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Language Resource Centre

Inside the Language Resource Centre

By Holly Pennal, Language Resources Centre Assistant

The Language Resource Centre is a dedicated centre for language learning available to ALL Newcastle University students and staff. Awarded the Government’s Customer Service Excellence award, the members-only centre (register your smartcard at: ncl.ac.uk/language-resource-centre), is always staffed and has a Language Learning Support Officer on duty Monday to Friday.

  • As well as 110 work stations with 90 PCs, the LRC has bookable spaces including a Meeting Room, a 16-Seater PC cluster with teaching area, and three glass Talk Shops – perfect for group study or to watch films. These can be booked at reception, as well as one-on-one self-study advice appointments with our Language Learning Support Officer if you need some advice on how best to start learning – or improve – your target language. With most of the materials within the centre now being loanable, we also have a feedback box for any suggestions of new resources.Pods in the Language Resource Centre
  • The LRC runs the university IPTV (Internet Protocol TV) site: a world TV and film video streaming service, available for FREE to all Newcastle University students and staff. It hosts a large database of over 3000 foreign & English language films, viewable on demand, and over 20 Satellite TV channels in languages from all over the globe.

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LILAC award: Terry Charlton

Congratulations to Terry Charlton who won a LILAC  Digital Award for Information Literacy 2019.

Terry won the award for his fantastic work  in the University Library Liaison team developing Newcastle University Library’s Online Learning Resources.

What did the project involve?

The project started with in depth consultation with students. This highlighted a preference for rich media and short,  focused videos that could be viewed on a range of devices when students needed them.

After listening to student views a number of videos were produced to cover information literacy skills areas such as literature reviews, finding information and evaluating information. Attention  was paid to the style of  these videos which included background illustrations and animations. Other team members were the friendly face of the videos, which involved a bit of green screen acting. Take a look at one of the videos below:

The second phase of the project included the development of a new search planner tool which is a step by step approach to planning a literature search. This results in a personalised search strategy and can be shared with others, for example supervisors or the library liaison team.

Project successes

  • Over 9000 views of the videos in the first 6 months
  • 94% of survey respondents rated the videos as ‘very good’ or ‘outstanding’
  • Greater student understanding of information literacy issues
  • Using a flipped classroom approach enabled lectures to focus on areas where students demonstrate less understanding
  • A fivefold increase in visits to dissertation pages
  • The resources are accessible, responsive, device independent and mobile friendly.

Find out more

Terry has recently moved to work in the Learning and Teaching Development Service and if you want to find out more you can contact him at terry.charlton@ncl.ac.uk

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RAISE 2019- The impact of student engagement

RAISE: Researching, Advancing and Inspiring Student Engagement
Dates: 4-5 September 2019
Location: Newcastle University, UK

Delegate registration is open for the Researching, Advancing & Inspiring Student Engagement (RAISE) Conference.

Student participation is particularly welcomed (students pay a very low fee). This year there is a two day format  but this is followed by a Development Day on the 6th with workshops and SIGS at the same venue.

The conference aims to offer a forum and platform showcasing practice and research about, student engagement (SE) and working in partnership. Staff in all roles, all students, and others interested in university and college higher education are welcome.

There are over 100 presentations and keynotes from Cathy Bovill, Brice MacFarlane and Colin Bryson.

There is still capacity for posters (those accepted will benefit from the presenter discount).

For full details of the programme and to register http://www.raise-network.com/events/conference-2019/ 

Note the early bird rate ends on May 30th and the final date for registration is June 30th.

Contact for any queries or proposals for poster submissions (send a 300 word max abstract): raise@ncl.ac.uk

Join the email list to keep up to date on Conference and other RAISE news.

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British Conference of Undergraduate Research: Student blog

Guest Student Blog and picture of Jan

This year 18 Newcastle University students attended the British Conference of Undergraduate Research at the University of South Wales.

Ján Dixon, from the School of Medical Education was one of the 12 students who successfully applied for funding to attend the conference. Ján presented his research to fellow undergraduate students on the day.  Read more from Jan below.

I applied for BCUR19 and was lucky enough to receive a scholarship from Newcastle University to attend. I submitted an abstract to BCUR because of the impact of presenting to such a large and diverse audience. The opportunity to present to an audience outside of the research field allows for an excellent shared learning experience; encouraging the presenter to distil the essence of their work and the audience to explore topics outside of their subject.

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Pedagogies of Scholarship and Teaching (PoST) Insights Series Presents CONVERSAZIONE

Image of two people talking

An informal discussion on pedagogy in higher education with              Professor Colin Bryson, Newcastle University, and Professor Sally Brown, Independent Consultant

 This conversazione offers an informal opportunity to hear from two extensively published authors in the field of learning, teaching and assessment in a semi-structured conversation. Each will outline how they got started in writing for publication, including discussion of their rationales for the kinds of publications they have produced, and the impact this has had on their careers and on colleagues around them.

Colin and Sally will make suggestions for those newly embarking in writing and publishing on higher education pedagogy. They will illustrate their perspectives from their publication journeys with anecdotes and stories about mishaps and pitfalls on the way, in ways that will help others avoid their mistakes and move on with their own publications confidently.

1st May @ 1pm in King George VI Building,  Room 1.43B

Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/conversazione-post-series-event-tickets-60568119877

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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

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NUTELA 3Ps: Using Video in your teaching

Are you interested in using video in your teaching?  The latest NUTELA pizza, pop and practice event looked using ReCap outside of the lecture theatre, Microsoft Stream and Box of Broadcasts.

Resources

If you are interested in finding out more  and accessing some of the resources join the NUTELA Team where you can also share ideas with colleagues.

Thanks to Carol Summerside, LTDS, Dr Chris Graham, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics, Graeme Redshaw-Boxwell, LTDS and Marc Bennett, NUIT, for delivering the session.

Find out more about NUTELA

Get in touch with the Steering Group if you want to find out more about NUTELA and future events.

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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

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SEDA Workshop: Supporting Programme Leaders and Programme Leadership

Thursday 11 April 2019

University of Birmingham

This workshop is aimed at programme leaders interested in development opportunities and covers  a range of areas including:

  • How to better frame and define the role
  • Academic leadership
  • Programme level assessment
  • A year in the life of a programme assessor

Find out full details, including how to book your place  on the SEDA Website

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Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching: Pedagogy and Knowledge Production conference

9-10 April, 2019, hosted by Keele University

“The future and end of interdisciplinarity. What is implied when we aim for more robust interdisciplinary insights?” presented by Dr. Machiel Keestra has been confirmed as the Keynote talk for the  Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching: Pedagogy and Knowledge Production conference.

Machiel Keestra is assistant professor (UD) at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He studied philosophy and psychology in Amsterdam and Heidelberg (Germany) and his PhD thesis Sculpting the Space of Actions. Since 2010 Dr. Keestra has been the elected board member of the US based Association for Interdisciplinary Studies and their President from 2014-16. In addition he has been on the strategic board of the 2017 and 2019 International Transdisciplinarity Conferences and is co-chair of the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies conference in Amsterdam, October 24-26th 2019 (http://aisconference2019.nl/).

Registration is open until the 29th of March at a very reasonable £60 for the full conference. The draft programme of speakers is now available from the website, https://www.keele.ac.uk/ilas/conferences/interdisciplinarylearningandteachingconference/.