Mrs Laura Stott

Laura plans, conducts and delivers all Academic Success support within KSA, through workshops, timetabled teaching and one-to-one tutorials. She keeps abreast of NSS and KSS metrics and is mindful of Kingston University's Inclusive Curriculum Framework, reviewing her teaching content and practice accordingly. An example of this is when she discovered that high levels of students engaging in the KSA ASC had a summary of Support Needs (in 2019/20, 27.8% of the students who engaged had a declared disability) and realised that she needed to adjust her teaching so that students with varied learning styles would still find her teaching inclusive and accessible. One way that Laura responded was by ensuring that in addition to synchronously delivered workshops, recorded workshops were also made available via Canvas. This was particularly for students who have processing speed difficulties, for those who would benefit from using the additional Teams Transcribe tool due to hearing issues or needing simultaneous communication streams, or for those students in digital poverty and unable to access live online sessions.

During the move to online teaching and blended learning as a result of COVID lockdowns, Laura attended numerous CPD events run internally by LTEC and external organisations such as Advance HE, Wonkhe@home, OfS and HEPPP UWE Bristol. The focus of the sessions was to improve her teaching methods, increase the use of technological tools to aid accessibility, participation, and inclusion, and also to internationalize her teaching materials. Laura now uses polls and quizzes to enhance student engagement during workshops and test their acquired knowledge, and uses a more multimedia style of teaching by incorporating the addition of mini videos found on Linkedin Learning and TEDx.

In addition to her role at KU, in 2021 Laura became the SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) and Safeguarding Governor at a local infant school. She received professional training via the Schools Alliance for Excellence regarding the ‘Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice (2015)' and around safeguarding within education. Laura has taken this broader understanding of educational regulations and processes and applied it to adult learners at KU. She now has an appreciation of the educational support processes for SEND students prior to entering HE, and is also aware of the range of potential safeguarding triggers for KU students, and knowledge of outside agencies offering specialised help/advice. Safeguarding can lead to poor attendance, attainment, and progression, and therefore this knowledge is pivotal when supporting students holistically.

For many years Laura has worked alongside colleagues during HeadStart events supporting incoming KSA Foundation and Level 4 students. She has also collaborated with colleagues in Careers and Employability providing cross-faculty Academic Success sessions during the Careers Festival, as well as during Enrichment Week providing sessions for postgraduates on Critical Reflection and Presentation Skills.

Qualifications and expertise

• MA Environmental Psychology

Areas of specialism

• Environmental Psychology
• Sustainability
• Building Design for the visually impaired

Scholarly affiliations

• Environmental Psychology Dept, Surrey University

Publications

In addition to her role at KU, Laura effectively engages with Professional and external public/civic organisations. Laura's civic role as ‘SEND' and ‘Safeguarding' Governor at a local school, enables her to be an ambassador for Kingston University in another education setting, heightening KU's link with the school and parents, and raising its reputation and profile. She remains active within the field of Environmental Psychology, and is a member of IAPS (International Association of People-Environment Studies). She attends conferences, such as Sustainable Earth 2021, and shares information about  environmentally conscious projects and teaching activities within KSA (e.g. the Sustainable Materials Library).

Laura collaborates with other Academic Success Centres within KU to exchange professional practice and share ideas and knowledge around pedagogic practice, improving outcomes for the students who engage with the service. As KSA Academic Success Officer, Laura feels the responsibility to enhance, amongst other metrics, student progression and attainment. To this end, Laura was part of a research team conducting an Access Agreement funded research project examining KSA students' experiences (particularly SEND students) of online assessment and feedback. The outcome was the implementation of new consistent marking criteria and rubrics, and recommendations for staff training on VLE technologies. Additionally, Laura plans to conduct research examining students' potential barriers to use of the KSA Academic Success Centre (ASC). The ASC is particularly under-utilised by BAME students, and therefore research will focus on interviews with current KU students and members of the BAME Alumni Advisory Group.

Laura has participated in more than a dozen CPD courses since 2021 (details seen in the Management and Teaching section below) which have directly impacted her teaching and thus benefitted the academic life of students at Kingston University. Additionally, Laura has engaged in training in unconscious bias, implicit assumptions and Eurocentric teaching. 

Qualifications and expertise

• BSc Psychology
• MSc Environmental Psychology
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Mental Health First Aider

Professional and scholarly affiliations

• IAPS (International Association of People-Environment Studies)
• Advance HE

Whilst taking responsibility for the leadership and development of the Kingston School of Art Academic Success Centre (KSA ASC), Laura also attends and contributes to the KSA Faculty Education Committee, the purpose of which is to monitor the quality of taught provision, consider new academic developments, and develop, support and monitor policies and practices that enhance KSA's teaching quality, learning environment and student outcomes. She is an active member of the bi-monthly ADLT team meetings, which aim to monitor progress against the Faculty Education Strategy and other Faculty strategic priorities. Laura also collaborates with other student services, and for the last few years has worked with colleagues in the School of Architecture and in Careers and Employability on the 'Access to Architecture' initiative, supporting students to write covering letters, CVs and prepare for interviews with Architecture practices for summer internships.

Laura has attended a significant amount of training around online teaching, blended learning, online safety and how to use the Canvas VLE. Since March 2020, Laura has used this training to embed tools within her workshop to make the sessions more engaging, such as creating quizzes via Microsoft Forms, Mentimeter and Kahoot, and has learnt how to embed other learning videos using the University's subscription to  Linkedin Learning into her online workshop material. She also collects student feedback about her workshops via Forms and acts on suggestions for improvement. For example, one attendee to a Time Management workshop said they wanted to know more about applications or programs to assist with managing their tasks, and as a consequence Laura added a section to the workshop reviewing and recommending various Apps to assist with daily planning, noise cancellation and distraction blocking etc.

With regards to resource management, Laura has now taken on the role of hiring and managing additional temporary staff to assist with the busiest times of the year for the KSA ASC. This is a new skill set; learning the Unified recruitment system, supporting staff with submitting claims forms and managing a budget. Additional staff will enable more student support, which is anticipated to increase this year due to the assimilation of students from the school of Arts, Culture and Communication into the KSA ASC caseload. Additional support is essential and a beneficial use of funding since data shows that in 2019/20 students who engaged with the KSA ASC had significantly higher progression rates at 1st attempt (73.1%) and following reassessment (98.9%) than non-engaged KSA students (66.7% and 87.9% respectively).

Qualifications and expertise

• GDPR Essentials Training (2021)
• Advance HE Webinar - From Emergency Teaching to Effective Online Education (2021)
• LTEC CPD course on 'Core Technologies for Blended Learning - Enhancing Student Contribution Using Office 365' (2021)
• KU Unconscious Bias Training (2021)
• KUDOS Microsoft 365 Training (2021)
• Advanced HEA webinar – Internationalising the Curriculum (2020)
• Wonkhe@home – Black Lives Matters: Taking action to tackle racism across HE (2020)
• LTEC Blended Learning Design: Essential Training in Canvas Training (2020)
• LTEC Accessible and Inclusive Learning Online (2020)
• LTEC Developing Active Learning with Asynchronous and Synchronous Activities Training (2020)

University responsibilities

• Academic Success Officer for Kingston School of Art, Kingston University
• Member of KSA Faculty Education Committee

Public and CIVIC roles

• SEND and Safeguarding Governor at St Peter and St Paul School, Chaldon