Colourful Visual Timelines to Support Student Coursework Submission Processes: Poster presented at the Association for National Teaching Fellows Annual Symposium 2023, 20-21 April, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

Supporting students with the management skills needed for timely submission of coursework in higher education can be challenging. Deadlines can help to drive completion of tasks, but submission tends to follow an exponential curve towards submission, with some students narrowly missing deadline windows. Clear guidance is key to supporting students in the submission process, but if provided in extensive narratives, the messaging can get lost. Timelines have been shown to help communicate processes by arranging a chain of events in a chronological order. They are commonly used in education and research projects, e.g. GANTT charts [1]. In 2022, we trialled a colourful ‘visual timeline’ for a submission of student coursework during year 1 medicine at the University of Bristol as an adjunct to written information. This encompassed all project stages, including embedded QR-codes linked directly to submission pages. In contrast to previous years, where there was considerable chasing required to achieve submission for all students, for the coursework with the visual timeline there were no late submissions, at either the planning or final submission stage. Whilst this data is only from a single cohort, this concept has worked so effectively we are hoping to expand it for other coursework.