We are approaching the end of another academic year and the programme of events and activities for the ERDP Unit.  So, first of all I would like to thank everybody who has contributed to our events programme through presentations at Journal Clubs, presenting at or helping to organise Faculty Learning and Teaching Fora or in any other ways including simply attending events.  The strength of the Unit is very much dependent upon the contributions from its members and I am pleased that people are so willing to give up time to contribute to or help organise events and also that attendance at our events remains so strong.  Next year sees the introduction of a new series of seminars organised by Jane Stewart “What I mean when I say”.  These seminars promise to be engaging with plenty of active discussion.  If you have ideas for future topics Jane will be pleased to hear from you.

Another way members of the Unit have been contributing is by sending us well-framed and focussed applications for funding from our ERDP small grants scheme.  We were very pleased at the high standards of the applications received in the last round and look forward to hearing from the successful applicants as they progress their projects.  We were also pleased to be able to fund requests for funding for Study Visits including requests for travel to Complutense University, Madrid Dental School and Harvard Medical School and we wish all our Study Visit applicants fruitful and stimulating trips.

As you can see from other reports in this newsletter projects already funded are starting to bear fruit.  We do encourage successful applicants to disseminate the results of their work in appropriate ways.  This could simply be by presentation at a local event but it could also involve presentation at external events or through publication and we are very keen that applicants take every opportunity to publish externally.  This will help you by telling the outside world what you are doing, helping you to develop external learning and teaching networks and it will also raise the profile of the Faculty as a centre of teaching excellence.  Several people have sent us details of recent publications and I would ask everybody who succeeds in getting work published in L&T Journals to let us know so that we can showcase your work.  Just send the details to fms.educational.research@newcastle.ac.uk.

We are also approaching the time of summer conferences and so if you are going to any event this summer and can spare the time please write us a short meeting report highlighting what you felt were the key contributions at your conference and what you learnt from attending.

One final point about dissemination and that is to draw your attention to the BERA blog.  This is a great way to let people in the education field know about what you are doing and Rachel Lofthouse in ECLS will be glad to advise you if you are thinking of posting something here.

Let me end by wishing everybody a good summer.  These days summer vacations seem to be filled with ever more activities beyond the UCAS results being announced in mid-August but I hope you will all be able to make time for enough annual leave to recharge batteries in time for the start of another academic year.

Prof Steve McHanwell, Director, FMS Unit for ERDP

Prof Janice Ellis (SDS) and Daniel Mall, a 4th year BDS student were interviewed by Hazel Davis for the spring 2016 issue of BDJ Student.  Although the interviews were done independently, both focussed on the same positive theme of how passionate and engaged our staff are and how there is a real sense of community within the School of Dentistry here at Newcastle. All positive stuff!

If you have a log in you can read the full article via https://bdjstudent.co.uk/

If you are engaged in research or enquiry related to education you might be interested in contributing to the British Educational Research Association multi-authored blog.  You can find the link at https://www.bera.ac.uk/blog.

As one of the blog editors I am a strong advocate of this forum as a means of scholarly communication and would be happy to talk to anyone who might be tempted to write for us. If you take a look at a few blog posts you will realise that they are diverse in style, theme and authorship.

At present Newcastle University’s ECLS is one of the best represented academic schools on the BERA blog, with posts from both staff and students.  Our presence in this social media has supported our profile, with colleagues being asked to keynote or join research activities as a result. Sometimes our blogs have been summaries of published papers, sometimes they are part of the writing process for new papers, and sometimes they have simply allowed us to ‘get it out there’ – when an idea seems critical and could be shared.

The following examples illustrate some of the types of blog that you might feel able to write:

• discuss research methods and methodology
• disseminate research outcomes of funded and unfunded research
• offer thematic commentaries pulling together expertise from both teaching and research
• distil key research findings from PhDs
• ask the big questions affecting our disciplines

So – what about you?

There are several aspects of work that would be relevant.  As indicated above we are interested in posts related to research methods. Could you capture approaches that you have used to research pedagogy, curriculum or student experience? We are interested in issues pertinent to Higher Education, and more discussion around professional education, internationalisation or the impact of policy changes in H.E., for example, would be welcomed. We are interested in research related to innovation as well as the continual knotty issues such as technology enhanced learning, feedback, meeting student expectations.

Each blog post is a maximum of 750 words, they can be single or co-authored and can be re-published on your own blog sites (personal or institutional) under the Creative Commons agreement and I can advise on drafts as well as be your gatekeeper to the editorial review team.  Why not give it a go? And if nothing else please remind Steve McHanwell that he keeps promising me a submission!

Dr Rachel Lofthouse, ECLS, Rachel.Lofthouse@ncl.ac.uk

We’re pleased to announce that the following projects have been funded in the latest ERDP Development Grant call.

Graduate School

‘Introduction and evaluation of voice thread software in facilitating student feedback in 3 online masters programmes’ Dr Jenny Yeo, Mrs Lynne Rawles, Miss Eleanor Lockheart, Miss Victoria Petrie.

School of Biomedical Sciences

‘Inclusive research with students and members of the public: How can we best evaluate innovative teaching about ageing?’ Dr Ellen Tullo, Dr Laura Greaves, Dr Luisa Wakeling, Prof Rose Gilroy.

School of Dental Sciences

‘A study visit to develop teaching teeth carving to enhance the learning of tooth morphology for dental students’ Dr Bana Abdulmohsen.

‘Scoping Exercise to develop a 3-D printing facility within the School of Dental Sciences’ Dr Iad Gharib, Dr James Field, Dr Simon Stone, Dr Andrew Keeling (Leeds), Mrs Cecilie Osnes, (Leeds), Dr Graham Davis (Queen Mary).

‘Developing public engagement in the quality assurance of teaching programmes’ Dr Janice Ellis, Mrs Zoe Freeman, Dr Richard Holmes, Dr Paula Waterhouse, Dr Sarah Rolland.

‘Leading the pan-European development of curricula within Dental Sciences’ Dr James Field, Professor Damien Walmsley (ADEE), Professor Andreas Schulte (Organisation for Caries Research), Professor Julia Davies, (Malmo University), Professor Cristina Manzanares Cespedes (University of Barcelona), Professor Corrado Paganelli (University of Brescia).

‘What are the benefits of a UK-USA educational initiative and visit programme for dental students?’ Dr Richard Holmes & Dr Paula Waterhouse.

School of Medical Education

‘Longitudinal integrated medical student placements: A study visit to Harvard medical school to inform the new Newcastle medical school curriculum’ Dr Hugh Alberti & Dr Steve Jones.

‘The Research Journey: using digistories to unveil the hidden process’ Dr Laura Delgaty, Mrs Lynne Rawles, Mr Marc Bennett, Ms Linda Errington, Mrs Erika Gavillet.

What route has your career taken to get you where you are today?

I first moved to Newcastle as a new post-doc, setting up a molecular biology lab for the university spin-out company, Novocastra Laboratories. I then moved to an RA post in the Department of Virology on an MRC training fellowship and later to a senior RA post in the musculoskeletal group. During this 12 year period I had my 3 children and worked part-time after the arrival of number two.  As time went on I came to realise that the part of my job I enjoyed the most was teaching and mentoring younger students in the lab and I started to take on some undergraduate seminars as well.  I was on the verge of leaving academia altogether and retraining as a school teacher when a teaching-focussed lectureship came up in the School of Biomedical Sciences – I applied and was appointed along with Chris Baldwin in 2006.  It was the best move of my career!  I’ve found teaching hugely enjoyable and rewarding and love the infinite variety of the job.  I became steadily more involvement in administration and management of the programmes, including becoming Senior Tutor and chairing the exam boards, and was promoted to senior lecturer in 2009.  I went on to become Deputy Head of School before being appointed as Head of School in August 2015.

What do you find most challenging about working in HE learning and teaching?

Finding time to think! From speaking to colleagues in the Faculty, across the university and from other HE institutions it’s clear that we’re all experiencing increasing demands on our time.  The increase in student numbers, levels of student expectation and associated admin have all contributed to this and it can be tricky to protect time to develop new ideas and give some thought to scholarship of learning and teaching.  I’ve tackled this recently by taking part in the EquATE programme – a cross-faculty programme facilitated by colleagues in the Research Centre for Learning and Teaching (CfLaT). The Equate days have created much needed space in my diary to focus on an educational research project and have also led to collaboration with Sue Thorpe in the School of Psychology, who’s brought a new dimension and expertise to the project.

What’s the best thing you’ve been involved in since you started working with Newcastle University?

I particularly enjoyed being involved in development of Personal Tutoring across the university. One of my first roles in the school was to act as a Phase 1 adviser, providing back-up for the personal tutoring system.  At the time this role was fairly novel in the university and, when Personal tutoring was identified as an area for development in the 2009 QAA Institutional Audit, I was invited to join a working group to review university Personal Tutoring policy.  Tutoring practice varied enormously across the university and one product of the working group was the Personal Tutoring Framework, which outlined minimum expectations for tutors and tutees.  I also worked with colleagues in the Student Wellbeing service to develop Personal Tutor training and have helped to facilitate training workshops for CASAP and SDU since then.

What’s the wisest piece of advice you’ve received from a mentor or colleague?

Don’t send an email when you’re angry – sleep on it!

What’s your top educational research interest

I’ve previously published on the use of attendance monitoring to identify students who are becoming disengaged and using this as a trigger for proactive intervention. More recently I’ve started investigating the extent to which students are distracted from study by social media use and strategies which they use to control this distraction.  I have to confess to often fighting the compulsion to “phone check”, so I became intrigued as whether today’s students, most of whom who can text faster than I can speak, deal better with this distraction than I do.  Previous studies have shown both negative and positive correlations between frequency of social media use and academic performance, depending on how the social media is being used.  I would love to know how we can enable students to avoid the distracting aspects of social media (when studying) so that they can reap the potential benefits.

If you could have dinner with 3 famous people from history who would they be?

Much easier to answer from the living – but if pushed I’ll go with Jane Austen, Freddie Mercury and Mozart. With plenty of wine.  I bet it wouldn’t be dull!

Dr Debbie Bevitt, Head of School of Biomedical Sciences

From the 19th to the 27th May 2016, six American dental students from Indiana University School of Dentistry (IUSD) joined their six Newcastle dental student ‘buddies’ to dip their toes (some may say, sink their teeth) into the life of a dental student at Newcastle University.

This is the first time within any university in UK and US where dental students have been involved in exchange activities.

Attracted by our established and vibrant oral health education outreach programme across Newcastle (led by Drs Paula Waterhouse and Richard Holmes), the visitors worked in partnership with their Newcastle buddies and immersed themselves into planning and providing oral health education to various community groups including schools, care homes and drop-in centres to support asylum seekers and homeless adults. They also experienced ‘a week in the life of a Newcastle Dental student’ by shadowing student and staff treatment clinics and technique courses. The students were encouraged to reflect upon and compare the US healthcare system with that of the UK and to understand the role played by our local City Council and Community Dental Services in ensuring oral health education reaches the communities most in need.

As part of our students’ elective studies, this innovative new programme endeavours to deliver the 6 Newcastle students on a reciprocal visit to Indiana in July 2017; building on trans-Atlantic friendships and experiences. Accompanying the students were two academic colleagues from IUSD providing a unique opportunity to forge clinical educational collaboration and educational research collaboration between our respective institutions.

The feedback has been enormously positive from both the staff and the students but may be summarised by a comment from their staff leads Drs Stuart Schrader and Joan Kowolik, “our students had a wonderful time and the experience was absolutely transformative”.

Dr Paula Waterhouse, School of Dental Sciences

Image legend: Newcastle and Indiana students celebrating a successful week of collaborative learning.