PLanT Projects Scheme winners 2021/22

The Partnerships in Learning and Teaching (PLanT) Projects Scheme aims to support small-scale collaborative projects involving students and staff working as partners to identify problems, find solutions, and enhance teaching and learning at the University.

This year, we are delighted to announce that four awards of up to £500 each have been granted to the following projects:

Embedding employability skills in Law: exploring gender and intersectionality biases in assessed groupwork (Lead applicants: Zoi Kantzi and Sharon Sinclair-Graham, School of Law)

Sharon said, “The team and I are extremely grateful to the University for awarding us this PLanT funding so that we can explore the intersectionality between group work and gender.  The Legal Skills module is pivotal in giving our students an underpinning grasp of legal ways of working but most importantly ensuring that the University’s key employability skills are embedded in our students’ learning.  ”

Zoi added, “It was a great achievement and opportunity for me and my fellow students that our department was successful in obtaining PLanT funding. We hope that the outcome of our project will be beneficial not only for the School of Law, but also for the whole University since it aims to inspire people and to motivate people to achieve their objectives.”

Building a flourishing student-led community in Pharmacy to increase a sense of belonging and enhance academic and employability skills: a feasibility study (Lead applicants: Noor Noeman and Dr Rosemary Lim, School of Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy)

Rosemary and Noor commented, “We are extremely delighted to have  an opportunity to make a difference in creating a pharmacy student community that is genuinely supportive and caring of each other. The two phases of the project will see students creating and leading sessions that are relevant to their own learning and development. In addition to enhancing academic skills, we hope that this feasibility study will be the seed to creating a flourishing community and can be sustained over our students’ University life and beyond.”

Promote international student mobility in the post Covid-19 era (Lead applicants: Jiajun Song and Dr Hong Yang, School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science)

Jiajun said, “I am thrilled to work with my classmates both in Reading and NUIST to share my study and life experience in Reading and encourage more students to come to study in Reading next year and beyond.”

Hong added, “We will collaborate with staff and students in Reading and NUIST, China, to understand the challenges Chinese students face when they choose to study abroad. We look forward maximizing the project impacts to various schools across the University.”

Climate Education: What now, what next? An analysis of the views, perspectives and needs of current students of the IoE, in relation to climate change understanding (Lead applicants: Lauren Seymour and Dr Catherine Foley, Institute of Education)

Lauren said, " I am excited to apply my own prior knowledge and work collaboratively with staff and like-minded IoE students to effectively embed Climate and Sustainability Education across all our programmes, to ensure educational practitioners that graduate from Reading University feel confident and enthusiastic about leading climate education in their own context.”

Catherine said, “ We want to build on the momentum of the University’s climate education conference and of COP26, but with so many key issues to tackle and such a diverse range of students and programmes it seemed vital to start by establishing our students’ perspectives: what they want and need to know about, understand and be able to do in order to confidently embed Climate and Sustainability Education within their future careers. We will work with a dedicated group of undergraduate, postgraduate, teacher training and PGR students to develop ideas as to how students feel this work could be embedded across the IoE over the next few months and years.”

Please join us in congratulating this year’s winners!