Congratulations to the 2024 winners of the Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Awards

The Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Awards aim to raise the status of education at Newcastle University by rewarding individuals and teams who have made a marked impact on the student educational experience.

The 2024 winners of the Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Awards have now been announced, with five winning submissions out of a very competitive field of nominations:

Professor David Rose

School X

Professor Rose receives his award for his innovative and sustained contributions to the field of Philosophy. The awarding panel praised David’s passion and commitment to his students and commended his work in “context based learning”. David’s teaching approaches have also attracted consistently excellent student feedback and have gained him international recognition and multiple teaching awards.

David commented “This award reflects a long development from my early days here at Newcastle and I would like to recognise my peers and students who have helped me to fashion an innovative way for learning to be personal and valuable and mostly to affirm its very social, collective aspect.”

(David will be presented his award at the winter congregation ceremony.)

Dr Jane Nolan

School of Arts and Cultures

Dr Nolan receives her award for her sustained, and much valued, dedication to student learning and support. Jane is commended for identifying student needs when coming to university, and for helping them attain the skills they need to thrive – in education and in the workplace. Jane’s work to build connections between students and alumni was particularly noted by the awarding panel, and reflects her passion and continued commitment to student support.

Jane told us “I am delighted to receive this award. It has been a joy to work with brilliant students, colleagues, alumni and external partners, helping to enrich the educational experience through research- and industry-informed curricula, experiential learning and extra-curricular projects, supporting students during their studies and as they prepare for their futures, and reaching out to our communities through engagement work. It is such an honour, and a highlight in my career as an educator, to have my work recognised by the Vice Chancellor’s Education Excellence award.”

Dr Simon Stone

Dental School

Dr Stone receives his award for his leadership, teaching excellence, and contributions to education across the dental curriculum, with student experience and inclusivity at the forefront of his work. Simon is particularly commended for his work to champion post-Covid return to clinical practice, and for enabling valuable clinical experience for students.

Simon explained “I’m delighted to be able to receive this award. Clinical dental training involves a huge circus of people and resources, in particular the need for a close, cohesive relationship the NHS, many people are unaware that Dental Students play such an active role in delivering healthcare to our community, with roughly 30,000 patient appointments delivered each year. The last 5 years have been particularly challenging with the pandemic forcing the temporary closure of student delivered patient facing activity, the first time this has been the case in our 125 year history. The restart and reshaping of clinical activity within the School was nothing short of exceptional and meant that we were to be in a position to safely return our students to patient facing activity and at the same time grow our portfolio of programmes. I am very proud to have played a key role in this and work alongside an exceptional team of academic and clinical colleagues who help to deliver our programmes.”

Language Resource Centre Team

Pictured: Lina Liu, Andrew Grenfell, Edward Shek and Maka Bekurishvili. Other members of the team include Sarah Crampton and Holly Penal

The Language Resource Centre Team receive their award for demonstrating sustained commitment to student support and service delivery. The awarding panel noted their excellence in supporting equity and cultural understanding, which has had a significant impact on staff and students across the University. The Language Resource Centre’s external engagement and outreach work was also commended, as was their support for learners during Covid.

Andrew Grenfell told us ‘This award is very important for the Language Resource Centre as it recognises the underlying pedagogy of the Centre’s approach to supporting the student learning experience. The award celebrates what is truly a team effort involving the LRC staff and the all the students employed in various roles to deliver an integrated student-centred learning environment, celebrating languages and cultures across the NU campuses and in the NE region as well as in Ukraine.’

Maths Stats and Physics, SAgE + GO Team

Pictured: Joe Matthews, Lucy Bell, Lee Fawcett and Lana Spour

The Maths Stats and Physics “SAgE + GO Team” receive their award for demonstrating sustained commitment to the student learning experience and for encouraging global opportunities. The team were commended for their innovative approaches to student mobility and for making maths more accessible at scale. The support in place for exchange students is particularly noteworthy, as is the development of a global curriculum which is ambitious and future focused.

Lucy explained “We are honoured to be recognised for our ongoing passion and commitment to global opportunities for our students. Our collaboration with staff across the University means we can make student mobility more accessible and truly develop a forward-thinking global curriculum.”

Lee added “It is a privilege to be recognised for our commitment to making global opportunities accessible to all students in the School of Maths, Stats and Physics and the wider SAgE Faculty. The development of short-term mobilities, including field trips, summer schools and virtual exchanges – as well as a range of new opportunities for study abroad – has made this a reality. Of course, none of this would have been possible without close co-operation with our colleagues from the Global Education team.”

The panel, chaired by Ruth Valentine, PVC Education, were extremely impressed with the scale of impact, breadth of activity, and the creative approaches to education and student support demonstrated by all awardees.

For more information about the awards, and how to apply next year, please visit the Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle website

9 May, 20246 June, 2024

Demonstrable impact on teaching and learning: 2024 The Association of National Teaching Fellows (ANTF) Symposium

Each year, the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) and the Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) celebrate and recognise individuals and collaborative work that have had a demonstrable impact on teaching and learning.

ANTF symposium

As a professional development adviser in the Academic Practice Team at LTDS who support colleagues learning and teaching development as well as the deputy TEAL at Newcastle University who support the NTF and CATE nominations, I attended the 2024 The Association of National Teaching Fellows (ANTF) Symposium at Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK, on 23rd to 24th April, which features two days of sharing and reflections from NTFs and CATEs in relations to wellbeing, Innovation and Impact, Reward and Recognition and Equity and Ethics.

National Teaching Repository

A variety of effective practices and resources have been introduced throughout the conference. For example, the National Teaching Repository, which is an open access online searchable database where tried and tested strategies ‘that work’ can be housed and harvested. Contributing and sharing your effective teaching and research via the platform means effective ways to Measure the impact of practice as well as making the resources more discoverable, shareable & citable as you will Attain a unique DOI for each item uploaded.

The National Learning and Teaching Focused Network

Another example is The National Learning and Teaching Focused Network, which connects colleagues in learning and teaching focused roles across the UK Higher Education sector. Through a one-hour workshop, presenters’ first-hand experiences were shared, and we discussed some common concerns and feelings among staff members who have a learning and teaching focused role, that in being learning and teaching focused, staff can feel misunderstood and like they do not belong. They often don’t know how to tell their “story” for promotion and because these pathways are relatively new and often the guidance from HR and senior staff can be lacking or at best narrow and restrictive. Yet these colleagues bring a richness and diversity to their institutions, but this is often rarely recognised. As a group, we explored the breadth of roles and activities of staff on learning and teaching focused pathways (The photo below shows some examples of the wide range of roles we discussed as a group).

Raising the profile of professional service staff with teaching and learning responsibilities

One of the important and timely discussion I engaged with was a workshop exploring potential ways to raise the profile of professional service staff with teaching and learning responsibilities. Within the higher education sector there are a significant number of teaching and learning professionals employed on non-academic contracts. This could include Learning Developers, Librarians, Technicians or Learning Technologists, for example. However, despite the important role these individuals play in the student learning experience, they are particularly underrepresented in institutional nominations for the NTFS: only 5.8% of NTFS nominees in 2023, 5.1% in 2022 and 10.6% between 2018-2022. Questions were raised and discussed, which also are important for professional services colleagues who are considering NTF and CATE applications as well as for those institutional stakeholders who support such applicants.

For example:

What are the range of professional service positions with teaching and learning. responsibilities?
Where might professional service staff with teaching and learning responsibilities be based within a university?
What are examples of professional service staff with teaching and learning responsibilities influencing institutional teaching practices within your institutions?
How can the profile of professional service staff with teaching and learning responsibilities be showcased to the institutional Teaching Excellence Award Leads (TEALs) who support and submit the nominations?
How can teaching and learning evaluation be inclusive of professional services to support demonstration of impact?

Mapping scholarship

A highlight of the conference was an interactive workshop on Making scholarship Inclusive, in which we discussed a key notion and concept, i.e., ‘scholarship’, with the growing emphasis on ensuring a sound evidence base for education, arising from ‘scholarship’ activities. Based on presenters’ recent ‘Mapping Scholarship’ project demonstrated that some staff are uncertain about what ‘counts’ as scholarship, whilst nevertheless undertaking activities that relate to education, that are or could be public, evaluated, and impactful, and thus are easily included under broad definitions of scholarship. Kern et al.’s (2015) Dimensions and Activities Related to Teaching Model (DART, see Figure below) proved immensely useful for stimulating discussion of the nature of scholarship. We discussed and evaluated the potential limitations of this model, and considered a proposed model that is both inclusive and useful in stimulating scholarship activity.

https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/josotl/article/view/13623/25313

Find out more

If you are interested in finding out more about how to get your teaching recognised, please go to the page to explore a potential route and contact APT if you have any questions.

19 October, 202319 October, 2023

Newcastle Educators 2023 – 2024 Programme – Progressive Curriculum approaches

The next Newcastle Educators session will take place on Monday 13th November2023 in Henry Daysh Building 1.06 Learning Lab.

Join us for this interactive session focusing on: Progressive Curriculum approaches 12.00 – 1.30, with snack lunch provided!

In this session participants will:

Hear from colleagues who have embedded Sustainable Development Goals across a programme in the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences
Gain ideas and suggestions to further develop sustainable curriculum design in your own practice
Hear how colleagues are working across the university to embed employability skills in their curriculum

Please sign up to the event via this MS Form.

Remember to save the date in your diary!

11 October, 202311 October, 2023

Applications for the Education Enhancement Fund are now open!

The fund (formerly the University Education Development Fund) provides grants of up to £10,000 to support the development of new approaches to learning and teaching across Newcastle University.

Two strands of funding are available: 

Strand A – applications up to £2500. Projects can be specifically focussed within an individual academic unit, or across multiple areas as appropriate to the project.
Strand B – applications up to £10,000. Projects must involve collaboration across academic units and/or services and have potential benefits that are applicable beyond a single school or academic unit.

Chaired by the PVC Education, the fund offers a fantastic opportunity to propose and deliver projects with real benefit to student education. Applications should further the aims and key themes of the Education Strategy.

Application deadline for Semester 1:

Applications must be sent to educationdevfund@newcastle.ac.uk by 12 noon (UK time) on Monday 20 November 2023.

Full information, guidance notes, and the application forms are available on the Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle website. 

For queries please contact educationdevfund@newcastle.ac.uk. 

28 September, 202328 September, 2023

Graduate Teaching Assistants Developers Network – Summer Event 2023: A blog post

Venue/Time: 21 June 2023, University of Manchester

Network: AdvanceHE_GTA Developers Network

Who: Dangeni, Professional Development Adviser, LTDS

In the ever-evolving landscape of higher education, Postgraduates who teach, including Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) play a crucial role in shaping the academic experience of countless students. These passionate educators form the backbone of university classrooms, bringing fresh perspectives and knowledge to enhance the learning environment. My role as a Professional Development Adviser at LTDS involves delivering workshops to postgraduates who teach at Newcastle University, supporting their professional development through the various modules and pathways we offer, e.g. ILTHE and ELTS.

I had the opportunity to attend the Graduate Teaching Assistants Network event at the University of Manchester in June, which brought together researchers and practitioners from different UK universities to share insights and support each other in promoting and developing GTA support. This blog post summarises the highlights and reflections from this enriching experience.

Prior to the event, the organisers facilitated the sharing of materials, resources, ideas and approaches related to GTA development from across the institutions, which can be widely disseminated to various key stakeholders working with GTAs. For example, a practical guide New to Teaching Geography, which oﬀers a starting point for graduate teaching assistants, teaching fellows and demonstrators. Another great example is around measuring the effective teaching through designing a Teaching Observation Form based on undergraduate feedback. These resources already and will benefit GTAs by unpacking the hidden curriculum of teaching and providing practical suggestions for GTAs to take away and implement in their own contexts; it’s also valuable for practitioners like me to reflect on and embed the effective and good practice in our current provision.

What happened on the day

The session began by reflecting on our roles and perspectives, e.g. where we work centrally or in a department, in an academic contract or as professional service staff, is supporting GTAs a core element of our role or something we do in addition to our day-to-day work, understanding that institutional differences and the different roles we play in supporting PgRs with teaching responsibilities require more in-depth discussion and frequent communication to share effective practices and reflect together on potential challenges.

We had key themes running through the day-long programme, such as:

Supporting GTAs within departments, faculties and disciplines across institutions.
The new PSF and its implications for accredited programmes.
Developments in GTA professional learning.

As our Academic Practice Team is working on the reaccreditation, the second theme provide helpful information regarding support and guidance, such as Advance HE PSF 2023 Associate Fellowship Guidance, Calibration events and Accreditation Policy 2023 (and guidance). The key changes were highlighted regarding D1, Associate Fellow, i.e., for individuals whose practice enables them to evidence some Dimensions. Effectiveness of practice in teaching and/or support of learning is demonstrated through evidence of:

D1.1. Use of appropriate Professional Values, including at least V1 and V3

D1.2 Application of appropriate Core Knowledge, including at least K1, K2 and K3

D1.3 Effective and inclusive practice in at least two of the five Areas of Activity

Inclusion and EDI were mentioned, highlighted and discussed throughout the day, including a workshop on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion by colleagues from the University of Sheffield. This training material is a practical tool for GTAs and us to explore prejudice and discrimination and describe how it can occur in everyday teaching and learning contexts.

My presentation

I presented and shared how we support GTAs through formal programmes and a recently established informal community building event at Newcastle University. In running ILTHE and ELTS and gathering feedback from participants, we found that workshop participants wanted the opportunity to continue to engage with teaching practice and develop their teaching skills after the workshops. This online community has been created based on my teaching experiences as an international GTA and my previous research projects, which looked at GTA, peer-mentoring and researcher development.

What did I think of the day?

The day was packed with insightful, exciting and innovative presentations from colleagues and GTAs from different institutions. I also had many useful resources to take away and great discussions with colleagues to reflect on. Thank you for taking the time to read this GTA-themed blog post. Please get in touch at apt.lts@newcastle.ac.uk if you’d like to chat about our pathways and your practice!

If you are interested in finding out more about the modules and pathways we offer here at Newcastle, check out the following links:

Introduction to Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (ILTHE)

Evidencing Learning and Teaching Skills (ELTS)

Professional Development (Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle website)

Meet Dangeni!

I am a Professional Development Adviser in the Academic Practice Team at LTDS. My teaching and research focus broadly on the teaching and learning provision in the wider context of the internationalisation of higher education.

I am particularly interested in research and practices around international students’ access, engagement and success in postgraduate taught (PGT) and postgraduate research (PGR) settings.

18 September, 202314 November, 2023

Digital Assessment Webinar Training Programme Available

A photo of hands typing on a laptop keyboard.

We are pleased to share our Digital Assessment Training Programme for 2023-24. Our training sessions are delivered as webinars via Microsoft Teams.

Inspera Assessment (the university system for centrally supported digital exams) is supported by the Learning and Teaching Development Service with a range of training options open to all staff.

Follow the links below to find out more about each session and to book onto individual sessions via the University’s elements system.

Inspera Webinars

Inspera for Professional Service Colleagues

9 October 2023 – 11:00-12:00
8 February 2024 – 10:00-11:00

Creating and Managing Exam Questions in Inspera

23 October 2023 – 9:00-10:00
19 February 2024 – 14:00-15:00

How to Grade using Rubric in Inspera

9 November 2023 – 10:00-11:00
26 February 2024 – 14:00-15:00

Marking and moderating an Inspera exam with manually marked questions

13 December 2023 – 09:00-10:00
25th January 2024 – 10:00-11:00
1st May 2024 – 14:00-15:00
6th June 2024 – 14:00-15:00

Marking an Inspera exam with auto marked questions

14 December 2023 – 09:00-10:00
24 January 2024 – 09:00-10:00
29 April 2024 – 14:00-15:00
3 June 2024 – 14:00-15:00

Digital Assignments: Canvas and Turnitin

Creating and Managing Digital Assignments

19 October 2023 – 11:00-12:00
29 January 2024 – 15:00-16:00

Online Marking and Feedback (Canvas)

5 December 2023 – 14:00-15:00
24 April 2024 – 14:00-15:00

Online Marking and Feedback (Turnitin)

4 December 2023 – 14:00-15:00
22 April 2024 – 14:00–15:00

Any queries?

If you have any queries on any of the above sessions, please contact digital.exams@newcastle.ac.uk.

Meet the Team

You can meet the Digital Assessment Team in this LTDS Blog post.

24 August, 202324 August, 2023

Evidencing Teaching Excellence for Promotion – Online Workshop

LTDS are running an online workshop Evidencing Teaching Excellence for Promotion on 7th September from 2-3pm.

This workshop is for any member of academic staff thinking of applying for promotion in whole, or in part on the basis of their teaching (whether they are on Teaching and Research or Teaching and Scholarship contracts).

The workshop is likely to be of particular interest to academic staff who are, or may be, intending to make an application to the 2023-24 or 2025-26 promotion rounds.

For more details, and to sign up for the workshop go to: https://elements.ncl.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=644.

If you have any queries, please contact ltds@newcastle.ac.uk.

1 August, 20231 August, 2023

Newcastle Educators – Using design thinking in the classroom

Thursday 14 September 2023

Henry Daysh Building – 6.16 PGR Training Space

12:00 – 13:30 (with snack lunch provided!)

Newcastle Educators 2023 – 2024 Programme

Join us for this interactive session and by the end of this session participants will:

Have a basic understanding of design thinking and its potential in the classroom,
Have an idea how you might apply an aspect of design thinking in your own classroom,
Be invited to join our community of practice of educators interested using design thinking in the classroom.

The session will be delivered by Yulia Dzenkovska and Lucy Hatt from Newcastle University Business School.

Yulia Dzenkovska is a Lecturer in Marketing (NUBS) specialising in services marketing and service innovation. Her interest in design thinking dates from her time here as a PhD student when she took part in a careers service design thinking event (EIT Health Innovation Competition) and won first prize! Since then, she has developed her interest in this approach and incorporated it into her module “New Product and Service Development” with great success. She is also the Employability Lead for her Subject Group.

Lucy Hatt is a Senior Lecturer in Leadership Development and Entrepreneurship (NUBS), with a particular interest in the value of the threshold concept approach for entrepreneurship, enterprise and employability educators. She is the DPD for the MBA and leads modules on Innovation, Change and Enterprise which incorporate Design Thinking approaches.

26 July, 202326 July, 2023

National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) and Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE)

The call for nominations for the 2024 National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) and Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) is now open and the deadline for nominations is 12 noon on Friday 3 November 2023.

The National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) is a highly prestigious award which celebrates excellent practice and outstanding achievement in learning and teaching in higher education.

The awards support individuals’ professional development in learning and teaching and provides a national focus for institutional teaching and learning excellence schemes.

The Collaborative Awards for Teaching Excellence (CATE) celebrate collaborative work that has had a demonstrable impact on teaching and learning.

For more information about the awards, including eligibility and the application criteria, please visit the information pages on the Learning and Teaching website:

Nominations must be a maximum of 1000 words, addressing the relevant criteria and should be sent electronically to ltds@ncl.ac.uk no later than 12 noon on 3 November 2023.

Want to know more? Sign up for our Webinar

If you would like to find out more about NTFS and CATE, please book a place on the webinar taking place on 10 August 2023.

Book NTFS/CATE webinar

7 July, 20237 July, 2023

Congratulations to the 2023 winners of the Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Awards

The 2023 winners of the Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Awards have now been announced, with two winning submissions out of a very competitive field of nominations:

Dr Carys Watts
School of Biomedical, Nutritional and Sport Sciences

Dr Watts receives her award for her sustained, and much valued, record of achievement and dedication to student learning and support. She is commended for her excellent work on the Support to Study, Virtual Exchange and Study Abroad initiatives, and more generally for her collegiality and passion for teaching.

Carys commented “I am delighted to receive this award and to be recognised for progressing student mobility, co-creativity and enterprise activities. Working with some incredible colleagues and teaching a diverse student community keeps me motivated, reflective and innovative in my approach to education”.

Rosalind Beaumont
School X

Rosalind receives her award for her record of innovation and creativity in support of student learning and staff development, both within her School and Faculty and more widely across the University. She is praised for her teaching excellence, dedication to sustainability, and for her support and contributions to the University’s Professional Standards Framework scheme.

Rosalind remarked “It’s an honour to be recognised by my peers for my work with both students and staff in different educational contexts at Newcastle over the last 15+ years. I’m here through a lot of determination, luck, and the countless conversations with colleagues and students which have helped shape me into the educator and colleague I am today. Thank you to all of you who have been part of my development so far – there’s always more to do, so let’s get on with it!”

The panel, chaired by Ruth Valentine (Interim PVC Education), were extremely impressed with the scale of impact, breadth of activity, and the creative approaches to education and student support demonstrated by all awardees.

For more information about the awards, and how to apply next year, please visit the Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle website