Editor’s Introduction 

Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol 15, No 1, 2022 
 1 

A warm welcome to volume 15, issue 1, of Compass: Journal of Learning and 

Teaching! 

 

This Winter issue of Compass includes a mix of opinion pieces, research articles and case 

studies. Several papers discuss aspects of online teaching including developing students’ 

online presentation skills to support their employability, using gamification to enhance inter-

professional relationships, building a community of practice through the delivery of a HE 

teaching programme via distancing learning and the challenges and benefits of online 

teaching in the context of applied disciplines, namely engineering and surveying. Another 

theme is around dialogue with students and incorporating the student voice, in relation to 

feedback methods, decolonization of the science curriculum and seminar delivery. Finally, 

papers on personal tutoring and building student resilience bring attention to the important and 

current topic of student wellbeing. We hope you enjoy the brief summaries below:   

In a powerful opinion piece about the often overlooked but still essential work of personal 

tutors, Eve Rapley and Michael Talbot of the University of Greenwich argue that such tutoring, 

advising and mentoring are not sufficiently recognised or properly rewarded. Considering the 

emphasis in contemporary higher education on the student experience and well-being, 

supporting students’ sense of belonging, progression, retention and achievement, the authors 

express concern that the personal tutor role still operates “in the shadows”. The complex range 

of skills and knowledge needed to carry out the role, they argue, demand the same degree of 

development as and parity of esteem with teaching and research. The pandemic has served 

to show even more clearly why the tutor-tutee relationship is so important; it can be 

transformational and is intrinsically linked to student success. Therefore, there is a need for 

formal training for the role along with discussion and development of the personal tutor skillset 

and mindset and, finally, institutional systems which “encompass the needs and outcomes of 

personal tutoring”, for it is “about people and about building and developing relationships.”  

In our second opinion piece for this issue, Ramla AlZadjali, University of Exeter, reflects on 

his experience of using different approaches to providing feedback on students’ work, in his 

role teaching English to HE students on Oman. The author argues that student engagement 

with feedback is likely to be greater and lead to deeper learning when feedback is focused on 

specific aspects of their work and contextualized by discussion of and support with those target 

areas. In contrast when feedback is comprehensive, in other words, it addresses all aspects 

of the students’ work submission, and is not contextualized, students can find this 

overwhelming, leading to more limited or surface level engagement. The author then raises 

key questions about the purpose of and best practice for providing feedback when teaching in 

other subject areas, emphasizing the need for dialogue around the feedback process so that 

students understand what it is for and how to use it.  

An interesting exploration of how distance learning higher education teacher development 

programmes can build effective communities of practice finds synchronous delivery to be more 

successful than asynchronous, but, whatever the mode, peer feedback, peer learning and 

collaboration appear to be crucial to the building of productive communities. Stephanie Fuller, 

at Queen Mary University of London, conducted a survey of a dispersed group of participants 

in the institution’s PGCert in Academic Practice to gauge to what extent they felt a community 



  Editor’s Introduction 

Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol 15, No 1, 2022 
 2 

had been established, from which it became clear that some key elements for relationship-

building were being commonly expressed, such as break-out rooms in webinars, opportunities 

for both hearing and seeing peers (the ‘chat’ function on its own seemed inadequate), 

interactive activity with peers and reciprocal feedback; all of these were bound up with finding 

out and learning from each other’s practice, experiences, ideas and approaches. Drawing on 

the findings, the paper lists ideas for enhancing community development, including 

suggestions for developing personal relationships and a common identity: use of online social 

groups, more synchronous spaces for informal chat and discussion and activities geared to 

helping group members to get to know each other better. There are many helpful 

recommendations for practice here.  

A Kingston University exploration of science students’ understanding of ‘decolonisation of the 

curriculum’ and their views on how that might be achieved in this subject area found that many 

were supportive of measures to achieve it; black African/Caribbean students were particularly 

so, especially in terms of the content of the science taught. Neil Williams and Audrey Benjamin 

conclude that the results support the call for decolonising the science curriculum to reflect the 

diversity of the student population. Though the findings indicate a low degree of understanding 

of the term ‘decolonisation of the curriculum’, they have already affected how science is being 

taught in this institution. For example, there is now a more balanced representation of the 

global south; more active learning is taking place; staff are able to undertake workshops to 

discuss how best to approach decolonisation. This paper sets out clearly the logic of taking 

steps to ensure that students from all backgrounds feel that the curriculum does indeed reflect 

them and their experience: an inclusive curriculum is fundamental to the interest and 

engagement of all learners.  

A comprehensive literature review on the subject of building resilience in higher education 

students reveals a wide range of institutional and pedagogical practices designed to support 

students to counter such debilitating challenges to their progress and success as anxiety, 

depression and stress. Adrian Buttazzoni of the University of Waterloo, Ontario, has 

synthesized findings from thirty-five articles into five analytical themes – all of which have 

considerable import for educators in the sector, especially when considering individual and 

interpersonal approaches – guided by the research question “What are the methods, 

strategies and defining (essential) characteristics of teaching approaches, course curricula or 

other course-based approaches used in HE to support psychological resilience among 

students?” An array of strategies to enhance resilience emerges from this meticulous review, 

central to which is a powerful focus upon “resilience-awareness and conceptualization, 

individual skill development and interpersonal strategies.” The review does much to direct 

educators to possible ways of helping students to develop the skills needed to establish 

personal mental well-being and, consequently, ensure retention and academic achievement.  

A University of Greenwich student-centred approach to learning that involved joint decision-

making, to overcome a perceived lack of engagement, is the focus of a case study that 

explores how involving students in the design and the delivery of their module by means of 

partnership and constructive dialogue can produce a marked improvement in both 

participation and outcomes. Giuseppina Madonia reflects carefully upon the limitations of this 

particular context and is conscious of constraints that might limit transferability, but the 

qualitative data provided voluntarily by students to support this study speaks clearly: students 

who had previously been disaffected, express their enthusiasm for ‘healthy’ group dialogue 



  Editor’s Introduction 

Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol 15, No 1, 2022 
 3 

and ‘power’ over the learning and ‘fun’ during it. Of significance are their references to the 

productive partnership relationship with the author as their lecturer, but whose role, thanks to 

a willingness to give students a voice, became that of facilitator. This case study illustrates the 

value of including students in decisions about design and content.   

Inter-professional education (IPE) in the context of the full range of health professions is very 

likely to make significant improvement to patient care. First-year IPE students at Falmouth 

University participate in facilitated multi-professional groups, the institution’s Medicine, Health 

Sciences and Natural Sciences faculties’ having “the aim of enhancing their team-working 

skills, increasing their grasp of roles and interactions in healthcare and developing knowledge 

of the principles of ethical and compassionate care.” A case study on using gamification as 

one means of achieving this intention describes two relevant activities: a team challenge in 

the form of a ‘pub quiz’ and a scenario-based group board game; both centred on small-group 

learning as the medium for collaborative exploration and creation of knowledge. Russell 

Crawford provides reflection upon the feedback gleaned from participants’ Likert responses 

and from IPE facilitators’ observations, concluding that there was a broad consensus that this 

approach helped awareness, knowledge and understanding of the roles of other healthcare 

professionals and that it increased a sense of inclusion. The authors conclude that a gamified 

approach encourages discussion, enables students to contribute to the group experience, 

enhances shared knowledge and imparts “lived experience of inter-professional practice.” 

The important concept of ‘employability’ underpins a case study from the University of 

Greenwich, where the business school, by means of module which provided experience of 

working in virtual teams, set about preparing second-year accounting students for their futures 

in a digitally driven workplace. Dawn Reilly and Katherine Leopold emphasize that to develop 

appropriate digital skillsets is becoming vital to gaining employment. The involvement, in the 

module activities, of an employability specialist aimed to keep students focused upon 

contemporary professional expectations and practice. Formal assessment of the technical 

skills needed to achieve success in virtual collaborative tasks ensured that students saw 

relevance and value in what they were doing. While many students may be familiar with the 

online environment, they do not necessarily have the confidence to, for example, work with 

others in a virtual space to create and deliver presentations, which requires proficiency in a 

range of technical skills. This case study shows that students enjoyed what they were asked 

to do, developed confidence and expertise and have now a much clearer sense of how they 

must prepare themselves for both recruitment and the work they will undertake once 

appointed. 

Another case study that considers employability, this time in the case of surveying students at 

the Anglia Ruskin University, chooses to explore the perceptions of those students of the 

learning they experienced because of COVID-imposed lockdown; staff were concerned that 

the loss of invaluable face-to-face delivery of courses – replaced either entirely by online 

education or by a mixture of the two modes – might cause students’ preparation for the 

professional workplace to suffer. Certainly, vocational degree courses demand a practice-

focused pedagogy to promote relevant deep learning. This study values highly the course 

participants’ views of the pandemic-enforced strategies, especially so that any positive 

elements that would enhance post-lockdown learning could be retained. Barbara Vohmann 

and Andrew Thompson found that considerable positivity emerged in the responses to the 

survey, with evident appreciation for tutors’ responses to the circumstances, such as provision 



  Editor’s Introduction 

Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol 15, No 1, 2022 
 4 

of learning materials and recordings that could be replayed (e.g., building surveys with voice-

over), which allowed class time to be devoted to tutor-student communication, something of 

significant importance to the students. They very much liked the flipped approach, which, 

together with the simulations, enabled tutors to go some way to replicating real-world contexts. 

Other interesting by-products of the survey include the exposure of inequalities of home 

learning environments, expression of fears and remarkable student awareness of personal 

responsibility for learning. 

Engineering education has always, crucially, depended on practical laboratory 

experimentation, but the sheer cost (complex equipment and specialist technicians) of 

achieving it and ensuring student safety have led higher education institutions to balance it 

with now very sophisticated computer modelling and simulation software. One case study, 

from the University of Greenwich, demonstrates that this blending of approaches is capable 

of encouraging the acquisition of basic skills, affording more time and opportunity to explore 

the subject matter and integrating laboratory experimentation with concepts covered in 

lectures, with resultant sustained improvement in learning and student satisfaction. The study 

explores project-based learning in power electronics, with an inquiry-based emphasis, taking 

students through the module via a combination of modelling, simulation and practical 

application in the lab. Yehdego Habtay carefully outlines the adopted approach, demonstrating 

that students benefited from more hands-on experience and more time to learn from relevant 

software and fit the activities around other responsibilities, with beneficial effect upon personal 

deeper learning and, consequently, engagement. 

We hope these papers will make enjoyable and informative reading.   

 

With best wishes to all Compass readers, contributors and reviewers, 

Rachel and the Compass team at the University of Greenwich