Category Archives: Social Renewal

Example: Simply Cracking Good Stories

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SimplyCrackingGoodStories imageMartha Young-Scholten and Margaret Wilkinson (School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics) lead the Simply Cracking Good Stories project. 

In the undergraduate module Low-educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition’ students write fiction books for adult immigrants and make these available to local ESOL students.  This addresses the Societal Challenge Theme of Social Renewal. 

Martha and Margaret’s flier and PowerPoint slides have more information about the project.

Students’ (cracking) finished books are available on their Blurb store.

Example: Enterprise, entrepreneurship, employability

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Jane Nolan spoke about exploring enterprise, entrepreneurship and enhancing employability through addressing societal challenges, a new undergraduate module developed using the Societal Challenge Themes.

Here’s a PDF of her slides.

In the module, Changing Age, NIReS, Institute for Social Renewal will set the provocations and provide the background for students’ work. The SCTs’ links to human needs and stories generate compelling stories, which this module uses to build communities and networks across the university between students, schools, researchers, research institutes, external stakeholders and wider society.

Example: Street Law

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Kathryn Hollingsworth (Law School) and Katie Sheehan (Bachelor of Laws student) spoke about the Street Law project.

Here’s a PDF of their slides.

Kathryn and Katie spoke about how the Street Law project gives students opportunities to develop skills in legal research, communication, teamwork, and using their initiative. They use ePortfolio to help students log and reflect on these skills. Street Law is part of the Law School’s offer to students and also, as a pro bono project with a strong focus on social justice, part of what students and the Law School offer back to the local community.

Example: ACTION 2011

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Elizabeth Scanlon spoke about ACTION 2011, a scheme that encouraged researchers to engage with enterprise training by using the Societal Challenge Theme of Sustainability.

Here’s a PDF of her slides.

ACTION 2011 participants said great things about the scheme, including this postgraduate student’s awareness of the skills they had not otherwise had the opportunity to develop:

“From ACTION 2011 I have experienced the business-side of scientific research, which is important for all scientists to understand and this is something I can apply to my Doctorate and in my future career.”

Keynote slides

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Listening to presentations

The Societal Challenge Themes in Learning and Teaching event on Friday 20th April 2012 went well: interesting presentations, a great display of student posters, lively discussions, and enormous slices of cake.

Here is a PDF of Ella Ritchie and Suzanne Cholerton’s slides. The key question in these opening remarks was:

What learning opportunities can the SCTs offer our students?

This led to discussions of how the SCTs offer students opportunities to develop skills, and their awareness of these skills, and also opportunities for experiencing research-informed teaching.

I’ll post each project’s slides separately: click the categories on the right-hand side of this blog to filter the projects by SCT.

Discussions at the event

What’s all this about?

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Newcastle University is focussing on three Societal Challenge Themes as a response to some of the most pressing needs within society. Our three themes are:

  • Ageing.  Our Ageing theme is a development of our expertise on the ageing process and the implications for society. We have the largest number of academics working on aspects of ageing in Europe, many based on a purpose-built campus operated in partnership with the NHS Trust.
  • Sustainability.  Sustainability can be summarised as: ‘enough, for all, forever‘. Drawing on Newcastle University’s world-leading expertise in the fields of natural and urban environments, agriculture, transport, water, energy, marine technology and clean industrial production, the Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability has been established to develop innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems.
  • Social Renewal.  Newcastle has significant strengths in research relating to how individuals, communities and organisations adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing and challenging environment. We have created the Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal as a hub for research activity which is focused on asking the big questions facing our society.

Significant emphasis has already been placed on the impact of our research on these societal challenges.  We are now increasing our focus on how our learning and teaching provision might reflect our commitment to these themes, and providing real opportunities for our students to make a difference to our knowledge and awareness of these global issues. 

This blog supports Societal Challenge Themes in learning and teaching by drawing together information and resources including:

Newcastle University staff are welcome to comment on posts and keep discussions going.  This is not compulsory – nor is it a substitute for other discussions. 

This blog is a work in progress.  Planning the launch event has brought a number of examples of practice together and demonstrated that there is already a rich seam of such projects across the University.  That said, planning the event also demonstrated the amount of innovative and effective practice that has not yet had the spotlight it deserves. This blog is an attempt to bring these examples together, and to see how they develop.