Fellowship case study: Deborah Morton and Sophia Bourne

Deborah Morton (Digital Content Developer for Surfacing Skills) and Sophia Bourne (Career Consultant for Surfacing Skills) are part of our 2025 class of Fellows, completing their 12 month project titled Impact evaluation of the Skills@Leeds suite of digital resources. In this case study, they share their experiences on their Fellowship project.

Route into Fellowship

We’d been building an online resource bank in support of students’ skill development, and we were keen to develop resources that would help students with their learning directly, in the form of online units, and indirectly, in their modules. Sarah Wenham, Student Careers Lead Manager for Surfacing Skills & Capabilities Framework, encouraged us to apply for a LITE Fellowship to allow us the time, space, and expertise to pilot and evaluate the initiative.

At that point, I had heard about LITE, but I didn’t know anyone who had done a Fellowship. I thought it was just for academics, but Sarah reassured us that it was for all staff at the University. Sophia had worked with Emma Peasland (LITE Head of Research) before, so we had some conversations with Emma which were really valuable. We found out about the Fellowships quite late in the application cycle, so we weren’t able to attend any of the briefing events, so having those conversations with Emma was great.

Applying for ethics felt very daunting – could I actually do that, even though I’m not an academic? Richard (de Blacquiere-Clarkson, LITE Research Ethics Strategic Lead) was very supportive throughout the ethics process, especially when we needed to make amendments. Collaborating with Sophia also really helped – we could share the load between ourselves. I also reminded myself that we were the experts on our project, and we could use our strengths and knowledge together to get through the application. I’ve really enjoyed working with a partner.

Doing the Fellowship

The induction at the beginning of the year was extremely useful – everyone was just so encouraging and friendly. All the workshops that I’ve attended through LITE have been invaluable. We’ve been working with Izzy (Harvey, LITE Research Assistant) and she’s been so supportive and helpful throughout. I’m proud of what we’ve done.

Sophia and Deborah presenting at the 2025 Student Education Conference

It wasn’t all plain sailing. Recruiting student participants was quite a challenge – we had hoped to cascade invitations through academics, but hadn’t accounted for the huge number of messages that students receive. We decided to rethink our approach. Our Fellowship sponsor, Karen Burland Clark, gave us some brilliant advice about different ways to recruit students which allowed us to run two student focus groups resulting in some really interesting insights. We’ve also conducted a number of successful interviews with staff and are very grateful for their input.

We’re now processing all of our data and writing our final report. Hayley (Bullard, LITE Higher Education Research Support Officer) is helping us to consider impact and dissemination. The data collection and analysis stage has been my favourite part of the project – it’s really satisfying when you’ve worked for so long and planned so much to actually see the results and think about how you can take them forward.

Reflections

Our LITE Fellowship will definitely inform the future development of the Surfacing your Skills resources. We’ve collected some interesting insights from students about what they would like next, and that feedback will be really beneficial when we’re developing more units.

I’m definitely interested in getting involved in more projects and collaborations in the future – I’d like to do more research. Sophia and I are keen to get involved with the LITE Incubators, and apply for more funding to continue this work.

I’d encourage anyone interested in LITE Fellowships to talk to other people who have done a Fellowship and ask them for advice. My own advice is to make sure that you have a topic that you’re passionate about – don’t just apply for the sake of it! It’s far more enjoyable if you’re working on something that you really want to get into. I’ve also really enjoyed working with Sophia, so find a partner to apply with if you can.

LITE is very well-respected at the University, and doing a LITE Fellowship is a great way to see how your work fits into the bigger picture at Leeds. Once a Fellow, you’re always a Fellow, and it’s been nice to have that feeling of inclusion. I’m very proud to have done a LITE Fellowship.

Are you interested in doing a LITE Fellowship? Want to know more? Visit our Fellowships page.