Personalised Learning Competencies Pilot
What is this Personalised Learning Competencies pilot?
As part of the PSYC6501 intensive, you will be participating in a one-week pilot of a new tool called Personalised Learning Competencies (PLC).
The University of Newcastle is actively exploring how artificial intelligence can be used responsibly to support learning, teaching, and professional development.
This means trialling new approaches in a careful and transparent way, where student experience, academic integrity, and ethical use remain central. The current focus is on how AI can support reflection, learning processes, and capability development within existing courses.
Your participation in this pilot forms part of that broader approach. It is a small, time-limited trial designed to learn what works well, what needs improvement, and how AI-supported tools might be used appropriately in the future.
The purpose of this pilot is to trial a simple way of supporting short daily reflection and to explore how professional and practice-based competencies are covered across the course. Your participation will help inform whether this approach is useful for students and teachers in the future.
Important information:
- This is not an assessment
- Your feedback at the end of the week will help shape next steps
- It does not contribute to your grade
- It does not replace any Canvas submissions
- It is an expected part of this intensive, designed to be quick and low effort
Answers to common questions
The pilot runs for the one week of the PSYC6501 intensive only. You will complete a short activity at the end of each teaching day, starting on Day 1 (30th January)
Each day, you will complete one short reflection activity linked to thetopic(s) covered that day. It should only take around 5 minutes.
These reflections are designed to help you:
- Pause and consolidate learning from the day
- Capture insights while they are fresh
- Reflect on professional and practice-related skills.
There are no right or wrong answers. This is about reflection and your learning. It also allows teaching staff to see, at a class level, how well topics are being understood as the intensive progresses.
As part of the pilot, you may see references to competencies within the tool.
Competencies are measured across an entire degree, not within a single course. For this small pilot, you don’t need to focus on whether a competency is “achieved”. The visibility of competencies helps teachers confirm that the course content supports required professional capabilities.
The tool uses an AI-supported reflection guide to help structure your thinking.
This means:
- The AI may prompt you with reflection questions
- There is no single “correct” response
- It may help you explore ideas or clarify your thinking
- You always write in your own words
- The AI provides guidance, not answers
You can access the tool here: Personalised Learning Competencies Pilot
You will also see a link in your PSYC6501 Canvas course which will take you to the PLC tool. You simply need to use your University login to access the tool.
If you have any questions, whether it be about the tool or the activities, please contact your course coordinator, Ben Britton.
At the end of the intensive, you will be invited to provide quick feedback on:
- How easy the tool was to use
- What worked well or could be improved
- Whether the reflections felt useful
Your feedback is a key part of this pilot and will directly inform whether and how this approach is used in the future.
Thank you for taking part
We appreciate you engaging with this pilot during an already intensive week. The intention is to keep this simple, short, and supportive, while giving both students and teachers useful insights into learning and professional capability development.
The University of Newcastle acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands within our footprint areas: Awabakal, Darkinjung, Biripai, Worimi, Wonnarua, and Eora Nations. We also pay respect to the wisdom of our Elders past and present.