Bruce is a Professor in the School of Psychological Science and was recently nominated by the University to apply for the Advance HE, National Teaching Fellowship scheme in 2025.
I recently reached a milestone when I discovered to my surprise that I had been working at Bristol University for 25 years. Where did that time go? They say time flies when you’re having fun, and I guess this explains my lack of awareness of the passing of a quarter century. I wanted to take stock of what I had achieved in that time and came to the realization that it was teaching that had been my most successful and lasting contribution. Yes, I had my fair share of grants and research papers over the years but as time went on, they felt less important in comparison to impact that teaching could make. When students write or come up to me to express how much they enjoy my classes today, I feel 25 years younger.
For these reasons, I decided to put myself forward for a National Teaching Fellowship and am delighted to be selected as a Bristol University nominee. My motivations for entering the competition are mixed but I reasoned that this process would at the very least bring more public attention to my goal to change the way we educate students.
I believe that we are facing real problems in education with the over-assessment of students using the traditional graded examination. I don’t have a simple solution, but I think we need to start re-thinking how we start preparing young adults for the world of work. There is undoubtedly a role for graded examination, but the fundamental problem is that as soon as you start measuring something, you change the nature of education. A bit like an educational Schrödinger’s cat!
As many of my colleagues know, we spend considerable time and effort refining, calibrating, revising, stress-testing our examination processes but to what end? As the British economist Charles Goodhart astutely pointed out, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Moreover, most students are adept at preparing for examinations but quickly forget or abandon the content they so effortfully absorbed. And what of the relevance of this process for the world of work? As I point out to my students, life is not an MCQ. Of course, there are other life skills necessary for examination preparation including time management, critical thinking, writing and all the other essentials, but I question if we could do things a bit better.
Six years ago, I launched a course, “The Science of Happiness” which was borne out of sheer frustration at the mental health crisis that had engulfed ours and other higher education institutes. I wasn’t an expert in mental health, but I knew that a course carefully crafted to engage students with positive evidence-based behaviours could help them cope with the demands of university life. To my knowledge, it is the only credit-bearing course of its kind that does not use graded examination. Rather credit is awarded on the basis of engagement at weekly lectures, small group activity seminars, weekly journal reports and a final group project. Contrary to expectations, regular attendance and engagement is challenging, which is why every year, around 15% fail.
The most gratifying aspect of the unit is that the students love the course. Not because of the lack of examinations but because they engage with the activities that seem to make a difference. Every year we have run the unit, we have found a significant improvement in mental health for the class and for those students who keep up with the recommend activities, they maintain mental health up to two years later before they graduate. Years on, I still receive the occasional feedback from those who remember the Science of Happiness fondly which is why I am hoping that a National Teaching Fellowship will bring this course to a larger audience.
