Say it with pizza: Building the Discovery offer
The Discovery programme has been successfully running since 2009 and consists of undergraduate modules that students can choose based on their personal and professional interests. These modules aim to complement and enrich their programme of study, expanding their horizons. Thousands of our students have benefited from this opportunity.
Currently, Discovery is re-imagined as part of Curriculum Redefined. While it has been a great success, a need to review and rationalise the programme was identified to make sure this provision is relevant, fresh, and attractive to a wider range of students. A Discovery Delivery Group has been set up to develop a complementary and distinct new set of Discovery modules. This initiative aims to broaden opportunities for all students in inclusive and equitable ways by integrating lifelong and life-wide learning into the curriculum, whilst earning credits.
Crafting Discovery with pizza
During the Student Education Conference (SEC) in January 2024, the Discovery Delivery Group asked 56 staff and student participants, “What are the key ingredients of a new Discovery experience?” Everyone was encouraged to discuss this and their responses were captured by making pizzas together. The responses were explored in two student focus groups.
Participants identified that a new Discovery offer should provide learning opportunities that are experiential, lead to personal development provide cross-disciplinary collaborative and creative learning opportunities, and prioritise their wellbeing.
The results from playing the pizza game were fascinating, students and staff gave a clear steer to be bold and creative in designing learning opportunities for the new Discovery provision. There was genuine interest in experiential collaborative learning, a focus on real-world challenges and the desire for learning to be ‘meaningful’ and ‘make a difference’. This desire to feel empowered to act and contribute is reflected in a recent study conducted by the British Science Association on Climate change and Sustainability Education in secondary schools.
What our pizza toppings reveal about Discovery
Understanding what ‘meaningful’ means to an increasingly diverse group of learners naturally involves dialogue and space within curricula. Space that allows for negotiation, interpretation, and contextualisation, fostering an open-ended environment that encourages curiosity. Participants identified that a new Discovery offer should provide learning opportunities that are experiential, lead to personal development provide cross-disciplinary collaborative and creative learning opportunities, and prioritise their wellbeing. They understand the need for curriculum design that provides support, scaffolds learning, and clearly communicates expectations as fundamental for its success. Many participants expressed a desire to remain involved in the conversation and help shape this provision.
While it has been a great success, a need to review and rationalise the programme was identified to make sure this provision is relevant, fresh, and attractive to a wider range of students.
These curriculum design features are illustrated in Figure 1 as slices of pizza, each representing a fundamental element of the Discovery Programme:
Next steps
The SEC24 Discovery workshop was invaluable for the Delivery Group. Who would have thought that the playful pizza activity would reveal such a richness of ingredients? Insights are being considered in the design of the new Discovery provision and will continue the conversations more widely within the University. This ongoing dialogue aims to gather further insights and collaborate with colleagues and students to create an offer that is not only responsive to current needs, but also flexible, adaptive and capable of transforming students’ education. This playful inquiry has given a lot to think about and consider going forward. Professor Michel Resnick’s (2024, online) stated:
I would like learners to have more control over how they are learning, what they are learning, when they are learning, where they are learning. When learners have more choice and control, they can build on their interests, so that learning becomes more motivating, more memorable, and more meaningful — and learners make stronger connections with the ideas that they are engaging with.
The Discovery Delivery Group is currently working on the new Discovery modules as well as a series of Broadening prototype courses in Jam, Open and Block format. These are co-designed by staff and students and aim to create flexible, inclusive, and transformative learning opportunities for all our students. They act as a bridge or scaffold towards gaining credits via the new Discovery modules at undergraduate and postgraduate level. The first Broadening prototype offer will be the Social Justice Jam: Spaces for Change, a three-day virtual event (10–12 June) in collaboration with University of Leeds and the University of Pretoria, which encourages cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural learning to address real-world challenges.
Professor Chrissi Nerantzi (Academic Lead for Discovery), Cathy Malone (Academic Design Consultant, Learning Design Agency), Dr Simon Rofe (Associate Professor in International Politics) and Sarah Briggs (Faculty Digital Education Manager)
