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Jiani Liu

Jiani Liu

Profile

I am a Lecturer in EAP with 10 years of experience in UK Higher Education. I am the lead educator for several institutional courses and resources, including the award-winning ‘Critical Thinking at University’ MOOC and ‘Step Up to Masters’.

My main accomplishments include: 

  • Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA)
  • Fellow of Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence (LITE) on assessment literacy and student success
  • Award winner of Digital Award of Information Literacy 2020 
  • Lead educator for Step Up to Masters, an award winning resource
  • Co-creator of Critical Thinking at University: An Introduction MOOC. One of the ‘Best Free Online Courses of All Time’ on Class Central
  • Nominated for Journal of Information Literacy Ross Todd Award for Outstanding Research Paper and Research Project 2023
  • Nominated for Leeds Partership Awards 2020
  • Nominated for Digital Award of Information Literacy 2019 

Research interests

  • Transnational Education (TNE) and English-Medium Instruction (EMI): I am collaborating with Dr. Zhao Ke from Southwest Jiaotong University as a co-author for a chapter titled 'An Analysis and Reflections on Students' Learning in University Physics Taught in English: Language as a Barrier – A Predictor of Success or Failure?' for an edited Bloomsbury book.  This collaboration emerged subsequent to my recent visit to SWJTU in Chengdu, China 

  • Partnership Working in In-Sessional EAP: I served as the in-sessional co-lead for LCS programmes. In collaboration with Helen Sadig, we have been engaged in an evaluation project to assess the effectiveness of the partnership working approach 

  • I conducted a LITE project on assessment literacy and student success from 2022 to 2023. I presented the findings from this project at various national and local conferences and forums, including recent contributions to the Assessment Matters in LCS symposium, a podcast for LITE, and a presentation at the BALEAP TNE SIG EAP Assessment Literacy in TNE contexts conference. These engagements involved sharing insights from my LITE project and their relevance in the age of AI and within the TNE context. My future scholarship focus remains on assessment literacy and student success within these new contexts. 

<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>

Qualifications

  • HEA Senior Teaching Fellow
  • MSc Management
  • BA (Hons) Information Science and Librarianship

Professional memberships

  • British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes (BALEAP)
  • British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL)
  • Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE)

Student education

I currently teach English for Academic Purposes to students in the SWJTU-Leeds Joint School Year 1 programme. Previously, I worked as the Library learning advisor for LCS UG programmes, leading the academic literacies teaching in collaboration with module and programme leads across Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, East Asian Studies, German Studies, Classics, and Linguistics from 2014 to 2023. I also acted as the PGT in-sessional co-lead for Linguistics, MAPLIS, and Translation and Interpreting from 2021 to 2023, and taught various modules across these programmes.

Research groups and institutes

  • Language Centre