Maneeha Siddiki and Leonie Faulker, second-year design engineering undergraduate students, along with Dr Rehan Shah, and a cross-institutional team of multi-disciplinary colleagues comprising Dr Matthew Cole (Hartpury University) and Dr Noleen Chikowore (University of Leeds) presented their collaborative scholarship research project "AI in Academia': Auditing educational developers' use of and attitude towards GenAI in HE and FE" at the SEDA Spring Conference held at Liverpool John Moores University on Friday 22nd May 2026.

The project, funded by a SEDA (Staff and Educational Development Association) Research and Evaluation Grant focuses on auditing educational developers across multiple UK institutions to shape future AI guidance and contribute to ongoing research by leveraging a diverse team across multiple institutions, both within the HE and FE sectors. It specifically aims to explore 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 employed a multi-phase, iterative approach to review existing literature to scope AI applications in educational development, surveyed educator staff to audit AI usage across multiple UK HE and FE institutions and conduct multiple rounds of cross-institutional staff focus groups to gather qualitative insights on attitudes and behaviours towards AI use for teaching and learning practices. Key outputs of the project include creation of open-access infographics to be showcased through the SEDA online blog and magazine, a research paper for SEDA's flagship Innovations in Education and Teaching International journal, in addition to dissemination at institutional conferences such as the upcoming QMUL Festival of Education in June 2026.