Dr Smart is a senior academic in the Department of Learning and Teaching Enhancement at Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland, UK. It is a role in which she led a two year University initiative focused on a Programme Focused Approach to Assessment and Feedback. She continues to lead the University’s Higher Education Academy (HEA) Fellowship Scheme. Dr Smart is a HEA Accreditor and International Consultant, and enjoys in this role working with colleagues outside of the UK who are keen to enhance academic practice in students’ interests.

Dr Smart is the Vice Convenor of the Scottish Higher Education Developers group, a community of practice which brings together the 19 Universities in Scotland to explore and develop the role of the educational developer. In this role Dr Smart has forged links with the Educational Developers Caucus in Canada, enabling collaborative learning and debate. Dr Smart is one of the leads of an innovative approach which seeks to establish a global programme of learning for individuals coming into educational developer roles, or those who are early career in such positions. She presented to the International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED) in Cape Town, South Africa in November 2016 on the early stages of developing the programme. She is presenting again at the ICED Conference in Atlanta, Georgia in June 2018, this time reporting on data from the pilot phase of implementing the programme.

Dr Smart has a particular interest in arts based pedagogy and has developed an innovative approach which enables group reflection and learning called poetic transcription with a twist. Outside of work, Dr Smart lives in Dumfrieshire, in a rural location. She loves to garden, read and walk her dogs.