Dr Rehan Shah, leading a cross-institutional team of multi-disciplinary colleagues comprising Dr Matthew Cole (Head of Student Experience, Hartpury University and College) and Dr Noleen Chikowore (School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds), has been awarded one of five prestigious Research and Evaluation Grants administered by Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA).

The rise of Generative AI has led some institutions to provide student guidance on appropriate use, while a small number of studies have explored student perceptions of AI in higher education. However, there is limited research on AI usage and perceptions among educational developers. While some larger universities have started offering general AI guidance to their staff, a gap remains in understanding how educational developers, especially from small and specialist institutions, currently engage with AI.

Motivated by this, the grant funding will support the three UK institutions to embark on a one-year collaboration project entitled ‘AI in Academia’: An audit of educational developers’ use of, and attitude towards, Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in higher and further education which aims to audit educational developers across these institutions to shape future AI guidance and contribute to ongoing research in this area.

By leveraging a diverse team across multiple institutions, this project will provide a broad, interdisciplinary perspective. Research questions will involve examining how AI is currently used in practice by educational developers, what their attitudes towards AI integration in education are and what the existing gaps in their knowledge, competence, and confidence of AI use are.

The study will employ a multi-phase, iterative approach to review literature to scope AI applications in educational development, survey staff to audit AI usage across the three institutions and conduct focus groups to gather qualitative insights on their attitudes and behaviours. The outputs developed will benefit educational developers across HE and FE sectors and serve as a valuable platform for the development of guidance for learner developers’ AI use in the future. The results will also complement and enhance impact within QMUL's recently launched Centre for Excellence in Artificial Intelligence in Education.