Playful and Creative Learning

This #Take5 is brought to you from Ravshonbek Otojanov, Queen Mary University of London who discusses how he uses ‘thought experiments’ to help students think like economists. This is an interesting approach to tackling active learning in large group settings where the space may inhibit physical interactivity  – but where you harness problem solving to initiate epistemic thinking. A challenge for us might be: What thought experiments can we harness in LD and other disciplines to help students understand and take ownership of their disciplinary learning? Think like an economist Students are not just engaging with and learning content, they […]

Sandra Abegglen, Tom Burns, Richard F. Heller, Rajan Madhok, Fabian Neuhaus, John Sandars, Sandra Sinfield, Upasana Gitanjali Singh This #Take5 is brought to you by the editorial team of Stories of Hope: Reimagining Education, an open book made possible by the contributions of authors from across the globe. These educators all had a positive and innovative approach to education, and have given much needed hope for a better future for both learners and teachers in these challenging times. Here we hear from the team and what they are doing now. We wanted to share this update because if Learning Developers […]

Event date and time: 21 May 2026, 15.00 – 16.00 Quiet Spaces, Collective Voices: Creative Pedagogies for Reflection and Renewal Educational institutions, and institutions more broadly, often overlook the value of our collective narratives and the stories of those who shaped them. This session offers an active yet meditative space for attendees to engage in and reflect on creative and liberatory practices that have been shared across our community – and in doing so to implicitly honour some of the individuals and collectives who have made contributions to education, society, and our community, whether big or small. The LD community […]

Tuesday 20 January 2026 15:30-16:30 Using Design Thinking for Learning Development: Problem-solving and Authentic Student Co-creation With Catherine Turton, Southampton Solent University and Lee Fallin, University of Hull. This practical workshop will engage participants in Design Thinking (DT), a creative approach to problem-solving (Panke, 2019; Liedtka, 2018) that can be utilised for authentic student co-creation in Learning Development. In the same way that Henry Ford said his customers would ask for a faster horse, when we engage with students, they often ask for more appointments, more workshops, and more support topics. Even when we set out to co-create, their ‘ask’ […]

This blog post is brought to you by  Jasmine Snowden (University of Southampton) Heidi Singleton and Debbie Holley (Bournemouth University). Jasmine is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Southampton with experience across Children’s and Adolescents Mental Health Settings (CAMHS), including inpatient, community and eating disorders. Heidi is a Senior Lecturer at Bournemouth University and has over twenty years of teaching experience and children’s nursing experience. Debbie’s research interests are in  immersive, virtual and augmented realities to enhance the student experience, inside and outside the formal classroom. From this piece, we hope readers gain some insights into using 360 […]

“The world of simulation and immersive learning technologies is developing rapidly and in parallel to the existing and predicted future requirements of health and care on a global scale”.  [Enhancing education, clinical practice and staff wellbeing. A national vision for the role of simulation and immersive learning technologies in health and care HEE, 2020] This  #Take 5 reflects upon ways in which paramedic students responded to a compassionate pedagogical approach to debriefing groups after a high intensity simulation experience. Their experience through changing the ambience of the debrief transformed their session from one where students reported anxiety, insecurity where lecturing […]

Studies show nursing students experience significant maths anxiety (MA) (Bull 2009; McMullan, Jones and Lea 2012); this is the ‘fear or an adverse emotional response to the idea of doing mathematics’ (Hart and Ganley 2019, p. 122). As MA is correlated with lower maths performance in nurses (Bull 2009), Dr Katie Woodhouse-Skinner (Academic Skills and Statistics Tutor) and Hannah Glenn (Senior Lecturer in Adult Nursing), wanted to know whether they, as university healthcare academics and library academic support working at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), could work together to reduce MA in the healthcare curriculum, using alternative pedagogies to develop students’ […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from Simone Maier. Simone is an inspirational lecturer in the LondonMet School of AAD – art, architecture and design – and is soon to complete an MA in Art Education, Culture and Practice at the Institute of Education (IoE).  Working with Simone, we became fascinated by the concept of practice-based research – where the practitioner makes something – anything – as a way of exploring or researching their own theory and practice. This, we thought, was something that every practitioner – every educationist – should think about and get involved with.  Read on and […]

Play provides the energy, the eruptions, the poetry and the connectivity for engagement and success. Play transforms deficit-fixing teaching, it is creative and emergent, it provides spaces and places of reimagining and agency – play has the power to transform education, and educational experiences and outcomes (Sinfield et al., 2019). This #Take5 is brought to you from Sandra Sinfield (London Metropolitan University), Tom Burns (London Metropolitan University) and Sandra Abegglen (University of Calgary). Drawing together playful, arts-based and creative practices, this post offers theoretical arguments for why we all need a more creative Higher Education (HE) to build a more […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from Lisa Clughen, Nottingham Trent University. It is both about the importance of movement in HE – and an invitation to participate in a small research project focussing on qigong-based mindful movement in HE. #Take5 steps? Taking Positive Steps in Learning and Teaching: An Invitation to Participate in Mindful Movement Research. Image: Lisa Clughen doing some Mindful Movement at the Lourve-Lens, France If you could do a very short activity during your working day that, research suggests, could reap wide-ranging rewards for your physical, cognitive and mental health and wellbeing, and in fact for […]