Learning & Teaching within the Faculty
Here is an overview of the latest Faculty initiatives related to Learning & Teaching. If you would like more information about these and other L&T activities taking place within the Faculty, contact Peter Watts| who is currently taking over the role of L&T coordinator whilst Emilia Bertolo is away on maternity leave.
FACULTY NEWS
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The Teaching Excellence Awards recognise those individuals who have demonstrated that they support innovation in learning and teaching within their department, Faculty and across the institution.Two of the three University's Teaching Excellence Awards for 2009 are members of the Faculty: Kevin Carlton and Sarah Lieberman.
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The Assessment "swap shop" took place on the 21st of May: the swap shop was open to staff from across the university who are interested in sharing experiences of innovative forms of assessment. For more information contact Emilia Bertolo or Shauna Mccusker. Download the flier (PDF, 221 KB)
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The latest meeting of the Induction Forum took place on the 27th of May: the meeting focused on current examples of induction practice across different departments. The forum is open to staff and students from across the University. For more information contact Emilia Bertolo or Shauna Mccusker.
NATIONAL LEARNING AND TEACHING SEMINAR
Two members of the Department of Applied Social Sciences – Sarah Cant| and Peter Watts| - have won funding against high quality competition to run one of 17 national seminars in the Higher Education Academy's 2009 "Access and Success for All" series. This series will explore research, policies and practices currently making a positive contribution to student access, retention and success. Commended for their very impressive proposal, Peter and Sarah's seminar – entitled "Familiarity Breeds Contentment: enabling student transitions into HE through taking a holistic approach to programme delivery" - will focus on an initiative recently undertaken in the Sociology and Social Science Programme, in which sociological insights were used to develop holistic Level 1 learning and teaching practices. The aim was to promote retention and success through integrating induction into curriculum delivery. Following an outline of the intervention and the thinking behind it, their seminar will provide participants with the opportunity to debate the contemporary challenges facing HEIs in relation to transitions, the relevance of sociology to learning and teaching, and other initiatives and experiences in the sector. It will be held on October 14th this year.
RESEARCH INFORMED TEACHING CONFERENCE
The conference was comprised of a keynote, Professor Mick Healey, plus a number of parallel sessions of discussion papers and workshops. The conference themes included:
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Research-Teaching Linkages
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Research-based and Research Informed Teaching (RIT)
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Developing Students as Researchers
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Pedagogic Research
The conference was the culmination of a three-year initiative that encouraged the development of over 30 departmental based research projects into a range of aspects of teaching, learning and research. The conference provided an opportunity to share and discuss aspects of RIT with academics who are interested in the "scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL)".
The Faculty of Social and Applied Sciences was particularly well represented by Professor Mike Weed| (Dept. of Sport Science, Tourism and Leisure), Dr Leo Raznovich| (Dept. of Law and Criminal Justice Studies), Mr Denis Edgar-Nevill| (Dept. of Computing) and Dr Kevin Carlton| (Dept. of Geographical and Life Sciences).
Download a pdf| highlighting the key isues raised at the conference (PDF, 198 KB)
LIBRARIANS' INFORMATION LITERACY CONFERENCE (LILAC)
Lynne Burroughs (Faculty Liaison Librarian) attended the Librarians Information Literacy annual conference in April. Information literacy is defined by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information
Professionals (CILIP, 2004) as "knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, and how to communicate it in an ethical manner". A number of workshops outlined how Librarians and academics have worked together to help students obtain the information skills needed not only for their course but also to enable them to become lifelong learners. It was highlighted that students believed that they were adept at finding information but they only used limited resources (mainly internet sites) and did not possess the skills needed to critically evaluate the information they found. One of the challenges is to ensure students make effective use of the 'academic' resources available to them as well as the freely available resources.
Lynne hopes to be able to work with academic staff to incorporate some of these new approaches to library inductions and information skills workshops. The review of the Graduate Skills policy is an ideal opportunity to revisit information skills provision for students in the Faculty. The arrival of Augustine House Library and Learning Centre provides an ideal opportunity to utilise the resources and facilities to enable different approaches to learning.
Visit the LILAC website| (opens in a new window)
Visit the CILIP website| (opens in a new window)