Success for Business School team at the University of Leeds Teaching Awards 2024

Announced in July, three of our faculty were recognised as winners in the Sustained Collaborative Excellence category at the University of Leeds Teaching Awards.

The awards celebrate excellent practice in student education and recognise the importance of teaching and learning as a scholarly activity.

Tony Morgan, Dr Lena Jaspersen and Dr Sanaz Sigaroudi from the Management and Organisations Department were recognised for their collaborative work to design, teach and improve “innovation practice” modules. The modules enable undergraduate and postgraduate students to develop work-ready skills highly valued by employers.

Here’s what the University had to say about the team:

Based in the Leeds University Business School, the team works closely with colleagues across the University and a wide range of industry partners and experts to understand skills requirements and support student learning. The modules are interdisciplinary and teach students how to work in diverse teams and apply “design thinking” human-centred approaches to problem solving while working on real industry challenges.

The same human-centred approach is used by the teaching team. Emphasis is placed on understanding student needs and how different students learn. Student voice is captured through observations and verbal feedback in class, discussion boards, module evaluations, student reflective journals, assignment papers and alumni inputs.
The team design and improve their modules using pedagogical approaches including experiential learning, team-based activities and reflective learning. To maximise student engagement and enable an inclusive approach to team-based activities, the team has pioneered the use of “diverge-converge” activities. The pedagogic research they have carried out in this area has demonstrated very positive impacts, including for introverted students and for students where English is not their first language.

The wider impact of their teaching can be evidenced by consistently strong feedback from industry partners and students, including high student evaluation scores, student demand to enrol on the “innovation practice” modules and student and alumni feedback of how their teaching has provided practical benefits during graduate recruitment and at the start of their careers.

The team takes a systematic approach to sharing their knowledge. This includes sharing resources and advice with colleagues across the University of Leeds, undertaking pedagogical research including the Leeds Institute of Teaching Excellence I-DE-ES Project, writing textbooks including “Design Thinking for Student Projects”, speaking at internal and external conferences and collaborating with other universities and industry bodies.
Tony, Lena and Sanaz are currently working together to design and develop the changes required to enable further scaling up of student numbers for their existing modules, on a new MBA module to add to the portfolio and further dissemination of their research.

We are delighted to win this award and be recognised for the work we’ve carried out to develop and enhance learning opportunities for our students to develop skills highly valued by employers. We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the many colleagues and industry partners who’ve supported us over the years and, most of all, our fantastic students, many of whom stay in touch with us long after their graduation. We look forward to expanding student numbers and further disseminating our work and research.

Find out more about all the winners at the University of Leeds Teaching Awards 2024.