Five more original projects have been awarded up to £5,000 in the latest round of awards from the Education and Innovation Fund. 

Launched in October 2022, the fund aims to drive positive changes in how we deliver our teaching and learning experience by stimulating student and staff co-creation and rewarding innovation and teaching excellence. 

Find out more about the winning projects

Developing entrepreneurial teams among students across disciplines as a strategy to promote inclusivity, belonging and enhanced curricula

Project leads: Xuan Huy Nguyen (USBS) and Ngoc Luu (USBS)

Encouraging interdisciplinary start-up teams among students significantly enhances their university learning experience by fostering a collaborative environment where diverse students work together on common goals. This inclusivity boosts their sense of belonging and builds a supportive community. However, the current approach suffers from low awareness of the Business Incubation Services and lacks adequate support for interdisciplinary start-up development.

To address these issues, Dr. Huy Nguyen and Dr. Ngoc Luu will design a comprehensive research project to investigate the current challenges and bottlenecks for interdisciplinary entrepreneurship at the University. Furthermore, a workshop will aim to develop entrepreneurial teams among students from the Business School, School of Psychology, School of Engineering and Informatics, School of Media, Arts and Humanities etc.

This project can lay the groundwork for a long-term initiative at the University. The findings may lead to broader institutional adoption and the development of supportive programs, ultimately enhancing the entrepreneurial ecosystem and providing better resources for start-up development across the University.

It’s about more than bums on seats: Co-designing and establishing the feasibility and acceptability of a brief online “Circles” intervention to improve sense of belonging, connectedness and attendance in first-year Psychology students

Lead: Kathryn Lester (Psychology)

Our project aims to enhance the university experience for first-year students, particularly those from lower socioeconomic and BAME backgrounds or those facing mental health challenges. By understanding and addressing barriers to belonging and engagement, we seek to improve student well-being and academic success.

We will identify critical periods when students need the most support and develop targeted interventions to boost their sense of belonging. Our co-designed workshops, delivered via a bespoke online meeting platform, will provide practical strategies for making the most of university life, building resilience, and fostering connections among students.

Ultimately, we aim to create a supportive environment that increases student engagement, improves attendance, and fosters a strong sense of community. This project will not only help students thrive academically but also enhance their overall university experience, contributing to their long-term success and well-being.

‘Closing the loop’: Leveraging project-based learning to understand student engagement in large group teaching across Medicine and Life Sciences.

Lead: Alex Stuart-Kelly (Life Sci)

Independent research projects (IRP) are offered to late-stage medical students and can include primary academic research, to literature and data analysis, to health service investigations. However, there is a relative lack of such projects investigating higher education teaching, which offers the opportunity for student-led projects with tangible benefits to both student careers and educational service evaluation.

This project will allow an IRP student to design and deliver a pedagogy-focused project investigating active learning and engagement behaviours during large group teaching of undergraduate students across Life Sciences and Medicine. The IRP student will undertake a range of qualitative and quantitative approaches to gain insight into existing teaching practices, routes for improvement, student perceptions, and cohort differences. For example, a variety of student engagement surveys, focus groups, and course analytics will produce complementary data to support ongoing curriculum reform.

This project focuses on student-centred approaches to teaching, with students leading the project and being active stakeholders and beneficiaries in its outcomes. Further, this project aims to help ‘close the loop’ between student input and educator output, addressing the student voice deficit identified in NSS evaluations at a cross-disciplinary level.

The future Sussex student: how is generative AI impacting the way that sixth formers learn and study?

Leads: Charlie Crouch (Educational Enhancement) and Keith Perera (ESW)

The use of generative AI in education is no longer new. Our future students will have been learning and studying with the assistance of AI for years by the time they arrive at Sussex. Through a series of focus groups with staff and pupils at our local Partnership Schools, colleagues from ESW and Educational Enhancement hope to gain a better understanding of sixth formers’ attitudes to AI, and how their study habits and expectations are changing. We will use the results of these discussions, alongside insights from current research, to improve our support for trainee teachers, our future Sussex students, and our teaching staff.

Building LifeSci STEM Ambassador Network for Students & Staff

Lead: Haruko Okamoto

We propose to build a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) ambassador network within the School of Life Sciences connecting undergraduate students, a group of academics, technical staff and professional services. 

The STEM Ambassador programme is supported by STEM Learning which connects volunteers of professionals and research practitioners from diverse STEM-related subjects to anyone passionate about and can champion STEM-related subjects. For a beginner volunteer, it is difficult to create outreach activities and is daunting to become a STEM ambassador without an activity to offer. 

In this project, we are providing undergraduate students with outreach opportunities using a phone app, ColourWorker. ColourWorker was developed by Professor Daniel Osorio and Dr John Anderson and substitutes for costly biochemical or spectroscopic equipment. Data is stored and processed in the cloud enabling users to analyse measurements. Undergraduate student apprentice STEM volunteers will test the phone app using plant leaves and human skin, simulate data analysis and help academics develop research projects suitable for CREST Gold submission, learning cutting-edge digital technology and the ethos of volunteering. Their weekly activities are guided and supported by volunteer technical staff and professional services integrating everyone into our LifeSci STEM ambassador network.

There are currently no further funding rounds planned for the Education and Innovation Fund. You can find out about exciting new opportunities to develop projects in your regular comms from the University including This Week at Sussex and Sussex in Focus.