The overarching research question of this project is:
How do students, particularly neurodivergent, queer, disabled, and racially marginalised students at LCC, experience institutional inclusion, and what forms of support, resistance, and care emerge within a student-only dialogic space?
The Workshop will evolve around 3 main topics of (open) discussion and will try to address the following sub-questions:
- Challenges and opportunities faced at LCC across courses and academic stages (from BA students to MA ones)
- How do students experience academic and institutional challenges at different stages of study (BA and MA) at LCC?
- In what ways do these challenges shift or intensify over time?
- How do interdisciplinary practices at LCC support or complicate students’ sense of progression, belonging, and capability?
- How do students perceive the availability and usefulness of academic, technical, and emotional support at different stages of their education?
- Explore the role of technology in academia, assessing how it alleviates and exacerbates barriers (AI, Moodle, SEAtS, etc)
- How do students experience the use of digital platforms (e.g. Moodle, Padlet, Miro, Collaborate, SEAtS) in relation to learning, accessibility, and engagement?
- In what ways does the integration of AI in academic contexts support learning—or reinforce existing barriers and exclusions?
- How do surveillance-oriented systems such as SEAtS shape students’ feelings of trust, autonomy, and wellbeing?
- Where do technological tools enable pedagogical innovation and care, and where do they undermine accessibility within creative education?
- Critically examine how policies and governance within the LCC community impact neurodiversity/gender-inclusion and disability justice.
- How do students, particularly, neurodivergent, disabled, queer, and trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming students experience institutional policies and governance structures at LCC?
- Where do institutional commitments to inclusion feel meaningful, and where do they feel misaligned with students’ lived realities?
- How do students understand disability justice in relation to curriculum design, assessment practices, and campus infrastructure?
- What gaps exist between policy rhetoric and everyday practice from the perspective of students
Since this is for a Workshop session with an open discussion format (120 minutes), my aim is to spark participation, encourage sharing of lived experiences, and guide the conversation using open, accessible, but still critical questions/prompts – introduced in the Research Methods section of this ARP blog report.
Update January 2026: In light of the scope, resources, and timeframe of this PGCert submission, the decision was made to focus on formative feedback rather than the delivery of the workshop itself (see EDI Update II in Action Plan post). This phase therefore, constitutes the first cycle of the ARP, with the workshop scheduled for 18 February 2026 serving as a second, iterative cycle informed by participant reflections. Given that I am not evaluating outcomes now anymore, but I am working with formative feedback, the second cycle starting with the workshop itself on the 18th of February, will answer the above described RQ. This first cycle RQ however had to be rephrased and focus on design, reflection, and iteration, not impact.
The revised overarching research question has become:
How can formative feedback from students and staff inform the iterative design of a student-only workshop aimed at fostering inclusive, care-centred dialogue at LCC?
Subsequent sub-questions could be:
- How do students respond to the workshop’s materials, structure, and facilitation approach?
- What aspects of the workshop design support or inhibit psychological safety and participation?
- How do students’ reflections inform changes between the first and second ARP cycles?
- What tensions emerge between care, inclusion, and institutional constraints in the workshop design?