Dr Paul Jones, Associate Dean for Education and Student Experience, Aston Business School, reflects on why universities may have become too focused on designing learning, and not focused enough on helping students weave together the experiences that shape who they become. 

Higher education has become exceptionally good at designing the mechanics of learning. We carefully map curricula, align learning outcomes, sequence modules, assure academic standards and continually refine our approaches to teaching and assessment. These things matter. They provide the intellectual rigour that defines a university education and should remain central to what we do. 

Yet during a presentation at Advance HE’s Teaching and Learning Conference 2026, I found myself asking a different question: what if we have become so focused on designing learning that we have paid less attention to designing the student journey itself? 

The presentation explored two ideas that I believe deserve greater attention. The first was belonging: helping students feel part of an academic community from the moment they arrive. The second was becoming: recognising that students leave university not only with new knowledge, but as different people from those who first walked through our doors. 

Following the session, someone asked whether the bookends I used to show the faltering start and end of the student journey were connected. It was an excellent challenge because the beginning and the end only matter because of everything that happens between them. That conversation stayed with me long after the conference had finished. 

Initially, I imagined the student journey as being connected by a golden thread, or even a guide rope, stretching from arrival to graduation. The more I reflected, however, the more I realised that the metaphor wasn’t quite right. If the guide rope already exists and students simply follow it, then learning becomes a journey someone else has designed. Higher education is far richer, and far messier, than that. 

Instead, I began to think about the guide rope as something students create for themselves. 

Every lecture, seminar, difficult conversation, disappointing mark, friendship, success and moment of uncertainty contributes another strand. Individually, these experiences can seem disconnected. Over time, however, students can begin to weave them together into something that helps them understand not only what they have learned, but who they are becoming. 

Eventually, the guide rope students have woven becomes a lifeline. 

Belonging as heartbeat, becoming as weaving 

Thinking about the journey in this way changes how we understand belonging. Belonging is not simply another initiative or a metric linked to student satisfaction. It is the heartbeat of the educational experience. Feeling accepted within a learning community gives students the confidence to ask difficult questions, take intellectual risks, recover from setbacks and continue moving forward when the path becomes uncertain. 

If belonging provides the heartbeat, then becoming is the weaving. 

Students are not simply accumulating knowledge. They are gradually constructing identity. Every challenge overcome, every assumption questioned and every new perspective encountered becomes another thread woven into their understanding of themselves and the world around them. The degree certificate may recognise academic achievement, but it cannot fully capture the person who has emerged through that journey. 

This is why we need to rebalance where we invest our educational effort. Universities have rightly focused on designing curriculum, assessment and academic content, but these are only part of the student experience. We should place equal care into helping students belong at the beginning of their journey and recognise their becoming at the end. The curriculum remains essential, but it sits within a much broader process of personal and intellectual development. 

AI as reflective companion 

Artificial intelligence also takes on a rather different role within this way of thinking. Much of the public conversation has centred on AI as a generator of content or a challenge to assessment. While those discussions are important, I wonder whether AI’s greatest educational contribution lies elsewhere. 

Rather than producing work for students, AI can become a conversational partner that helps students notice the threads of their experience and connect them into a more coherent story of growth. It can ask questions that encourage students to connect experiences across modules, reflect on moments of uncertainty, recognise changes in their thinking and identify patterns in their development. The technology is not weaving the lifeline. The student is. AI can support the weaving by making it visible. 

This moves us beyond reflection as an activity that happens at the end of a programme. Instead, students can develop an ongoing reflexive narrative, noticing their growth while it is taking place rather than attempting to reconstruct it months later. By the time they graduate, they have not simply completed a degree; they have woven a lifeline that helps them understand where they have been and gives them confidence to navigate whatever comes next. 

The lifeline beyond graduation 

Perhaps that is one of the most important responsibilities of higher education. Not simply to help students acquire knowledge, but to help them make sense of the experiences that shape them. Universities cannot weave the lifeline for students, but they can create the conditions in which it is woven: communities where belonging flourishes, learning experiences worth connecting, opportunities for dialogue and spaces where students are encouraged to recognise their own development. 

Degrees eventually end. The lifeline does not. 

Perhaps the greatest legacy of higher education is not simply what students know when they leave. It is the strength of the lifeline they have woven, and the confidence it gives them to continue learning, adapting and becoming long after graduation. 

How might your institution create more opportunities for students to weave together the experiences that shape who they are becoming?

Dr Paul Jones is Associate Dean for Education and Student Experience at Aston Business School, Aston University. His work explores rethinking learning in the age of artificial intelligence, exploring how psychology, philosophy and educational design can support belonging, critical thinking and lifelong becoming.