Ruth Valentine presented a poster at the North East Regional Three Rivers Conference in March, titled ‘Ensuring fairness in group work assessment: an online tool to facilitate engagement and interaction’. The poster came from a project funded by the ULTSEC innovation fund in 2014. Collaborators were Simon Cotterill, N Gallagher (student) and D Mall (student).

Patrick Rozencrantz  presented a poster at the Teaching Institute of the International Convention for Psychological Science 2015 (ICPS2015) in March 2015.  The poster was about the second cycle of some action research around teaching psychological research methods currently being carried out with colleagues Amy Fielden and Effy Tzemou in the School of Psychology.

ASME’s Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) will be held at BT Murrayfield, Edinburgh this year between the 14th July (preconference workshops) and Friday 17th July. The ASM conference is one of the most friendly and inclusive meetings I have ever been to so even if you are going alone, it’s unlikely you’ll stay that way.

For those who have not been before the conference has different strands of activity covering educator development, leadership, research, psychometrics and technology enhanced learning to name but a few. There are also separate events designed specifically for students and trainees as well as teachers /educationalist, developers, programme leads and researchers. Although it is a medical education event you’ll find its contents are relevant to everyone who is interested in education or teaching pre or postgraduates.

This year there are three very varied pre-conference workshops to sign up for: Change, Adaptive Leadership and Management, Creating innovative, fun and engaging online content: navigating the e-learning minefield and Conducting Medical Education Research. The attendance numbers for these workshops are restricted so if interested do get these booked as soon as possible.

The main conference starts on Wednesday morning running over two and a half days. You can buy attendance for a day or two day or the whole event. If you want to go but can only attend for one day I would recommend you look at the website to see what would best suit your interests. The days are usually structured around an early key-note speaker(s), presentations by those receiving awards, intra-conference workshops (a particularly good range of these on Thursday) as well as parallel sessions where delegates present their studies and posters available for perusal. One of the most popular sessions in the past has been the ‘What’s Hot’ event that showcases innovation and creativity across the UK and beyond – I would highly recommend it.

If you’d like any further information about ASME, its awards, bursaries or conferences, please contact jane.stewart@ncl.ac.uk.

Jane Stewart, Chair of ASME’s Education Research Group, School of Medical Education

Sociology at Newcastle University will be hosting a Symposium on the 25th September 2015 that will look at  the question of ‘student engagement’ in the context of recent reforms in Higher Education. Should be interesting. Further information is available from the School website.