The call for papers for the HEA Arts and Humanities conference closes on 11 January 2016.
We are accepting paper, ignite sessions, workshop and poster submissions on the following themes:
Innovate: How are we adopting and implementing innovative practice in Arts and Humanities teaching and learning?
Assessment: How can we meet the assessment & feedback challenges in Arts and Humanities?
Achievement: How can we support student retention and attainment in Arts and Humanities?
Embedding employability: How can we embed employability and prepare students for their transition into the world of work or postgraduate study through our teaching and learning strategies?
Developing our practice: How do we drive our own practice forwards, what are effective strategies for continuing professional development?
Really? Can it really be nearly that time of year again? It comes round so quickly doesn’t it?
No, not Christmas. It’s nearly National Student Survey time again. Shortly after the start of the new calendar year NSS 2016 launches – at Newcastle the Survey will launch on Monday 2 February. Sometimes it can feel as though there are some Groundhog Day elements to the NSS, but this year is different. 2016 will be the last time that NSS runs in its current format as HEFCE are planning a number of significant changes for NSS 2017.
The format of the NSS has remained pretty constant since it was launched in 2005. It surveys final year undergraduates. It uses the same 22 questions, with the addition of a question on Students’ Unions in 2012 being the only change. Such a period of calm, and lack of change, is somewhat unusual in UK higher education – and it’s about to end.
HEFCE have proposed that from NSS 2017:
Seven of the existing questions should be dropped from the Survey – including all three on Personal Development and the question on Students’ Unions.
Nine new questions should be added – four under the heading Academic Challenge and Integrative Learning; three on The Student Voice; and two on The Learning Community and Collaborative Learning.
All three of the existing questions on Learning Resources should be re-worded, as should two of the questions on Assessment and Feedback.
Not quite all change, but if HEFCE goes ahead with these changes the NSS will look very different. I’ve uploaded a mock-up of what the new NSS 2017 would like under the proposals to highlight this, which was compiled by Corony Edwards at Exeter University (and which I’m uploading with Corony’s permission) – NSS 2017 Proposed Questions.
What it means is that NSS would start to take on a different character with a much greater focus on student engagement issues – both student engagement with their programmes, and student engagement as members of the academic communities in the departments/schools that deliver their programmes.
Of course this isn’t fixed and agreed yet. HEFCE have been consulting on this (the consultation closed last week), and it will be a while before the final outcome and the actual content of NSS 2017 is announced. But it seems pretty clear that as with most other things relating to learning and teaching and external ‘regulation’ (TEF, quality assessment) we’re about to enter a very different world.
The recent Pizza, Pop and Practice workshop on Sound and Vision, looking at making recordings and short video clips for use in teaching, was a tremendous success.
Participants enjoyed their pizza and pop, whilst learning about Audacity (which enables you to make short sound recordings and clips), Animoto (which allows you to make short video clips to advertise events or explain simple concepts – see Jo’s video about the workshop below), as well as looking at ways to use Microsoft Office Mix to create videos and recordings for use in powerpoints or online.
Thanks to everyone who came along and thanks in particular to Lucy Keating, Marc Bennett, Jo Robinson-Lamb and Nuala Davis for delivering such interesting workshops!
All of the materials from the workshops are now available on this blog.
Interested in using these materials in your teaching? Contact LTDS for more information and support.
On the 17th of December, the Learning and Teaching Development Service will be launching their new website, alongside the new Case Studies database.
The new LTDS website replace the old QuILT website, and will provide University staff will a clear route to find the things you need related to learning and teaching development and teaching quality assurance at Newcastle University.
We have many workshops and webinars running, and we will be developing a new booking system in the New Year.
The new Case Studies database has over 100 examples of good teaching practice across the University. Use it to inspire and support you in your teaching.
We don’t always find out about the next steps for our FutureLearners, so it was great to meet up with Bryan Wallace recently and hear how studying “Hadrian’s Wall: Life on the Roman Frontier” was a step on the ladder to signing up at for a part time Roman Frontier Studies MA here at Newcastle University.
Office Mix is a PowerPoint plugin that enables you to take new and existing presentations and transform them into interactive online learning resources that you can easily publish to your website and/or Blackboard. You can use the tool to add:
An excellent range of resources, including some more advanced features, like embedding mixes in webpages, can be found at mixforteachers.com
When you come to publish your mixes you can either publish to a personal account or use your University account which Microsoft refers to as ‘Work or School Account’. Simply sign in with your username@newcastle.ac.uk (e.g. nmb84@newcastle.ac.uk) and your university password.
If you want to track your students’ progress and engagement with your mixes via your Blackboard Module you can use the integrated Office Mix tool in the VLE. This will give you stats on a range of things that you can link to individual students including how many attempts they took to answer questions and time spent on specific slides.
Please note: Office Mix is currently in Beta which means that it could change or be removed completely in the future. We believe this is very unlikely given the growing popularity of the product and as your mix PowerPoints will remain functional as presentations it is very low risk experiment should you wish to try it.
If you wish to install Office Mix on a University machine simply request that your computing officer apply the following policy: ‘4 NUIT Office Mix Beta’
I was delighted to be asked to represent one of three UK FutureLearnpartner institutions at the first FutureLearn Asia Pacific Partner Forum, held in Shanghai, 24 & 25 November 2015.
Partner Forums are one of the things that make working with the FutureLearn partnership so useful. A chance to meet others a few times a year who are facing the same challenges, providing regular opportunities to share experiences and learn from each other, as well as influence the development of the platform. And we do really influence the development of the platform. Previously Partner Forums have happened in London, but with recent expansions in the Asia Pacific partnership, an inaugural Forum was planned in Shanghai, aiming to replicate meetings in the UK, but for Asia Pacific partners.
I set off to meet up in Shanghai with Kate Dickens, Project Lead for FutureLearn from University of Southampton, Joanna Stroud, Project Lead for FutureLearn from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Simon Nelson, CEO of FutureLearn, and 4 of his staff. We took part in a very well organised and intensive two day forum with around 70 representatives from HEIs and specialist organisations based in the Asia Pacific region, from countries including Australia, Malaysia, Japan, and Korea, as well as several Chinese institutions and representatives from the British Council and Consulate.
In a packed two days, as well as getting to know each other, we got to know a bit about how the approaches developed within UK and European FutureLearn partners were being received by more recent Asia Pacific partners, and had the opportunity to share with each other some of the things we have learned in our time developing and delivering free online courses with FutureLearn.
FutureLearn’s mantra for free online courses, which appears at the beginning of nearly every presentation, is to ‘Tell stories, provoke conversation and celebrate success’.
As Newcastle University courses have consistently succeeded in achieving higher than average engagement with our courses, I was asked to present a session on Effective Storytelling in Newcastle’s free online courses, and to sit on a panel discussing approaches to course development and sharing top tips.
For the panel session, which took place on the morning of day 2, I was on the stage with Kate Dickens from University of Southampton, David Major, Learning Technologist from FutureLearn, and Professor Hongling Zhang from Shanghai International Studies University (SISU), Lead Educator on the Intercultural Communication free online course. The session was facilitated by Kate Sandars, Partnership Manager from FutureLearn and was based on questions from the floor, which were many, and discussion around them, which was lively. The session was very much about the practical aspects of developing and delivering free online courses, and about how this aligns with institutional strategy. The panel session overran and there was much continued discussion in the following tea break.
Just before lunch on day 2 I presented a half hour slot on ‘Effective Storytelling’ in our free online courses at Newcastle University. I was pleased to be asked to do this session, as our courses consistently achieve higher than the FutureLearn average for social learning (engagement of learners with discussion and comments), and we also achieve higher than the average FutureLearn full participation rate (the nearest metric we have to ‘course completion’) – with our Ageing Well: Falls course having the highest full participation rate of any FutureLearn course to date, at 57% of those who started the course.
This indicates to us that there is something about our approach to working with teams of educators on developing our courses which works. Our focus on learning design is crucial to course success and we do focus on it a lot, right from course conception to delivery.
Why is storytelling so important? Well I think that the telling stories analogy is a great one for us to focus on. It enables us to talk about course creation in a different way, it encourages us to examine what is special about storytelling and storytellers. Why do stories work? Why are they compelling? What qualities to they have which are different to campus based courses? How can we replicate some of that in free online courses? And why is making courses online so different to making campus based programmes?
The session went down really well, and there was further lively discussion afterwards over a delicious lunch with colleagues from Monash University, the University of Malaya, RMIT, Fudan University, SISU and others.
An afternoon tea reception hosted by the British Council ended the Forum, which was an amazing privilege to be asked to attend, and which profiled the work of the University and its approach to online course development which has generated much interest from Asia Pacific HEIs. We look forward to following up with these contacts over the coming weeks. Many thanks go to Simon Nelson and his team at FutureLearn for asking us to represent established partners, for giving us the opportunity to profile our work and courses in the Asia Pacific region, and for looking after us so well in Shanghai.
In session 3 of our 3P event on Friday 27th we had a look at sound recording and sound file use. Here are a few resources we used for this part of the session:
Experience tells me that if you are doing anything with sound the quality of the recording is important – here’s a post showing that a decent microphone is a must.
If you’re sad there was no PhotoStory in this session you can see how to do something similar in Powerpoint or with Movie Maker (but let’s face it Animoto makes short work of this).
The University’s Innovation Fund awards are designed to encourage the development of new or innovative approaches to learning and teaching and to enable their dissemination across the University.
The Innovation Fund is a fantastic opportunity to propose and deliver projects with real benefit to learning, teaching, and the student experience.
Past projects have also offered stepping stones to other internal and external learning and teaching opportunities and funding (eg: evidence for the reward and recognition of teaching; HEA schemes).
Whilst Innovation Fund projects can offer opportunities to undertake educational research, it is essential that the primary focus of projects is on improving the student learning experience.
Workshops for prospective applicants to the Innovation Fund are available giving an overview of the purpose of the fund, and the responsive and strategic strands of funding.
Presentations will be made by winning Innovation Fund project teams.
Guidance will be available from the Careers Service about employing students as part of an Innovation Fund project.
Introduction to the application process, key dates, and where to find further information will also be included:
