ULTSEC Innovation Fund Dates Announced

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The submission dates for ULTSEC Innovation Fund have been announced for 2016/17.

Responsive

Autumn – Monday 7th November 2016

Spring – Monday 10th April 2017

Summer – Friday 26th May 2017

Strategic

Semester 1 – Friday 20th January 2017

Semester 2 – Friday 26th May 2017

We will be running some webinars and workshops which will be available to book on to via the ULTSEC Innovation Fund webpage shortly.

There will also be training workshops giving useful advice on preparing submissions. Please see our website for details.

Three Rivers Learning and Teaching Conference 2016

The next annual North East Regional Three Rivers Learning and Teaching Conference will be held on the 17 March 2017 at Teesside University. 

three-riversNow in its 10th year, this regional conference builds upon the success of previous partnership events held by the region’s Universities (Northumbria, Sunderland, Durham, Newcastle and Teesside). The conference title is ‘Transformations, Transitions & Territories’ and further information can be found on our website.

We would like you to participate in this year’s conference by submitting an abstract for a 20 minute paper presentation by 16th December 2016 that is  focused on one of the following areas of the student journey:

  • Transforming assessment
  • Embedding employability
  • Student access, retention, attainment and progression in higher education
  • Internationalising higher education
  • Flexible learning
  • Student engagement through partnership
  • Technology enhanced learning
  • Education for Sustainable Development

Submissions are welcome from all staff at participating institutions and joint student/staff submissions are encouraged.

Please read the supporting information before writing your abstract.

Please submit abstracts  by 16th December 2016.

Proposers will be informed of the outcome of the selection process in January 2017.

Conference bookings will open in the New year. Please see our the Three Rivers website  for more information

For further information, please contact Rosa Spencer in Newcastle’s SDU  or Richard Sober at Teesside.

International Student Barometer 2016

Monday 24 October sees the launch of the 2016 International Student Barometer (ISB),  which Newcastle is taking part in for the eleventh time.

The ISB gives European Union and international students the opportunity to give their opinions on their experiences at Newcastle, from arrival at the University, through to teaching, accommodation and employability

We will survey all full-time and part-time EU and international undergraduates, taught and research postgraduate students, as well as study abroad and exchange students, based here in Newcastle and at Newcastle University London. We are unable to survey non-UK based and distance learning students as part of the ISB.

What is the ISB?

The annual ISB, which is run by i-Graduate, asks European Union and international students in around 200 universities across the world about their course and learning experiences. In 2016, the ISB will run at Newcastle between 24 October and 2 December.

What questions does it ask?

The survey includes questions about the whole student learning experience, including:

  • Pre-Arrival (including decision-making, application, and funding)
  • Arrival (including registration, and welcome/induction)
  • Learning (including teaching, assessment, and employability)
  • Living (including living costs, sports facilities, and accommodation)
  • Support (including personal tutors, students’ union, and wellbeing)

Who benefits from the ISB?

Schools, professional support services and NUSU examine the anonymised ISB data internally to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses. This information can be used to help effect changes designed to enhance or improve the student experience for both current and prospective students.

Some examples of changes implemented in recent years can be found at https://internal.ncl.ac.uk/yousaidwedid/actions/

Want to know more?

More details about the ISB, including access to previous year’s results, can be on the University website or obtained by emailing the team.

ERDP Workshop

The ERDP (Unit for Educational Research, Development and Practice) will welcome Pauline Kneale PVC(T) Plymouth  University for as part of their seminar series next month.

Pauline has led the development within Plymouth of a very active and successful Pedagogic Research network.

She will be leading a workshop in the morning of 8 November on evaluating teaching development which will be based upon the findings of an HEA-funded project.

She will also be delivering a seminar at lunchtime on that day,  in which she will be sharing her reflections on developing pedagogic research.

FMS Seminar Nov 8Pauline is an excellent speaker and her presentations will be of interest to anybody interested in developing pedagogic research whatever stage their career is at or is interested in evaluating the impact of their teaching.

If you wish to attend this event please register.

This information, as well as details of other upcoming ERDP events, is also available at on the FMS website.

 

Edubites by Newcastle Educators – 2016 Programme of Events

EduBites Poster 2016With increasing developments and discussions around teaching excellence in the sector, the Edubites sessions this year will be delivered as a Teaching Excellence Series to discuss this topic from a range of perspectives.

Everyone is invited and welcome to attend as many of the sessions as they wish.

As always, Edubites offers you the opportunity to share your practice and discuss issues or points of interest with other colleagues, so please do come prepared to contribute.

Lunch will be provided, so please register if you wish to attend.

Peer Mentoring: Helping Our New Students to Settle In

APL-Induction Pasta
Students Parents meet their Mentees in Architecture, Planning and Landscape

Peer parenting, or mentoring, inductions have taken place across campus.

The university’s mentoring scheme is gearing up for another busy year of supporting first year students through the first term of University here at Newcastle.

The scheme involves recruiting second year students to act as mentors, or parents, to first years offering advice on academic work as well as on other aspects of University experience.

In the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape (APL), Caroline Armstrong,  Student Recruitment and Wellbeing Manager, organises the scheme, and the new “families” are all set for the new year.

Caroline said: ‘We call them parents in this school, rather than mentors.

‘We’ve been doing this for years now.

‘I just think that it’s such a good way of helping students to settle in.

‘I pick out the groups as soon as the firm offers are confirmed and students are contacted before they start by their new university “parents”.’

Caroline thinks the scheme is invaluable for new students in the School.

‘Just having someone there, who was in your position last year, to say “it gets better” makes all the difference.

‘Our students, like many others from across the University, are used to being real shining stars at School and when they get to University can struggle as they adjust to new subjects and new ways of thinking.

‘The have a social room, like a Common Room in the School and knowing and socialising with the second and third years can help them to feel comfortable and relaxed in these public spaces.’

The School have recently run their induction event, at which mentors meet their mentees for the first time.

‘We just get them together and they get a tour of the School and then have lunch with their new “families”.

‘To break the ice we gave them spaghetti, marshmallows and fruit pastels and told each “family” [a group formed of two mentors and a number of mentees] to build a structure.’

The scheme is so popular that the “parents” now have “grandparents”, third year students to help initiate them into their parental duties.

‘We might try brightly coloured jackets, to make the mentors really easy to spot in freshers week and to help promote the scheme to our other students.’

Caroline is currently planning feedback meetings, where students will be able to raise any pitfalls or benefits of the scheme.

‘Then it’s already looking forward to January, where we will start contacting this year’s first years to see if they want to parent next year’s students.’

Do you need help or advice about Peer Mentoring? Contact ltds@ncl.ac.uk.

Claire Burnham – Peer Mentoring

In light of the growing success of the University’s peer mentoring programme, Newcastle has appointed a new co-coordinator for the scheme, based in LTDS.

Claire Burnham began her new role in August and is already involved in helping to support the scheme more widely across the University.

She said: ‘I’m really looking forward to getting going with the programme. It’s going to be very exciting meeting the new mentors and helping to deliver some of the training.’

The programme trains and supports second and third year students to offer help and advice to first years as they begin their studies.

Each mentor works with a group of students in his or her school and a coordinator in their school or unit supervises the project and acts as a point of contact for mentors needing extra support or advice.

A Newcastle alumnus, with a degree in Psychology, Claire is very aware of the importance of getting it right in helping students to transition between school and higher education.

She said: ‘It’s such a great way of supporting students in making the transition to University, having a mentor who has already been through it and can offer support and advice.’

The programme offers full training to all mentors, equipping them with the skills to help new students but also with transferrable skills which will help them to enter the world of work.

As well as arranging and supporting training for peer mentors across the University, Claire is also responsible for making sure that the mentor’s achievements are celebrated.

She said: ‘We will be running, as we have done in previous years, awards for the best mentor in each faculty as nominated by their mentees.’

The awards get presented in a special event to be held at the Great North Museum: Hancock Museum on 5 December.

‘There is also an award for the best coordinator. So the event marks a great chance for mentors and coordinators to get together and celebrate a good job well done.’

If you would like help with training and supporting student mentors in your school or have any questions about the Peer Mentoring Scheme, you can email Claire on claire.burnham@ncl.ac.uk.

Do you have a particularly novel approach to Peer Mentoring School? Get in touch with us on ltds@ncl.ac.uk and tell us about it.

HEA Conference 2017 – Generation TEF: Teaching in the Spotlight

The Higher Education Academy conference will be held on 4th, 5th and 6th July 2017 in Manchester and will concentrate on ‘improving the quality of teaching and learning in the age of the Teaching Excellence Framework.’

Structured over three days, the conference will provide a platform for higher education professionals to share their experiences, ideas, research and good practice in a community of their peers and learn from internationally respected speakers.

The conference format allows for cross-fertilisation of pedagogies, with a day dedicated to addressing sector priorities, such as retention, assessment and employability, sandwiched between two days of discipline-led activities.

The conference is an ideal opportunity to meet like-minded peers, build networks, and expand your knowledge of sector issues and innovations, thus strengthening your own professional practice and reputation.

Proposals for posters are invited from higher education professionals that relate to this year’s chosen theme and/or one of the sub-themes below:

  • Transforming assessment;
  • Student access, retention, attainment and progression;
  • Embedding employability;
  • Internationalising higher education;
  • Student engagement through partnership;
  • Flexible learning;
  • Curriculum design;
  • Student choice landscape;
  • Leadership of learning and teaching in the disciplines;
  • New pedagogic research in the disciplines.

The deadline for submissions is 31 October 2016.

See more on the conference website.

PROFILE: VC Award Winner Clare Guilding

VC Award-winner Clare Guilding of the School of Medical Education is always trying new things to keep her students ahead of the game.

Clare’s innovative approach has won her many accolades in addition to her recent VC Award, and seen her re-design the way that medical students learn certain subjects.

Clare GuildingShe said: ‘I am really always looking to try new things, always thinking about what’s working well and what’s not.’

Put in charge of the pre-clinical pharmacology courses for medical students at Newcastle, Clare felt that a new approach was needed to make sure that students gained the skills they needed at earlier stages of the course.

Clare lead the development of a new Clinical Pharmacology, Therapeutics and Prescribing curriculum which now runs as a vertical strand through the MBBS degree programme at Newcastle University.

She said: ‘I realised that students were not being asked to prescribe – such a crucial element of their jobs – in the pre-clinical years. I thought that these practical skills should be introduced earlier so we redesigned the curriculum to make sure that they are working on prescribing throughout their five years, rather than it being introduced in the third year.

‘Now in the first two years we’ve got pharmacists who run practical prescription writing workshops with our students and we run inter-professional education events based around prescribing and diagnosis with pharmacy students from Sunderland University.’

Indeed Clare’s implemented re-write of the curriculum for pharmacology has led her to advise other institutions and even the British Pharmacology Society on curriculum design.

She said: ‘I presented the curriculum nationally and in March 2015 was invited to join a four-strong core team managing the development of the British Pharmacological Society’s new core pharmacology curriculum which has furthered my professional development.’

Clare is always looking into the use of new technologies to deliver learning. An early advocate of the use of TurningPoint in lectures, she more recently introduced SimMan (a simulated patient) into her teaching ‘to help deliver realistic simulations of the professional environments that our students will eventually work in.’

She said: ‘SimMan is an artificial dummy who breathes, has heart beats, bleeds, blinks, responds to drugs etc. He can be programmed to display a wide range of physiological and pathophysiological signs and responds appropriately to treatment for example cardiopulmonary resuscitation or administration of oxygen.

I run simulations of medical emergencies in the lecture theatre and at key clinical points in the scenario students vote individually and anonymously (using TurningPoint) on the most appropriate course of action (for example which drug should be administered).

‘The option with the most votes is applied to SimMan and the students then observe the physiological effects this has in real time. This provides the students with a unique opportunity to apply learned principles in a safe, controlled learning environment and it offers them instantaneous feedback on their actions’

As a result of her work with SimMan, Clare won the British Pharmacological Society Education Prize and Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME) Educator Innovator Award in 2015.

She is very keen to encourage the students to develop their team-working skills, and with colleagues from Newcastle and Sunderland universities has integrated a seminar on IPE (Interprofessional Education) into the curriculum.

‘In the professional environment our students will be making decisions as part of a varied team of health-professionals so learning in inter-professional groups is an important part of the students’ education.’

This proved so popular that it was expanded into a day long ‘Interprofessional Education Conference’. This year the event had 400 students rotating round a variety of interprofessional tasks, facilitated by 50 academic staff members from medicine, pharmacy and nursing backgrounds from across the North East of England.

Five major external organisations ran stands on the day and more are being recruited, including the GMC (General Medical Council) for the next iteration of the conference in 2017.

Clare is now looking forward to a new challenge as Dean of Academic Affairs at NUMed in Malaysia, where she starts in January.