Innovative Approaches to Student Engagement
These resources are concerned with undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in higher education in all disciplines and aim to:
- identify and examine some of the factors that impact on student engagement - both positively and negatively
- share experiences of novel attempts at promoting student engagement
- explore the potential for radically new strategies to promote student engagement
- Workshop activities will include presentations and opportunities for discussion
Practice and Evidence of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
Journal covering topics such as;
- Postgraduates as teachers: exploring expectations and highlighting disciplinary differences
- porting the postgraduate demonstrator: Embedding development opportunities into the day job
- Future-proofing university teaching: An Australian case study of postgraduate teacher preparation
GoAnimate is a tool which can be used for free to allow students and teachers to produced short 30 second animations. Julie Hulme Discipline Lead for Psychology has created this animation on using this tool for assessment with your students.
These resources look at top tips for successful publication including picking the right outlet following guidelines planning communicating with large audiences of informed and interested peers and moving from an idea to a clear and well thought-out proposal.
Getting started in pedagogical research
The attached resources are aimed at staff from STEM Subjects interested in developing their teaching activities and their understanding of student learning with a view to research leading to publication. The resources will provide users with an opportunity to consider educational (pedagogic) research in a scientific context and how this relates to their own practice. A workshop based on the resources could include a mixture of presentations and opportunities for discussion including the opportunity for individuals to share early experiences of venturing into the educational research and publication arena and gain advice.
Applying for Funding rousources outline a session advising academic staff on applying for funding to include:
- When should I apply for funding?
- Sources of support
- Who will offer funding
- Where to look to find information about funding
- How to write a grant proposal
- Eligibility criteria for research funding
- Learning from rejection.
How to avoid plagiarism’ information provided by universities often focuses on the type of coursework more often associated with non-scientific courses and frequently STEM students do not see the relevance to their own work. The concept of plagiarism is vastly different between a subject in which is assessment is essay based and one where code/calculations and formulas is the assessment currency. This resources explore ethical misconduct by examining:
- Unintentional plagiarism
- Copying others’ work without proper acknowledgment
- Deception about ownership of the material
- Self-plagiarism
- Plagiarism of ideas
- Contract cheating
Using problem/enquiry based learning to engage students
These resources are to guide for facilitator to direct a Enquiry Based Learning Workshop lasting around 4 hours where participants work in groups taking an enquiry-led approach to the workshop
A workshop for lecturers learning developers and other professionals in higher education
Defining critical thinking (hereafter CT) is notoriously complex and a great deal has been written on the subject. It is widely acknowledged that CT is an essential aspect of university education – in fact some maintain that it is the defining characteristic of higher education (see Ronald Barnett’s 1997 book Higher Education: A Critical Business for example). CT is also widely felt to be necessary for informed citizenship and for employment (see for example the 2003 Scottish report “Higher Education: Higher Ambitions”; and Brown Hesketh and Williams’ paper also from 2003: ‘Employability in a knowledge-driven economy’.)
These workshop resources aim to provide an opportunity for participants to explore critical thinking both from a general and theoretical point of view and in practical ways to explore how it relates to the work of lecturers own work with students in STEM subjects.
Using Web 2.0 tools to engage students
The workshop uses the term ‘social media’ to refer to Internet services where the online content is generated by the users of the service. Although there are other synonymous terms for such services (Web 2.0 participatory media etc.) for consistency this session will use the terms social media (to describe the phenomenon) or social tools (to describe the technologies). Each of the following sections includes a short discussion links to published materials and pedagogical prompts:
- Why use social media in education?
- Understanding the mind-set - how do people use social tools?
- Assessment
- Best practice for using social tools
Reflective writing or writing about one’s personal experiences of learning is appearing more and more often as a requirement of Higher Education courses and in the professional regulatory procedures for many scientific and technical careers. These resources are designed to introduce the concept of reflective writing in the context of scientific and technical disciplines: the Higher Education STEM subjects . You will have an opportunity to explore the potential advantages and disadvantages of including structured reflection as a formal part of your students’ tuition clarify some settings in which it might be appropriate and consider the practicalities of delivery. After experimenting with it you might want to try reflective writing as part of your own personal development.
The Sustainable Practitioner
Part 1
Part 2
Sustainable Development has been on the agenda in education for a number of years with international and national drivers to encourage and promote the inclusion of material. However take up and engagement by practitioners in Higher Education has been somewhat fragmented.
These materials aim to:
• support staff development of STEM staff with respect to Sustainable Development;
• make participants aware of the background to Sustainable Development;
• to highlight the emphasis and role of Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education and in particular the relevance of this to STEM subjects;
• to provide case studies and examples of how Sustainable Development can be incorporated into participants’ own teaching;
• to introduce some resources available to assist participants in including Sustainable Development.
Particular learning outcomes are:
• to understand the definition of sustainable development;
• to appreciate the role of Education for Sustainable Development;
• to understand the role of Higher Education in promulgating Sustainable Development