Author: Kirsten McKay Bounford
Does anyone else have imposter syndrome?
I’d never presented at a learning and teaching conference before. For the past couple of years, I’d attended these events as a curious observer, interested in the themes and hot topics, but feeling very much on the sidelines. This year, however, I found myself stepping into a different role as a presenter at the 19th Annual University of Glasgow Learning & Teaching Conference. Instead of excitement, what I mostly felt was apprehension, and, at times, outright panic. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried, and I want to reflect here on why.
I presented some SoTL work that had begun during my PGCert in Academic Practice training. I am a teaching-focussed academic on a postgraduate MSc in Medical Genetics and Genomics. As part of my role, I provide and supervise dissertation projects, and I wanted to make sure the projects I suggested and supervised were of a high standard and aligned with the interests and requirements of the students (Taylor, 2019). I designed and carried out a small exploratory study with three former students to understand their reasons for choosing certain projects, and their experiences of those projects. I then widened the study to survey my whole class about their reasons for choosing certain dissertation topics. As my training has always been in the STEM subjects, I had a lot of faith in my quantitative survey questions, thinking that I just needed more responses to produce clear answers (De Vaus et al., 2008). However, the most interesting details came in the free text boxes, where a couple of comments got me questioning why we do things like we do (Braun & Clarke 2006).
The theme of the conference was ‘Inclusive education in a changing environment’ and I surprised myself by having something to say on this subject. A lot of work has been done to make higher education more inclusive and accessible to students with a range of circumstances (University of Glasgow, 2026), however in the area of how dissertation projects are allocated amongst students on my programme, I found evidence that processes could be improved. I discussed the current process with student volunteers, and we co-created a list of recommendations for improvements. These included:
- ensure project descriptions are up to date and accurate,
- include practical information about location and hours of work,
- include scope for flexible working accommodations,
- linking to informative sources of information (websites, reviews etc) rather than detailed technical papers
- providing a named contact for queries,
- allocating sufficient time allocated for students to consider options and make choices.
I recorded my presentation in advance, and then on the day of the conference, I attended to answer questions. There were comments and questions about how I am planning to take this forward, and how this might be interesting for other areas of the University. This was lovely, because inherent in the questions was the implication that this work was interesting and valid. I realised that my apprehension stemmed from a lack of confidence that my work was ‘enough’ to share. I am now planning to spread my findings via SoTL networks and attend more conferences this summer.
One of the most valuable lessons of this experience was realising that work which feels small or obvious to us can still be meaningful to others. For those experiencing similar feelings of impostor syndrome, I hope my experience highlights that even small-scale work can make a valuable contribution. My main advice to colleagues who are new to SoTL, or still trying to find their niche, would be to start with something familiar, something you care about, or something that has always been done in a certain way. And do not worry about sharing what you find. The SoTL community is generous and supportive, and, as I discovered at this conference, it offers not only constructive feedback but the opportunity to build new, positive working relationships.
References
- Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) ‘Using thematic analysis in psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp. 77-101
- De Vaus, D., Petri, P. A., Kidd, S. and Shaw, D. (2008) ‘Constructing questionnaires’, Surveys In Social Research. London: Taylor & Francis, pp. 93-120.
- Taylor, S. (2019) Good supervisory practice framework. UK Council for Graduate Education.
- The University of Glasgow Learning & Teaching Strategy 2021-25 (accessed March 2026). https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/learningandteaching/about/strategy/