August will see the launch of a new series of seminars designed to support and complement other teaching-focused sessions within the Faculty. Held on the last Wednesday of the month, between 3-4pm, the one hour session is designed to promote discussion with time to share ideas as well as challenge all our personal perspectives on teaching and educationally related activities. The idea is to cover, over the coming year, as broad a range of topics as possible – anything from delivery, organisation, innovation, management and institutional practices across anything related to teaching & learning, education, training and educational research.

The format will challenge formulaic ways of thinking by adopting an innovative interactive approach: after a short presentation from a knowledgeable speaker the session will be open for discussion and the broadest range of perspectives sought. The mechanisms by which this will be done will be revealed in the session!  It should noisy. It should be engaging. It certainly won’t be boring. If you have a suggestion for what you would like to discuss or would like to offer your expert opinion  … don’t wait to be asked, please get in touch.

The series is called ‘What I mean when I say…’. The first session will be held on the 31st August, focusing on a topic important to all on T&S contract – ‘Scholarship’.

Hope to see you there.

Dr Jane Stewart,  Associate Dean (Quality Assurance and Enhancement), Jane.stewart@newcastle.ac.uk

4 April, 10-3.00 in Room 2.22 the Research Beehive

You are invited to a seminar on 4 April, 10-3.00 in the Research Beehive. The seminar will be led by Sue Robson and Alina Schartner from the Teaching and Learning in HE Research Group in ECLS, and Professor Marilia Morosini and colleagues from PUCRS

The seminar will address the following key questions:

• In an era of globalisation, how can HE institutions maximise opportunities to provide an internationalised university experience for home and international students from all socio-economic backgrounds?

• How can HE internationalisation be conceptualised in educational, social, cultural and experiential rather than economic terms?
• How can HE institutions promote a high quality, equitable and global learning experience for all students, including the non-mobile majority?

The seminar theme will allow participants from NU and PUCRS to analyse and critique existing conceptualisations of HE internationalisation at individual and institutional levels, leading to fresh perspectives on pedagogy, curriculum and international graduate competences.  The seminar is intended be the first step towards the formation of a joint UK-Brazil research and practice network on inclusive and values-based HE internationalisation. They will act as a forum for multidisciplinary dialogue and help to identify network partners and themes of mutual interest for collaborative enquiry.

To register for the seminar, please email Kate.Dixon@ncl.ac.uk

Assessing student learning in Higher Education: the potential of alternative methods

Wednesday 28 October, 16.30-18.00

Dr Clara Pereira Coutinho, Center for Child Studies Minho University  – Braga – Portugal.

Within the context of change in Higher Education, there is growing recognition of the importance of assessment as a key factor for quality teaching and learning and academic achievement. Existing international literature points to the need to examine further the impact of different methods, especially the so called alternative methods, for students’ learning and achievement as well as for teaching methods in classroom, as evidence of their effectiveness is still scarce. Also of importance is the need to

better understand the ways in which different methods of assessment lead to different learning approaches and academic achievement. Earlier work has shown that assessment plays a key role on how students spend their time and what they regard as important, and this can have either positive or negative influences on their learning. This is even more crucial at a time of great pressure and change upon Higher Education institutions, resulting from the Bologna process which emphasises the need

for a more student centred paradigm, one which recognises the need for independent learning and development of both technical and soft skills. Within this context, it is essential to get to know what has changed in higher education in terms of teaching and learning and, especially in terms of assessment and feedback, as these have implications for the development of teaching learning process and academic achievement. Literature has also highlighted that more empirical work is needed in order to provide sufficient data to develop a comparative profile of assessment practices used in HE institutions in different courses and different countries. The main goal of this project is then to examine what is known and what needs to be known in this regard by exploring the questions that remain answered. In this seminar we will present the state of the art on this issue, combining a review of existing literature on the use of different methods and perspectives to explore assessment in HE in order to identify and disseminate best practices, in particular those involving ICT.

Key Words: Higher Education, Assessment, Alternative Methods, ICT.

To register for the seminar please email sue.robson@ncl.ac.uk

The School of Medical Education Research Forum 2016 will take place on 23rd June 2016. Please hold the date in your diaries. For more information please contact sonia.bussey@ncl.ac.uk directly.