Session 2.1: How to session
‘Take a walk on the flip side’ – how to effectively incorporate flipped learning into undergraduate and vocational teaching
Law
Gareth Bramley, Rachel Cooper and Paula Hatton, University of Sheffield
This session aims to set out how flipped learning can be effectively incorporated into higher education teaching specifically vocational and undergraduate teaching.
The session draws upon specific examples of flipped learning on the Legal Practice Course and LLB law degree at the University of Sheffield setting out the methods and practices used to design effective flipped learning. The session also highlights the benefits and challenges for both staff and students of incorporating flipped learning into modes of study drawing on feedback provided by the staff that developed the teaching and the students that took part in the teaching.
The objective of this session is to highlight how innovative teaching practices can be implemented into teaching and to give specific examples of how flipped learning can encourage engagement and deep learning for students
Session 2.2: Paper presentation
Institutional change and academic culture: a framework and principles-led approach to designing programme level assessment
Sociology
Jessica Evans, The Open University
The HE sector seeks to support a more cohesive and holistic student experience (Harvey and Kosman 2014) but the creation of frameworks and policies to support this on the ground can bring about sharp encounters with the practices of individual course and module teams. This paper describes a major Faculty of Social Sciences scholarship-based change project that created an innovative set of policies and principles for assessment for a curriculum spanning ten programmes in social sciences and psychology.
The paper describes the need process and the outcome of the project reflecting in particular on the obstacles encountered proposing that the conceptual formulations and principles of such an assessment policy must create coherence yet needs to be workable within a modular structure and not restrict each programme's distinctiveness. Furthermore it stresses how sustainable changes in teaching and learning rests on an understanding of and changes to organisational contexts and structures.
Session 2.3: How to session
Live lecture recordings – distraction or enhancement tool for on-campus students?
Law
Thorsten Lauterbach and Eric Ogilvie-Brown, Robert Gordon University
The session aims at showcasing the non-intrusive qualities (both from a student and staff perspective) of a particular software package when recording ‘live’ lectures and presentations. It seeks to challenge a number of negative perceptions and highlight the enhancement opportunities to teaching and learning as well as student retention.
Session 2.4: Paper presentation
Personalising work-based learning for a mass market
Business & Management
Madeleine Jarvis and Jeremy Peach, University of Chester
The benefits to student employability of work based learning are well documented (e.g. Harvey et al 1997 Johnson and Burden 2003). Formal work based placements as part of the curriculum offer experiential learning opportunities including skill development and are arguably easier to ‘control’ than ad-hoc or extra-curricular work experience. However to offer a curriculum embedded work based experience is fraught with quality and delivery challenges (see Boud 1998). This presentation explores these opportunities and challenges in relation to the university-wide Work Based Learning module compulsory for all Level 5 students at the University of Chester. In doing so it draws from student employer and staff perspectives to offer insights into promoting student work-readiness across diverse disciplines industries and pedagogic approaches in social science teaching.
Session 2.5: Paper presentation
Facebook: one faculty’s attempt to enhance student engagement
Economics
George Callaghan and Ian Fribbance, The Open University
Social media tools such as Facebook are commonplace throughout society. However within educational environments such networking tools are still in the developmental stage. This session will describe and examine case study data from the Open University’s Faculty of Social Science Facebook page. It will give an overview of the literature surrounding social media in higher education before looking at how the Social Science Faculty at the Open University has used Facebook to help build an academic community. Data will include numerical information on number of fans demographic data on students who use the page and more qualitative extracts from postings around academic issues. We will also discuss challenges and difficulties with using such social media tools in a university environment and suggest fruitful areas for future research.
Session 2.6: How to presentation
Transforming in-class teaching into out-class interactive activities within a flipped classroom approach
Interdisciplinary
Emma Senior and Mark Telford, Northumbria University
The main aim of the session is to explore how in-class theory based teaching can be transformed into an out-class student centered interactive approach to innovative learning.
The learning objectives are to:
- explore the interactive teaching materials designed for a module within an undergraduate healthcare programme
- will critique the interactive teaching materials and consider their application to their teaching practice.
Session 2.7. Paper presentation
‘Room for Imagination’: Audio-visual assessments and active learning in critical security studies
Politics
Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik and Sarah Hayes, Aston University
We discuss the adoption of audio-visual assessments as an innovative alternative to essays fostering active learning. We explore how this ties in to the aesthetic turn in international relations and contrast this with forms of representation that have dominated this scholarship. To provide students with the opportunity to explore their own insights through aesthetic ad non-written formats we describe how student groups were asked to record short audio or video projects. We explain how these projects are understood to be deeply embedded in social science methodologies citing inspiration from The Sociological Imagination (C Wright Mills 1959) as a way to counterbalance the marketisation of HE in a global economy where students are often encouraged to consume rather than produce knowledge. Finally we draw conclusions in terms of deeper forms of student engagement leading to new ways of thinking and presenting new skills and new connections between theory and practice.
