UCLan's Learning and Teaching Conference 2015

Call for contributions from UCLan staff, students and partner colleges in the form of 20 minute talks or posters giving an account of research, experience, evaluation, policy or practice with the emphasis on drawing out lessons for others and engaging participants.

Innovation and Research to Enhance Learning
30 June, 9.30am to 4.30pm

This event is ppen to all UCLan staff and students. Themes for proposals, including but not limited to:
- Learner experience and engagement
- Professional identities
- Collaborative and practice-based learning
- Effective learning environments
- The use and value of appropriate learning technologies
Deadline for abstracts is 17 April. Please submit a 300 word abstract describing the research, link to themes and the potential impact.  State if you are doing a poster or talk. Please email abstracts to HHewertson at uclan dot ac dot uk

Teaching Exchange 2014

Teaching Exchange 

Wednesday 18th June 2014 1 - 4pm

UCLan Media Factory

ME320

The Teaching Exchange is open to everyone wanting to develop or explore teaching and learning.

Drop in slots with talks and a demonstration.

Teaching Exchange 2014​​​

​1-00-1.15  Opening introduction

1.15 -2pm Talk: Carol Banks- Diffusion and undergraduate research

 2pm -3pm  Talk: Clive Palmer -undergraduate research and inquiry workshop 

3-3.30 pm Break 

3.30-4pm  Talk: Amanda Taylor - Social Work book club: embedding research in the curriculum 

4-4.15pm close

Please be on time for the slots or enter quietly so not to disturb the speakers.

PRF dates for 2013-14

Introduction

The PRF is an important university-wide community that supports teaching and learning excellence. 

Activities:

·         We hold regular seminars at which colleagues share their practice and report on pedagogic research. We also run two larger annual events: the Teaching Exchange and the Sharing Practice Conference.

·         We host regular reading groups and have a thriving network through which we disseminate papers, calls for conferences, funding calls and disseminate good practice. The network has a community site within Blackboard, which is open to staff and postgraduate students.  

·         We publish an annual journal which is peer reviewed with an editorial board led by Gavin Sim and Michael Thomas. 

·         We have produced two resources for staff: the Guide to Pedagogic Research, and an Impact publication showcasing the work and impact of the PRF.

Ruth Pilkington from SoESS is the Chair of the PRF.

Helen Hewertson  is the main contact for  activities and resources 
HHewertson at uclan dot ac dot uk 

Dates of Seminars for the PRF in 2013-14

Times 1-2pm

Meetings are normally in Fy114 and will include 1 paper presentation plus networking

Monday, 21^ST October 2013

Wednesday, 20^th November 2013

            Friday, 17^th January 2014

Times 12-1pm

Monday, 10^th February 2014

Wednesday, 12^th March 2014

Friday, 16^th May 2014

Workshops

Regular Meetings are supplemented by special events each semester.  These take the form of Teaching Exchanges which will allow the sharing of practice around themes and topics of interest to members

Semester 1 Wed 20^th November 2-4 after the PRF. 

Semester 2 Wed 18^th June 12-4. Teaching  Exchange

National Teaching Fellows 2013

Two inspiring UCLan lecturers won the prestigious award of National Teaching Fellow.

Dr Helen Day from the School of Language, Literature and International Studies and
Francois Nel from the School of Journalism and digital communication.

The National Teaching Fellowship Scheme recognises and rewards excellent learning and teaching and is funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW), and the Department for Employment and Learning in Northern Ireland (DELNI). It is open to all higher education institutions and further education colleges in England, Northern Ireland and Wales who have more than 100 FTE students and are directly funded by HEFCE, HEFCW, or DELNI.

Up to 55 awards of £10,000 are made to recognise individual excellence. The award is intended for National Teaching Fellows' professional development in teaching and learning or aspects of pedagogy." http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ntfs

See full news story here
http://www.uclan.ac.uk/news/national_recognition_for_two_uclan_academics.php
We are extremely proud of our inspiring and engaging lecturers and these awards are a tangible reward for all the hard work they put in developing their teaching and providing and excellent student experience. 

Teaching Exchange 2013

This years Teaching Exchange had drop in slots with talks and a demonstration. Featuring some of the winners of the VC's excellence in learning and teaching awards....

#badacademia

This letter appeared in the Independent.  It raises several concerns about Gove's new curriculum

"We are writing to warn of the dangers posed by Michael Gove’s new National Curriculum which could severely erode educational standards. The proposed curriculum consists of endless lists of spellings, facts and rules. This mountain of data will not develop children’s ability to think, including problem-solving, critical understanding and creativity." 
It was also signed by over 100 academics from universities across the country many of whom are experts in education and have published multiple books and papers on education.  
The academics state that Gove did not take on board the advice of experts when designing his curriculum and as such is sacrificing a good education for rote learning which will severely affect educational standards.
Gove's response was this was to shout at the academics for living in their ivory towers and being an example of bad academia.  How ironic!  

@ThomsonPat: So Gove read my 12 books  140+ peer reviewed journal articles in 2 days as well as those of my 99 colleagues? - Pat Thompson - Professor in Education

This led to @timeshighered encouraging academics to take back the term by using  #badacademia on twitter to tweet about the good education that happens in spite of Gove.
Some great tweets below:

Turn that phone on! Mobile technology in the classroom

This PRF session featured a talk by Anna Hunter who used mobile learning and TweetDeck to encourage engagement in the classroom. Students were expected to set up a twitter account if they didn't already have one by the next session and bring a smartphone or laptop....

VC's awards for excellence in learning and teaching

On Fri 7th Dec 2012 we celebrated the second annual Vice Chancellor's awards for excellence in teaching and learning. 

Hands on assessment

I was inspired by this article on how hands on science assessment are a much more accurate reflection of student comprehension. The computer based and physical tasks set for the students, involved much more than you would ever get out of a pen and paper exam, and the students got much more out of it. The study was conducted by the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress)

Other kinds of "impact" REF 2014

David Willetts speech-at UUK conference today was interesting for many reasons. The biggest 'impact' for me was where he was talking about what will be REF'able and how research will be assessed for the Research Excellence Framework 2014.
The most surprising thing was that you could include unpublished work and journal impact factors would have no relevance!

Supporting the research process

Research is a pivotal part of Higher Education, all universities do research to some extent, even if it is research into their teaching that never get published in peer reviewed journals.

Academic Mentoring

Anyone at the start of their career needs to be shown the ropes. But why is mentoring so important in HE?

Sharing Practice 2012

We held the Sharing Practice conference in Livesey House at Uclan today. It was a great event with many more people than we were expecting. Really positive feedback from participants...

Teaching Exchange

We held the Teaching Exchange yesterday , and it was a very successful event, there was standing room only in the first session, so we had to move to a bigger room!

Innovations in Higher Education

The internet has been abuzz with all the innovations for teaching and learning, the free online learning platforms and different ways to teach students. Now it is research's turn to be overhauled...

Uclan Journal of Pedagogic Research

After the successful publication of our latest issue, the call is now open for further submissions to the Uclan Journal Of Pedagogic Research.   ..

Should Lecturers have teaching qualifications?

The view that university lecturers in the UK should have teaching qualifications is not new, but with the increase in fees the NUS president is demanding that it be made mandatory for all lecturers to have teaching qualifications, as at the moment it is considered advisable but not mandatory...

Free universities?

In the age of increasing fees and sale of Higher Education , there has been another university set up that will offer courses for free as reported by the BBC ....

Refworks Vs Mendeley: The battle of the online reference managers

I have been using Mendeley for a while now, and I find it easy to use and a great way to organise and share research. But then my University released access to Refworks  and so I thought I would try it out and see if was as easy to use as Mendeley.  This review is based on my experiences in using both platforms to organise my references....

The Sale of UK Higher Education

News has come about regarding the sale of the Charitable College of Law  to a private equity firm, who now has degree awarding powers....