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School of Environment, Education and Development

An update from Rory Stanton, Director of Teaching and Learning

25 Sep 2026

Rory discusses the growing role of AI in teaching and learning, welcomes colleagues into new leadership roles, and celebrates the collaborative community that supports our students across SEED.

Dear all, 

Welcome to everyone as the new academic year gets underway and where the campus is busy once again with new and returning students. 

Since my last update, where it was not mentioned at all, Generative AI has assumed a far more conspicuous role in our teaching, learning, and student experience. We have seen its impact on our assessments, on the additional new skills that will be demanded of our graduates, on the pressures being experienced by students in this new (somewhat challenging) learning space, and all within what seems like a very compressed period of time. And I am sure by my next update this landscape will have evolved yet again!  

This has prompted a more considered response from the university, however, not least the roll out of Copilot 365, the development of a range of supporting materials for GenAI more generally, and a new AI policy that speaks to our assessments going into 2026/27.  

GenAI and Talking to Our Students 

The new AI in Teaching & Learning Policy aims to provide a framework to help us and our students understand the extent of AI’s interaction with our assessments. While assessment categorisation for AI is the action, this moment should ideally be seen as an opportunity to engage in a wider AI-focused conversation on the overall learning experience, the roles and responsibilities for us all – students and staff – in the ultimate and substantive quality of our degrees, the impact on graduate employability, as well as an understanding of the wider environmental and ethical concerns regarding AI use.  

To support our students, Peter Kahn, SEED's Associate Director for AI and Digital Learning, has brought together a range of resources on the SEED AI and Digital Learning SharePoint site, including: 

Further support materials are coming to help colleagues implement the new policy and respond to AI in teaching & learning. In the meantime, do also explore further resources in the University's AI Teaching and Learning Needs Hub. 

Many colleagues still need to update their assessment pages and assignment briefs on Canvas with information about which category/categories their assignments fall into under the new University policy on AI in teaching and learning. See the School advice: ​SEED implementation of the AI T&L policy. Please do this as soon as possible, so that students taking course units in Semester One have this information at the outset of their studies. We are also working to enhance the kinds of AI-related support we can provide in SEED as the year progresses. 

Course Unit Framework 

The next phase of programme development, following on from the Teaching Sustainability Project, will be the Course Unit Framework implementation. We already have an initial round of meetings with a range of SEED programmes scheduled for this first semester. The aim of this newer project is to ensure the school remains competitive in a recruitment market that demands certain conditions or attributes from programme offerings. In SEED this could include a move towards more streamlined and logical programme structures, or visible evidence of employability (or partner-enabled learning) factors embedded in our teaching, learning, and student experience, or a response to the rise of AI being evident across all programmes, and so forth. 

Welcome to New Colleagues
To help us lead in these circumstances, I'm delighted to welcome Caglar Koksal (PPEM), Karen Beswick (MIE) and Claire Goulsbra (Geog) into Director of Teaching and Learning roles in SEED, with Claire acting as Geography's Director of Teaching and Learning during Mark Usher's sabbatical in 2026/27. Later this academic year, we will also be welcoming Jaco Renken (GDI) and Ross Jones (Geography) into Director of Teaching and Learning roles. 

At the same time, I'd like to express my sincere thanks to our outgoing Directors of Teaching and Learning, Anna Gilchrist (PPEM), Garry Squires (MIE), David Lawson (GDI) and Pete Ryan (Geog), for their leadership, honest direction, advice and support over recent years.  Thanks too to Chris Darvill for his work as SEED's Associate Dean for Field courses. During his term, Chris oversaw a detailed review of field course offerings across the school and, together with Laura Ingleby, developed SEED's Field course Strategy to 2030. 

We are the SEED TLSE Team 

Lastly, I would very much like to begin this year by acknowledging the wider SEED Teaching & Learning and Student Experience community. This role has demonstrated clearly to me the shared commitment and endeavour by everyone in the School to not only ensure that our students have the best experience possible while studying at Manchester, but also to support one another, creating a rewarding and supportive community for colleagues across SEED. 

Good luck with the semester ahead, 

Rory 

SEED Director of Teaching, Learning & Students