Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching

Hi everyone! I’m Siqi, one of the Student Fellow for 2026-27, working on the theme of Active and Inclusive Learning.

Across my involvement with these adolescents, I have become increasingly interested in a relatively empirical question: what does it mean for students to be not just be present in an educational environment, but genuinely take part in it?

This brought me to the theme of Active and Inclusive Learning. For me, inclusion is not only about whether students can access a classroom, a course or an activity, but should more about what happens once they are there: whether teachers’ expectations are clear, whether they feel able to contribute in context, whether different ways of participating are recognised, and whether the learning environment enables them to feel that they belong.

Before becoming a Student Fellow, I worked as a Research Assistant on a BILT-funded project on inclusive learning and inclusive assessment of international students, where I was involved in interviewing students and analysing their experiences of assessment and learning. One thing I particularly valued about the work was the opportunity to hear directly from students about the parts of their real university experience that mattered to them. Through this process, I began to see how broader questions about inclusion were often reflected in the small, everyday challenges students faced in their learning – challenges that might seem minor but should not be overlooked.

That is something I would like to continue exploring in my Student Fellow role this year. One important area will be students’ experience of teaching and learning at the new campus, Temple Quarter. New spaces create exciting possibilities of teaching and learning, and I would be more interested in what these spaces feel like in practice: how students actually use them, who find it easy to participate, what might make participation more difficult, and what further support might be needed.

More broadly, I also hope to help bring students’ real learning experience into conversations about inclusive development across the University. Student voice is most valuable when we do more than simply ask “How do you think about the inclusivity”. We need to understand their experiences carefully, identify the issues that genuinely affect their everyday learning, and think about how such evidence can lead to practical change.

I’m really looking forward to working with students and colleagues across Bristol this year, learning more about how active and inclusive learning is experienced in different contexts, and hopefully helping to make learning at Bristol more active, inclusive and engaging for everyone.

Connect with Siqi on LinkedIn.