both research, and teaching or supporting student learning, so the framework needs to be suitable for them as well as the more traditional roles such as ‘lecturer’, ‘research fellow’ or ‘teaching fellow’. This is also crucial when considering the Leadership and Management strand, as this might involve a move into a different kind of contract when taking on a particular Leadership or Management role.
People working within the three strands of academic activity don’t always recognise the skills and experience they are developing as part of their roles – especially when working towards a formal Academic Promotion, or thinking about a sideways move within HE, or moving outside of HE altogether. The Framework should provide them with some ability to assess where they currently are and work out what they can do to get to the next stage.
We had initially envisaged the Framework mostly being used by individuals, but the BARDG discussions demonstrated how it could play a key role in line managers initiating conversations about career development and using it as a tool to prompt regular check-ins with staff about how they want to progress. Often line managers may not be experts in all the resources available, or have knowledge of requirements for each strand, particularly if they themselves have focused on one or two strands in their own career.
We also explored how the Academic Career Stage Framework can be used to support and develop a reflective approach to career development.
Thanks to everyone who came and contributed to the discussions, or who have filled in the survey. We plan to return to BARDG to demonstrate the toolkit once we are at a later stage of progress, so watch this space!
Reference
Brammar, L., Wade, V., & Weaver, J. (2025). The Career Stage Framework: facilitating enhanced engagement with students, institutional partners, employers, and alumni. Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling, 54(1).
Using Lightboards to create dynamic teaching videos:
Sue Venables and Dan Bennett (both Videographer and Editor), University of London
