Category: Events and Awards

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Success for Dr Hélène Tyrrell at the Northern Law Awards

Dr Helene Tyrrell receiving her award

Congratulations to Newcastle University Law Lecturer, Dr Hélène Tyrrell, who won the Law Teacher of the Year award at the Northern Law Awards 2018.

To be eligible for the award individuals were expected to have demonstrated a number of excellent teaching qualities including innovative teaching practices, an interest in student development and the ability to enhance the student learning experience through scholarly activities.

Dr Tyrrell stood out to the judges who noted that she:

“..consistently demonstrated a high level of achievement across all of the criteria with clear evidence for genuine warmth and ability to build rapport with students”

Northern Law Awards Winners Guide 2018

One of the nominations highlighted a number of Dr Tyrrell’s key achievements including:

  • Redesigning and running the PARTNERS Summer School resulting in exceptional feedback from participants.
  • Successfully engaging over 200 students with detailed case and statute reading in a lecture setting . Read more about this in Dr Tyrrell’s case study.
  • Incorporating research knowledge into her teaching from her time researching in Parliament and her work on the UK Supreme Court. This ensured that students greatly benefited from her expertise.

The award was open to any law teacher working in Higher Education in the North of England so a fantastic achievement for Dr Tyrrell to win the award.

Dr Jennifer Stephens, also a lecturer here at Newcastle, was shortlisted for the award recognising the excellent work she has carried out with student support services.

There was further success for Newcastle Law School at the awards with the student-led Street Law initiative winning the Pro Bono/ Community Initiative of the Year.  Read more on the University website.

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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”

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NUTELA weeding and seeding

The last NUTELA 3Ps (pizza, pop and practice) of this academic year took place last week . It’s been a productive year for the group and we are looking forward to arranging another exciting programme of sessions for next year.

Our excellent presenters showed everyone the new online reading lists system, gave tips about cleaning up Blackboard modules, as well as well as how to explore new ways of adding value with collaboration tools, groups and tests. There was time for attendees to ask lots of questions and give some of the technologies a go.

Special thanks to Paula Fitzpatrick and Stephen Harding from Digital Library Services and Rebecca Gill and Carol Summerside from LTDS for delivering such informative sessions.

We’ve included some resources  below but please feel free to get in touch with LTDS@ncl.ac.uk with any questions.

Online Reading Lists

Quick instructions for creating your own reading lists.

Blackboard Weeding and Seeding resources

Session presentation: Covering student feedback, Blackboard Baseline,  enhancement and mobile accessibility

Blackboard module checklist: A handy resource to help you consider whether your module meets the recommendations set out in the Blackboard Baseline.

Interested in NUTELA

We are always looking to engage with more members of staff and we have a mailing list which we use to keep people up to date with events and opportunities. Anyone who would like to sign up to the mailing list can email  nutelaops@newcastle.ac.uk

Also if there are any technologies that you would like to try or find out more about let us know. We can try to include these in our Pizza, Pop and Practice Programme next year.

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Teesside University Learning and Teaching Workshop: Minecraft as a teaching tool

If you’re interested in the use of games in learning and teaching sign up to this workshop exploring the use of Minecraft, particularly how it can be used in Biosciences.

The programme includes a keynote from Joel Mills,  Minecraft Mentor & Deputy Director of Learning & Teaching Enhancement, Hull University,  as well as lots of opportunities to use the software and trial the virtual field trip exercise.

Thursday 12th July 2018
10am-4pm
Teesside University

To find out more and book your place please visit http://www.tees.ac.uk/sections/whats_on/events_details.cfm?event_id=10172 

 

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Vice Chancellor’s Education Excellence Award Winners

Dr Simon Tate, Dr Alison Graham, School of Biomedical Sciences Professional Services Team and Dr Patrick Rosenkranz

The winners of 2018 Vice Chancellor’s Education Excellence Awards have now been announced after careful consideration of a number of excellent submissions.

Congratulations to Dr Alison Graham, School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, Dr Patrick Rosenkranz, School of Psychology and  Dr Simon Tate, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology for their outstanding achievements which resulted in them winning an  individual award.

A valued addition for 2018 was the introduction of the team award. Congratulations to the School of Biomedical Sciences Professional Services Team who won this all new award for their exceptional achievements when dealing with new challenges.

The winners have demonstrated a marked impact on the experience of students here at Newcastle University, with the panel commending the winners on a wide range of projects in which they have played an instrumental role. Professor Suzanne Cholerton, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Education highlighted the excellent achievements of all of the winners:

“The Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Awards celebrate outstanding contributions to our students’ educational experience. The winners of the awards have demonstrated a sustained record of innovation and creativity in supporting students’ learning and shown exceptional dedication and commitment to support their students. Congratulations to the award winners on this well-deserved recognition.”

Continue reading “Vice Chancellor’s Education Excellence Award Winners”

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Celebrating even more success

Lisa Fishburn

Lisa Fishburn, Learning Enhancement and Technology Adviser, was also invited to the  Celebrating Success event as a result of her fantastic work with the School of Dental Sciences transforming 15 years of unmanageable Blackboard content into the accessible, consistent structure that is in place today.

The self named ‘crack task force’ of both dental academics, Lisa and colleagues in LTDS worked together to ensure that the changes had a hugely positive impact on both the student and staff experience.

Christopher O’Connor, Clinical Fellow in the School of Dental Sciences was the lead academic member of staff for this project and you can read about his experience in this blog post

For more information or if you have any questions about Blackboard get in touch with LTDS@ncl.ac.uk 

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UKAT Annual Conference 2018 – Workshop: Staff and Student perspectives of Personal Tutoring

Workshop: Staff and Student perspectives of Personal Tutoring – Gemma Taylor – University of Derby

MA dissertation research on personal tutoring with a small case study conducted between Jan and March 18 on a UG Programme. Consider student perspective on if the tutorial scheme was fit for purpose and if this enhances the student experience, and for staff to identify any training of changes. Improvement for EDI, widening participation, retention and support. Tutors are frontline for pastoral support; create sense of belonging with relationship with tutor; influence on student engagement; effect on satisfaction, wellbeing and retention rates; development of self-motivation. Continue reading “UKAT Annual Conference 2018 – Workshop: Staff and Student perspectives of Personal Tutoring”

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Celebrating 10 years of ReCap

Members of the ReCap Team at the Celebrating Success event

The ReCap team were invited to  last week’s Celebrating Success Event in recognition of their fantastic work, in collaboration with staff across the University, over the past 10 years.

Newcastle University has now been involved in lecture and event capture since 2007/08 which was a number of years before the majority of UK HEIs even began to consider the potential benefits of such a service.  From the outset the team involved envisioned a pervasive institutional service that would enhance student experience by providing supportive learning resources for all students and especially those with disability, international students and those whose circumstances make attendance at all lectures problematic. Continue reading “Celebrating 10 years of ReCap”

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The Future of Work: Stimulus Event

Students and staff in the Urban Sciences Building

Be bold, be brave and think about the new possibilities, words from Professor Julie Sanders set the tone for The Future of Work : Stimulus Event held on the 13th June. In an area that often results in fear and uncertainty, with much of the media focussing on loss of jobs as a result of AI developing at an ever increasing speed, it was refreshing to see this topic being tackled from such a positive perspective.

This approach was continued by Professor Suzanne Cholerton who outlined how the new Education Strategy embraced the challenges ahead and aimed to give our students an education for life in a world that we don’t yet know. A focus was placed on the strategy theme,  ‘developing students as the whole person by supporting and preparing them to shape the societies in which they will live and the professions they choose to enter’ and this focus was evident from other speakers throughout the day. An emphasis was placed on developing attributes, and thinking about how our graduates can engage creatively and critically with the digital environment. Continue reading “The Future of Work: Stimulus Event”

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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”