Student Researchers from the department of Art to present at RAISE 2013 by Christine Ellison

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OSCAR 1

 

As we continue to develop OSCAR the online student community in Art our students are becoming more involved and more integral to the development of the project. Together we are researching innovative ways to integrate the social network, designed to support our studio modules, across all of our programmes in Art. We have been invited to present at the RAISE conference in Nottingham this September which we are delighted to be able to attend with support from Digitally Ready. The theme this year is The Future of Student Engagement: Partnerships, Practices, Policies and Philosophies. I am working with two BA students (from our OSCAR student research group) on a joint presentation about the collaborative process of developing OSCAR. We will address student engagement particularly in relation to partnerships and practices highlighting our current focus on developing students’ professional online profiles.

OSCAR 2The ‘member profile’ feature recently added to OSCAR enables students to start shaping a profile that represents them academically and professionally. Most students have several online ‘faces’ across the likes of Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc. We are keen to support them in shaping these identities and in learning how to ensure they are confident and informed about how these platforms represent them. They are increasingly aware of the importance of an online profile that can be separate from their social activities. And we as staff are keen to emphasise the value of an academic/professional space that is not public facing like sites such as LinkedIn.

We want to nurture and encourage a space where students learn how to shape their profile online in a sheltered environment. Learn is the key worked here. The time at University is an important pre-professional time where things should be tried, tested and developed. We want to foster an approach to building professional online identities that can evolve and develop without the consequences of immediate publication on a public facing network. The member profiles on OSCAR offer students this opportunity. They can build a profile through emphasizing their academic interests that enables them to connect with other students on different programmes and at various levels, whilst shaping their professional statement, CV, blog, website etc. in a subject specific peer group.

The students representing us at RAISE have the added opportunity of presenting at this high-profile conference. I am excited about the potential impact of this next year on the student research group, the wider student community in Art and the OSCAR learning environment.

Teaching and Learning in the School of Humanities. The Department of Philosophy showcases the First-Year Module ‘Reason and Argument’ (PP1RA) and the new Second-Year Module ‘Truth and Bullshit’ (PP2TBS): Interview held by Dr Rebecca Rist (School Director of Teaching and Learning) with Dr Nat Hansen (Department of Philosophy).

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1.          How long has the Department of Philosophy offered the Part One ‘Reason and Argument’ module (PP1RA) and why have you decided also now to offer a new Part Two module ‘Truth and Bullshit’ (PP2TBS)?

The module ‘Reason and Argument’ was offered for the first time last year. It is a revised version of a long-standing skills-based course called ‘Critical Thinking’.  My colleague Professor Emma Borg redesigned the course for First Years to include a career component in line with the University of Reading’s push to include career advice and placement opportunities in curriculum design.  ‘Truth and Bullshit’ is based on a module that I taught at the University of Chicago that was called ‘Telling the Truth: Scepticism, Relativism and Bullshit’.  The course was developed as part of a Tave Teaching Fellowship–a competitive teaching award at the University of Chicago–and it subsequently also won an award for course design from Chicago’s Center for Teaching and Learning.   The idea behind the ‘Truth and Bullshit’ course is to introduce central topics in philosophy that will have broad appeal not just to students majoring in philosophy but also to joint-degree students across the School of Humanities and the University. And it’s a really fun class to teach!

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Teaching and Learning in the School of Humanities: The Department of History Introduces the Third-Year Module History Education (HS3HED): Dr Rebecca Rist (School Director of Teaching and Learning) interviews the module convenor, Dr Elizabeth Matthew

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1.       Why has the Department of History decided to introduce the third-year module History Education?
The idea for History Education arose from two coincidental events in mid-January 2011.  A message landed in my inbox calling for applications for Faculty of Arts and Humanities ‘Think Space’ funding for curriculum-development projects to enhance student employability.  Earlier the same day I had seen media coverage of league tables ranking secondary schools by the number of students gaining GCSE passes at A*–C in English, maths, two sciences, a classical or modern foreign language, and either geography or history.  With this new EBacc (English Baccalaureate) measure of performance raising the profile of history in schools, the ‘Think Space’ scheme seemed an ideally timed opportunity to consider a new initiative to help some of our students enter careers in history education. Having close links with the Historical Association (the subject association for history at primary and secondary level) as past president of the local branch in Reading and a current member of the HA Council, I was also keen to offer some practical support for history in schools.  I knew that the university’s Chemistry Department already offered its students credit-bearing placements in local schools.  I wanted the History Department to do this too, ahead of any similar moves within BA History programmes at competitor universities in the south of England.

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Supporting students through personal tutor tutorials by Dr Paul Glaister, Dr Karen Ayres and Dr Calvin James Smith

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With the news that the University’s personal tutorial system has been under review (Issue 2, T&L Reading), we thought it would be useful to highlight how we have been successfully combining pastoral and academic responsibilities of a personal tutor. In the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, for the last three years we have operated a system of weekly Part 1 ‘personal tutorials’: small-group academic tutorials which are led by the student’s personal tutor. We certainly do mean ‘small group’, because typically there are around six students in the group, i.e. just the tutor’s Part 1 tutees (compared with around 25 in our more traditional tutorials). The focus of the personal tutorials is a formative problem sheet for one of the core mathematics modules (e.g. Calculus Methods). The aims of these tutorials are many: to provide strong support for the school-university transition both in academic and pastoral terms, to develop a strong relationship early on between both parties, to provide better monitoring of progress and engagement by students, to provide support for their Part 1 modules (and one module in particular in place of a large group tutorial) and to enhance their transferable skills. This has proved very popular with students.

The tutorial is not designed to be tutor-led, but rather the students are encouraged to come to the board and work through one of the problems on the sheet, explaining their reasoning as they go. The intention is to start developing students’ skills in communicating mathematics right from the start, since this is a vital employability skill. Whilst one student works at the board, the other students, as well as the tutor, offer suggestions on what to try next for solving a problem, effectively creating a small learning community which meet each week. With a group of reasonably engaged students, the whole experience can be very rewarding for both personal tutors and tutees. Of course, the choice of module is very important to the success of this scheme. For the focus of the Autumn term tutorials we have deliberately chosen the module that is most similar to what the students have seen before: with material they feel comfortable with, they are more likely to be willing to come to the board and work through solutions, rather than just feel intimidated. By the Spring term we find that students have developed more confidence.  There is also the opportunity to make students aware of connections between material studied in different modules, and tutors also get a better idea early on as to which students are struggling, and can ensure that appropriate advice and support is provided. So all in all, it is a win-win situation all round.

Mobile Technology – Changing the Learning Landscape – a HEA sponsored conference by Dr Natasha Barrett & Dr Samantha Weston

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On Thursday 18th April, the HEA hosted a conference in Bristol, showcasing some innovative uses of old technologies as well as demonstrating the cutting edge of new tech used in the delivery of teaching materials to undergraduates in medicine and dentistry. We attended in the hope that some of these ideas might be adaptable for teaching the increasingly tech-savvy undergraduates of UoR’s School of Biological Sciences and School of Pharmacy. The focus of this workshop was the use of mobile devices, social media and open practice in medicine and dentistry but was applicable to many disciplines.  This was an intense day, packed full of interesting sessions including:

  • Twitter for forming networks
  • Blogs to support reflection
  • Digital curation
  • Augmented reality
  • Apps for mobile devices e.g.  Reflection app, Learning Suite app (MCQs), Clinical assessment app (tutor feedback sent straight to your eportfolio), Dr Companion app (5-6 searchable textbooks).

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Digital teaching in Classics –a recent conference at the University by Dr Matthew Nicholls

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The University of Reading recently hosted the Classical Association Conference, the UK’s largest annual meeting for Classicists. As well as research papers, the CA traditionally hosts panels exploring the teaching of the subject at both school and University levels and covering new developments. Classics, despite its ancient subject matter, has always been at the forefront of modern digital techniques of teaching and research, as recent work here at Reading shows.

This year’s CA featured a series of panels dedicated to e-learning, and as ever school and university teaching staff enjoyed the chance to learn what new developments each others’ professions had found to be useful (or not). In The first panel, teachers discussed their use of online learning environments, and pupils’ use of and response to using digital classroom tools for collaborative learning in a session which led into a general and wide-ranging audience discussion on the merits and demerits of VLEs. A second panel considered the application of IT resources to language teaching via heavily interactive digital resources of various sorts. New classroom IT offers the scope for social collaboration via wiki-like pages, and for the development of learning resources that are project- and problem-based. On the other hand, VLE’s can lag behind commercial or social software in the ‘real world’, which shapes student expectations. The incorporation of social media in teaching contexts can blur the boundaries between social and paedagogic interactions in ways that can be both productive and challenging – the appropriate etiquette around appropriate Facebook use, for example, continues to develop for both pupils and teachers. The panels considered the need to make IT resources engaging enough to capture student engagement when the online environment can create an expectation of game-like experiences, while still delivering robust content and structure.

These panels reflected a growing interest in tools and techniques for digital learning, a topic of much current interest in our own University. The overall impression from the panel I chaired was that there is much excitement about what has already been developed, and what is about to come (MOOCs were mentioned more than once). At the same time, there was a sense that the pace of change can make it hard to back the right horse – that time, effort, or money directed at a current device or platform might be worth very little in a couple of years, and that solid, ‘committee-designed’ platforms within institutions can lag behind nimbler commercial offerings. Students are now such practiced digital consumers that any frustrations or shortcomings in (for instance) a VLE are likely to disrupt their use of it quite substantially, and make it hard for us to direct them to the digital resources that we want them to use. The same seems to be true in the school classroom. When done well, however, results seem to show a promising uplift in performance and student engagement; the consensus was that digital methods of teaching definitely deserve their growing place in the teaching toolkit.

The conference panels also helped to address what seemed to be a shared sense of frustration that successful initiatives can develop in isolation, with practitioners in different sectors or institutions working on similar projects but unknown to each other. Conferences like this help to bring such people together, and as ever the chance to talk to and learn from people across one’s own field and beyond was very rewarding for all concerned.

What did I do wrong? Supporting independent learning practices to avoid plagiarism by Helen Hathaway

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My paper on the project What did I do wrong? Supporting independent learning practices to avoid plagiarism was well received in Manchester last week at LILAC.

What is the project about?

It is one year project at the University of Reading involving collaboration between Library staff (including a Study Adviser); staff from the International Study and Language Centre and academic staff and students from a range of Schools across different faculties. It is funded by the University’s Teaching and Learning development fund.

It is not a “how to reference” or even a “how to avoid plagiarism” project but rather embedded within the wider context of the fundamental academic principles of independent critical thinking, supported by appropriate and properly cited evidence from evaluated sources which is especially crucial in avoiding unintentional plagiarism. Students need to understand where to find appropriate sources of information in their subject and how, when and why to use references to these in their academic work to enable them to develop their arguments and achieve the correct balance between evidence and interpretation. This goes beyond simply learning the mechanisms of setting out a bibliography or when to include a citation, though these are problems that will be addressed – how to cite unusual types of materials for example. While not implying that poor academic practice in this is a  problem that is confined to international students, experience suggests it is perhaps more acute in that area; while the toolkit will be useful to all the Schools we are particularly aware of the cultural difficulties international students may face academically.

The primary output will be a digital ‘toolkit’ of bite-sized resources for academic tutors to draw on which collates evaluated teaching and support resources with guidance for adapting them for subject teaching. The aim will be to maximise their effective use with students to develop their deep understanding of “why” they should develop particular practices or skills.

The funding has allowed the appointment of a project officer to conduct focus groups and extended interviews. Other members of the team have researched existing resources both within the University and beyond and are now working on the toolkit. We are not there yet…

And what is LILAC?

LILAC is the “Librarians’ Information Literacy Annual Conference” and is “aimed at librarians and information professionals who teach information literacy skills, are interested in digital literacies and want to improve the information seeking and evaluation skills of all our library users whoever they may be”. It is an excellent chance for professionals from across sectors and from many countries to get together to share good practice in learning and teaching and to look to the future.

My paper was part of the dissemination phase of the project and was taken in the “Collaboration and partnerships” strand. It resulted in interest in whether the toolkit  would be made available as an Open Educational Resource and of course some interesting discussion. Further dissemination will be across the sector via ALDinHE, BALEAP and hopefully JISC conferences/seminars.

The team is – myself, Clare Nukui (IFP), Kim Shahabudin (Study Adviser), Liz Wilding (ISLC) and Project Officer Rhi Smith.

Dr Kim Shahabudin also just presented this poster on the project at the ALDinHE conference in Plymouth
Dr Kim Shahabudin also just presented this poster on the project at the ALDinHE conference in Plymouth

Teaching in Higher Education by Dr Cindy Becker

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This month sees the publication of my latest book, Teaching in Higher Education, written with Professor Pam Denicolo and published as part of the SAGE series Success in Research of which we are editors.

I suppose it is inevitable, given our busy lives, that we do not always have the time to analyze all the ways in which we teach and/or learn. We develop new ways of getting the best out of our students, we recalibrate our approach so that they get the best out of us, but we frequently do this instinctively. This instinct of the educator is vital to our role within the university, and the range of Teaching and Learning support offered within our workplace now allows us some time and space to think more deeply about our methods, and to share our successes and challenges with each other.

Despite this space for sharing, I was still aware that much of what I do as I face my students each day is ‘just what I do’. You might imagine, then, my pleasure at being asked to write a book designed to guide those less experienced in our profession. I was being given the chance to sit down and think about all aspects of teaching, to interrogate my assumptions and articulate my ideas.

After months thinking about how we do what we do, I still believe that teaching is a vocation, an activity for which you need to call up passion, energy and patience, but I have also come to the view that it can be taught: Teaching in Higher Education is the result.

Teaching in Higher Education‘If you are considering teaching or are new to the role, this book contains invaluable advice which will not only help you to get started but will help you to make teaching a rewarding, life-long career!’
– Serena Simmons, Nottingham Trent University

Chemistry’s Mini MOOC Attracts Industrial Interest by Dr Elizabeth Page and Professor Mathew Almond

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Course participants see NMR in practice with Dr Geoff Brown in the CAF during an on-site visit

Dr Elizabeth Page and Professor Matthew Almond developed an online distance learning course in 2011-2012 with funding support from the National HE STEM programme. The distance learning course entitled ‘Fundamental Analytical Techniques for Industry’ encompasses a host of analytical chemistry techniques typically used in a variety of scientific industries – pharma, food, agrichemicals etc. The course was targeted at employees in these industries without a background in higher education and designed to give staff a more thorough understanding of the theories behind the day-to-day processes they are routinely using. The course was piloted in 2011-2012 with a small number of students and fully rolled out this year with employees from a variety of major science based companies. Employers are viewing the course as cpd opportunity for staff wishing to enhance their personal portfolios.

A successful spin-off from development of the course is establishing and strengthening links with industry. A major international pharmaceutical company with analytical and QA operations in Maidenhead has contacted the Department of Chemistry about placement and employment opportunities. The company is offering either a placement year or summer internship for undergraduates and is recruiting to two full-time positions for graduates in June. We are also discussing the possibility of them sponsoring a local school leaver to study Chemistry at the University.

Institutional exposure via the provision of online courses or MOOCs is certainly leading to opportunities which could not have been foreseen when the idea of the course was first discussed.

For full information see: http://www.reading.ac.uk/chemistry/businessdevelopment/chem-e-learning.aspx

Showcasing Excellence in Students’ Research at Reading By Dr Anne Crook and Professor Julian Park

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The T&L away day in September 2011 focused on the theme ‘Building an Undergraduate Research Community’. Arising from these discussions a group of staff met to investigate ways in which undergraduate research at Reading might be more effectively showcased across the institution (and beyond). The group has expanded since its conception in 2011 and now meets once a term, consisting variously of staff from across the Faculties, support services and RUSU and is co-chaired by Dr Anne Crook (CDoTL) and Professor Julian Park (Associate Dean T&L, Life Sciences). The remit of the group has also expanded to encompass both undergraduate and postgraduate research activities and aligns with one of the key strategic priorities in the new Learning and Teaching Strategy (2013-18), namely ‘to engage students in research and enquiry in the curriculum’.

The aim of this blog post is to update colleagues on the activities of the group and to seek your feedback on other ways in which we may showcase excellence in students’ research at Reading.

Members of the group are currently engaged in the following activities:

1.  Developing a framework for disseminating students’ research news, e.g. on a webpage of the University’s website

The outputs of student research (undergraduate and postgraduate) are sometimes published in academic journals and other publications. However at present there is no central ‘forum’ for communicating the high quality contribution that is made by some students through their research activities (within and extra curricula). The group felt that a more effective forum of communicating these contributions, and the experiences which the students gain by being involved in research, is required. The group are therefore currently working with the Communications Office to investigate ways in which high quality students’ research may be showcased, both internally and externally, taking into account the different audience that such a website may cater for (current/prospective students/alumni/research community etc.)

2.  Further investigation of the possibilities of publishing high quality Master Theses on CentAUR

The issue of Masters theses remaining largely ‘on the shelves’ after submission was considered and it was agreed that the highest quality dissertations could be an excellent research resource for other students (and staff). The possibility of theses being accessible once relevant permissions/copyright had been sought, e.g., in PDF format via CentAUR, is being pursued. It is worth noting that it is already possible to search for papers with an UG or PGT  author and this currently returns 40 papers.

3.  Support for and dissemination of students’ attendance at the 2013 British Conference on Undergraduate Research

The conference will take place in April at Plymouth University and a number of Reading students will be attending and presenting (at least 5), some of whom have been funded by members of the group. The group will be working with the Communications Office to ensure these students are showcased on the University website following their attendance at the conference.

4.  Financing a UROP in 2013 to focus on the impacts to students’ confidence in undertaking research placements.

This is being funded by the Science Faculties and is currently being advertised. The project will be supervised by Dr Gillian Rose in Agriculture.

5.  Liaising with the University Committee on Museums, Archives and Collections (CMAC) to establish the ways in which University resources held within its museums and collections are currently being used to support T&L.

6.  The Associate Deans for T&L within the group, Julian Park and Orla Kennedy, are taking forward discussions to establish the nature and extent to which students at Part 1 and Part 2 are undertaking research activities. 

7.  Liaising with RUSU regarding the possible involvement of the Students’ Union in supporting a University-level student-led conference to showcase excellence in student research activities, which could build on the existing annual UROP showcase event in the Autumn Term.

8.  Exploring opportunities with the Communications Office whereby the annual UROP showcase event could ‘dovetail’ with other events taking place on campus at that time to maximise the potential impact of the UROP event.

9.  Drafting an article for the Engage in T&L blog to solicit staff ideas for other ways in which we may showcase students’ research.

The group would welcome your feedback and suggestions on its work, in particular, additional ideas for ways in which we could be showcasing the excellent research activities that many of our UG and PG students undertake at Reading. Please send your suggestions to Anne Crook (a.c.crook@rdg.ac.uk) and Julian Park (j.r.park@rdg.ac.uk). Thank you!