Michelle Schneider (she/her)

Profile

I am the Learning Development liaison contact for the School of Design, School of Music, School of Media and Communications and School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural studies. I work with academic staff to integrate academic skills and literacies into Undergraduate and Postgraduate programmes. I also teach on several modules, working directly with students.  In addition, as part of the Skills@Library co-curricular offer, I provide 1 to 1s, design and deliver workshops and contribute to online resources. I am the strategic co-lead for our Workshop Programme and contribute to University-wide initiatives such as Curriculum Redefined and the growing area of Artificial Intelligence.  

I am particualrly concerned with how a deficit approach to academic skills and literacies development perists in Higher Education. I am passionate about working with academics to position students’ academic skills and literacies development as an integral part of the curriculum rather than a deficit need, ‘bolted on’ to individual modules.  In addition, I value students being able to direct their own learning and have access to academic skills development opportunities outside of, but complementary to, their curriculum. Moreover, those opportunities must be student centered and relevant to the diverse range of students we have at Leeds. This thinking is instrumental to the way we approach the design and development of the Skills@Library Workshop Programme which I co-lead. 

I have worked on several projects to improve the student experience: 

2022-23 LITE fellowship: I researched into staff and student perceptions of the Skills@Library service. There is a snapshot report and podcast discussing the findings. These findings have and will continue to inform our co-curricular offer to ensure that it meets the needs of all students and offers a truly developmental experience.  

2019 MOOC: I co-created a MOOC on FutureLearn titled ‘Critical Thinking at University: An Introduction’. This was on a list of ‘Best Free Online Courses of All Time’ on Class Central. (https://www.classcentral.com/course/critical-thinking-at-university-12273) and is a pre-requisite for MA Linguistics, MAPLIS and Translation Studies.  

2016 USEF fellowship: Building on our Final Chapter resource, I worked with academics to develop an online bank of annotated final year project examples and employed three undergraduate students to write a series of blogposts, documenting their experience of undertaking their final year projects. This was to help students navigate and better understand the expectations of their final year research project. 

Responsibilities

• Workshop Programme co-lead

Qualifications

• AldinHE Certified Practitioner
• MSc Information Studies
• BA History

Professional memberships

• Higher Education Academy (Fellow)
• Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (Member)