We have developed a multidisciplinary module, Newcastle Universities Ageing Generations Education, in active collaboration with student interns and older members of the public. A major aim of the module is to challenge the de facto association of ageing with frailty and ensure learning is grounded in the realities of ageing in the community rather than solely reflecting research priorities of the university.

In December 2017, the HEA contacted the NUAGE team to present at the Impact of Teaching Excellence ANTF and HEA Excellence Awards Symposium, Manchester, jointly run with the Association of National Teaching Fellows. We were invited because we had been previous CATE finalists and we were asked to display the impact of the award on the institution, the community and us.

On the 21st March 2018, Luisa attended the symposium to present. This was a great opportunity to present our work and network within a community of other CATE finalists and National Teaching Fellows. We were fortunate in that a few clips of a video we were making of the NUAGE module had been shot and this allowed us to ‘take a couple of our older members of the public with us’ (albeit in video form) to share their thoughts on the module.

To finish the evening, Luisa headed back to Newcastle to join Ellen to host an LTHE Tweetchat #LTHEchat 108 where some delegates from the conference joined in further discussion about involving members of the public in teaching.

Another recent success of the NUAGE team comes from our student intern, Safiah Fardin, who has just recently had an abstract accepted to the BERA conference 2018 on ‘The value of student engagement in an innovative module about ageing – an undergraduate student’s perspective.’

We will attend a few more conferences this year and will hopefully be able to show our video in full so watch this space!

Luisa Wakeling, Ellen Tullo and Laura Greaves