Session 2 - Strand 4

Abstract:

This paper proposes a practice-based case study of how the newly established London team became a laboratory for pedagogical innovation through just-in-time staff development, collective curriculum design, and a shared commitment to active, authentic learning and assessment. It examines how a clear ethos, leadership, structural conditions, working culture, and educational development practices combined to enable rapid, consistent, and sustainable change in teaching and assessment. It argues that meaningful innovation is less about isolated, untargeted initiatives and more about designing coherent ecosystems in which professional learning, curriculum design, and classroom practice are integrated. Staff development was consistently “just in time”: interventions were requested in response to immediate institutional and pedagogical needs, delivered collaboratively - often with the central academic development team - and actioned immediately. This tight coupling between learning and implementation fostered high staff engagement, collective ownership, and accelerated pedagogical confidence. This collective was able to implement a number of initiatives promoting authenticity in learning and assessment, such as the systematic involvement of what we came to call industry educators offering live briefs, a decisive move away from essays and examinations, and use of AI-supported and AI-resilient assessment models. It explores how a “one team” culture emerged, characterised by high collaboration and ownership of agreed educational decisions. It analyses how universal implementation can be achieved without requiring universal consensus, and how this challenges traditional interpretations of academic autonomy.