The University was awarded a prize in recognition of the success of the Education for Social Justice Framework in reducing the degree-awarding gap.
Date: 15 February 2022
London Met's Chemical and Pharmaceutical Science courses have been awarded a prize at the LearnSci Teaching Innovation Awards 2021.
The award came in recognition of the University's Education for Social Justice Framework' that is in place to eliminate attainment differentials, transform the university experience for BAME students and to ameliorate degree-awarding gaps.
Dr Bhaven Patel, Dr Daniel Sykes and Dr Jonathan Tandy led the submission. They said, "Within the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences group, the experience of our student learners is at the heart of everything we do.
"We have adopted approaches and behaviours that embed these values within the fabric of the activities we are developing with the key driver that these should be inclusive and engaging.
"Alongside LearnSci, we have built on a previously successful custom worksheet, where the degree-awarding gap decreased, to expand our library to accentuate our primary goal of using inclusive assessments in attractive and innovative ways."
In the past year, the course leaders have progressed and implanted further solutions and worksheets at advanced levels, and developed new custom worksheets. They currently use a range of worksheets across the School of Human Sciences where syllabus content focuses on data analysis and problem solving.
The original custom worksheets have been developed to increase the employability skills of London Met's students and demonstrate professional competencies that are very much in demand by industry.
Apart from consolidating student understanding of the core science, the aim was to increase and encourage critical thinking, problem solving, numeracy, decision-making and digital literacy skills. The custom worksheets employed were a mixture of assignments that supplemented laboratory sessions and lectures.
The success of the introduction of the worksheets is transparent in the performance data of students:
- Physical Chemistry had no awarding gap.
- Analytical Science saw the awarding gap close by 10% over two years.
- Inorganic Chemistry had no awarding gap.
The judges said "The impact here is rather extraordinary and is a compelling insight into the value of autonomous marking and standardised feedback on attainment gaps."
