Annual Academic Monitoring Dissemination Event 2025
On Thursday 27 November 2025, staff and students gathered for our annual dissemination event, designed to share good practice and explore ideas for enhancing learning and teaching across the University. The examples featured in this session were identified by the Academic Management Group (AMG) based on Annual Monitoring (AAM) reports, highlighting innovative approaches that are making a real difference to student learning and experience. Colleagues responsible for these initiatives delivered short presentations sharing their approaches and insights.
The session showcased four distinct examples of good practice:
- Peer-Assisted Learning (PAL), School of Earth and Environmental Sciences: Will McCarthy presented an overview of their PAL program where senior students (3rd-5th year leaders) support junior students (1st-2nd year mentees) who have completed the same material. The approach emphasises facilitation over teaching, with staff leads managing structure and consistency. Strong evidence supports its effectiveness, especially in cases where the PAL philosophy is embedded throughout the curriculum.
A similar scheme runs in the School of Medicine since 2010 and it was one of the four finalists for the 2025 Enterprising Mind of the Year (EMOY) Awards https://medicine.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/celebrating-pals-student-led-support-scheme-among-emoy-award-finalists/
If you would like to know more about student-led peer learning and support schemes across the HE sector, this Advance HE compendium offers some interesting case studies https://advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/student-led-peer-learning-and-support - Exit interviews with graduating students to inform curriculum development, School of Physics and Astronomy: Ian Bonnell presented the School’s process of exit interviews offered to all graduating students as part of the overall continuous quality improvement efforts of the School. The Head of School conducts group interviews (4-8 students, 20-30 minutes) with graduating undergraduates, organised by degree program. With 50-80% participation, these interviews gather reflections on teaching methods and student experiences. The insights gained from these sessions inspire changes and set priorities, creating a feedback loop that makes students feel heard and builds on the sense of academic community.
- Gantt charts for assessment planning, School of Psychology and Neuroscience: Eric Bowman introduced Gantt charts to his honours module to reframe deadlines as continuous work rather than submission dates. This innovation, responding to student anxiety and extension requests, reduced workload complaints and concerns about deadline clustering. The visual representation appears in student handbooks and is discussed in the first introductory lecture. Gantt-like assignment chart
- Good practice and innovation reports for module boards, Business School: Luca Savorelli demonstrated how module boards can become a place to examine pedagogy and celebrate innovation. Module coordinators of the Business School are asked to submit reports that do not just present data and grade distribution, but they cover recent module innovations and responses to student feedback. Shared with external examiners, coordinators are given the opportunity to present their practice in 3-5 minute slots during module boards.
These initiatives come from different Schools and present diverse practices, but they all share a common thread: centring student experience in educational design. The PAL program recognises and builds on the importance of peer learning and senior students supporting junior ones. Exit interviews formalise what is sometimes lost: the accumulated wisdom of graduating students. The Gantt chart addresses the psychological reality of how deadlines feel to students. The module board reports shift focus from outcomes alone to the teaching process itself.
All of them demonstrate a commitment to listening and responding. These are not just isolated interventions but interconnected practices that give support and create feedback loops at multiple levels—peer-to-peer, student-to-institution, and coordinator-to-examiner. The willingness to adapt institutional structures in response to student wellbeing and concerns demonstrates a genuinely student-centred culture, an approach the University of St Andrews is committed to cultivating across all its schools and departments. The presentations were followed by group discussions to explore these topics in greater depth, ask questions, and consider how these approaches might be adapted to different contexts across the University.