Learning and Teaching Conference 2019: Resources

Delegates at the conference

The changing landscape of Higher Education

3 April 2019

Over 250 delegates attended this year’s conference to celebrate learning and teaching here at Newcastle University.

The packed programme included  45 presentations, workshops and lightning talks, as well as keynotes from  Professor Alison Shaw, Vice-President, National Foundation for Educational Research and Founder, North East Futures UTC and Chris Millward, Office for Students.

You can find a full range of resources from the conference below, including ReCap recordings and copies of presentation slides.

Don’t forget to save the date for next year’s conference which will be held on  2 April 2020. You can also sign up for the conference reminder service if you want to find out when the call for submissions and registration opens.

Welcome

Professor Suzanne Cholerton, Pro-Vice-Chancellor Education

ReCap recording

Curtis Group Shot

Continue reading “Learning and Teaching Conference 2019: Resources”

Learning and Teaching Conference: Poster Vote Now Open

Quayside

The Learning and Teaching Conference poster competition is now open and Newcastle University staff and students can vote for 3 posters that they find most inspirational. Winners will be announced  at the end of the conference on 3 April 2019.

You can view the posters on sway (you will be prompted to log in to view these) and then submit your votes on the voting page.

Conference delegates will be able to browse the posters during registration and over lunch, where presenters will be available to answer any questions. Voting will close at 3pm  (GMT) on the 3 April 2019.

Find out full information about this year’s conference on the conference website.

If you have any questions please get in touch LTDS@ncl.ac.uk

Learning and Teaching Conference 2019: Keynote Speaker, Professor Alison Shaw

Professor Alison Shaw

The changing landscape of Higher Education,  3 April 2019

This year’s  programme includes a fantastic range of speakers and we are delighted to confirm that Professor Alison Shaw  will be delivering a keynote at the conference.

Biography

Alison has enjoyed a long and varied career in the English education system. She is Vice-President of NFER, the UK’s leading independent provider of education research and insights; and Founder of North East Futures UTC.

She studied Modern Foreign Languages to postgraduate level at the University of Leeds, to which she subsequently returned to do her PGCE after a year spent teaching at the University of Lyon in France. She has occupied senior roles in several secondary schools in England, including 11 years as a Headteacher, specialising throughout in shaping and augmenting curricula which combine academic rigour with real-world experience and relevance. Continue reading “Learning and Teaching Conference 2019: Keynote Speaker, Professor Alison Shaw”

Have your say on the University’s future VLE

Do you want to help inform the University’s decision on the future VLE?

The University is well underway with the review of its Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and following the in-depth consultation that has taken place with staff and students over the past 18 months, the project team have worked hard to ensure the University’s requirements have been captured in the official tender which will be published later in February.

Once we receive suppliers’ responses to our tender, members of the project team will analyse these and will initially determine which suppliers meet our mandatory (pass/fail) requirements.  The project team will then score suppliers based on their responses to our highly desirable/desirable requirements.

We need your input….

The quality of the user experience is a very important element to our tender and will have significant weighting in our scoring process. We would really like both staff and students to get involved with this. During April to June, we will have access to test accounts for the systems that have met our mandatory requirements and volunteers will be asked to undertake a series of tasks, assessing each for ease of use, anticipated support required and system confidence.

It is essential that colleagues involved in this process review all systems that meet our mandatory requirements but it is not anticipated that this will take more than half a day. You will have the option of an organised workshop or completing the tasks in your own time and further details will be provided in the coming weeks.

We need representation from both academic and professional service staff with varying degrees of VLE experience from absolute beginners to expert users.

If you are interested in being involved, please complete this expression of interest form. 

On behalf of the project team, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your engagement throughout the consultation period which has been crucial in getting us to the point of publishing our tender documentation. I look forward to working with you during the next exciting phase.

 

 

 

Learning and Teaching Conference: Keynote Speaker Announced

Chris Millward

The changing landscape of Higher Education,  3 April 2019

We are pleased to announce that Chris Millward,  Office for Students  (OfS), will be a keynote speaker at this year’s Learning and Teaching Conference.

Chris is the first Director for Fair Access and Participation in the Office for Students (OfS).  His role is to ensure that universities and colleges are doing all they can to support underrepresented groups to access and succeed in higher education. Chris is also an executive member of the OfS board.

In his previous role at HEFCE as Director (Policy), he led HEFCE’s work on access and student success, learning and teaching, and higher level skills.  This included delivery of the Teaching Excellence Framework, the National Student Survey and the National Collaborative Outreach Partnerships, as well as programmes to remove barriers to student success, to improve postgraduate progression and to develop degree apprenticeships.

Chris has also worked at the universities of Warwick, Edinburgh and Durham before joining the Arts and Humanities Research Council as Head of Research Programmes in 2002 and HEFCE in 2006.

The keynote will focus on:  Access, success and progression in the new HE environment. We are looking forward to welcoming staff and students from across the University to this one day event celebrating learning and teaching.

Full information about this event is available on the conference website and staff and students can register here.

If you have any questions please get in touch with LTDS@ncl.ac.uk

The changing landscape of Higher Education: Learning and Teaching Conference 2019: Call for submissions open

Quayside

We are pleased to announce that the theme for the Learning and Teaching Conference 2019 is ‘The changing landscape of Higher Education’.

This one day event will be held on Wednesday 3 April 2019 and will explore:

  • How do we deliver our vision for a Newcastle education set out in the University Vision and Strategy, in a constantly changing higher education landscape?
  • How can we reflect these changes in the education experience?
  • How do these changes positively impact on teaching and the student experience?

This year’s conference will explore the landscape of change under 4 key themes:

  • Supporting all students to fulfil their potential: This will incorporate innovations and effective practice around equality, diversity and inclusion; international students, accessibility, student wellbeing and student voice
  • Education and research: How students benefit from studying in a research-intensive environment and professional practice
  • Employability and engagement: Working with students as partners, and with partners in business, industry in the public sector, to provide educational experiences that allow our students to succeed and thrive in the new world of work being created by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (including how these experiences support the social impact, both locally and globally, of the considerations of widening participation and outreach)
  • Technology enhanced learning: Using digital tools now and in the future to support flipped, blended and online learning and assessment and feedback

Further details about the conference  are available on the conference website and the we will continue to update this website with details of the keynote speakers and programme over the coming months.

Call for submissions

The call for submissions is now open and staff and students at all Newcastle University campuses are warmly invited to submit an abstract. The deadline for submissions is 11 January 2019 . Find out more and submit your abstract here.

Registration open

All staff and students are invited to attend this inspiring event. Please book your place now. We look forward to welcoming you on the day.

 

Make your learning and teaching resources more inclusive – two free online courses

Home Office poster on inclusive design.
Inclusive design is better for everyone.

Following on from the interest shown in a session, run by Ruth Graham and Sandy Alden, at the 2018 Learning and Teaching Conference, on designing inclusive learning, you can now sign up for two free online courses.

Inclusive Learning and Teaching Environments and Digital Accessibility: Enabling Participation in the Information Society are both from the University of Southampton.

Inclusive Learning and Teaching Environments runs from Sept 3rd for three weeks and is specifically for those working in Higher Education and interested in making elearning accessible to all.

Explore the barriers experienced by disabled students and learn how to overcome these barriers through inclusive practices.

Digital Accessibility: Enabling Participation in the Information Society runs from Oct 8th for five weeks, and has 8 universities discussing different aspects of digital technologies and accessibility from the developer and user’s point of view. It features case studies, new technologies and the latest news about legal standards and guidelines for web, mobile, documents, IoT etc. When there is:

“a better understanding of users’ needs, technologies can be developed to be accessible & provide a more inclusive environment”

Both courses are free, and offer practical hints and tips you can use straight away to make your own resources more inclusive.

Learning and Teaching Conference 2018: Legacy Resources

Education for Life: celebrating partnership, encouraging innovation

This year’s Learning and Teaching Conference took place on the 21 March 2018.  Staff from across the University came together to explore the following questions:

How do we provide education for life, across all of our campuses?

How can we engage, challenge and support our students to discover and fulfill their potential in Newcastle, London, Singapore and Malaysia?

This conference  highlighted partnerships, encouraged innovation, and celebrated effective teaching. Full legacy resources are available below:

Continue reading “Learning and Teaching Conference 2018: Legacy Resources”

Reflections on the Learning and Teaching Conference

By Ma. Brenda Carbonilla Pancho,  MD, MPH, PGDipMedEd, FHEA Associate Professor and Assistant Dean for Student Support, NUMed Malaysia

Brenda Pancho standing in front of her poster presentation
Ma. Brenda Carbonilla Pancho, Associate Professor

The Learning and Teaching Conference covered a range of topics, from broad issues such as the Newcastle University Education Strategy, to more specific topics such as the use of technology to support and enhance learning, approaches that promote active student engagement in the classroom, inclusive learning and other innovative teaching strategies.   I think that because of this, the conference was able to cater to the interests of everyone, from those who set educational policies within the institution, heads of departments who implement educational programmes, those involved in providing academic and other types of support to students, and those involved in teaching.

My own contribution to the conference was a poster entitled ‘Student Support Services at Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia’, which was basically an audit of student support services during the Academic Year 2015-2016, the aims of which were to determine the distribution of students seen by Student Support Services, the types of problems affecting these students and the types of support provided, and to make recommendations to improve service provision. Continue reading “Reflections on the Learning and Teaching Conference”

Conference blog: Dr Cindy Lee, Newcastle University in Singapore

Written by Dr Cindy Lee, Assistant Professor and Director of Excellence in Learning and Teaching, Newcastle University in Singapore

Dr Cindy Lee, Assistant Professor and Director of Excellence in Learning and Teaching
Dr Cindy Lee, Assistant Professor and Director of Excellence in Learning and Teaching

Welcomed by a drizzle of snow upon my arrival at Newcastle airport, I must say that attending the learning and teaching conference has been a great experience for me. This has been made possible by the travel bursaries provided this year for participants from Singapore and Malaysia. Presenting in the session on “How might a research intensive environment add value to the education of all students at all stages” broadened my horizon on how to enhance the research-informed learning environment for students. Continue reading “Conference blog: Dr Cindy Lee, Newcastle University in Singapore”