This work is supported by the Vice Chancellor’s Learning & Teaching Project Fund 2020-21. The year 2021 marks 60 years since the invention of the piston action pipette that has allowed scientists to develop some …
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Inclusive curriculum design and curriculum co-creation as responses to the HE diversity challenge
A mix of established trends in the HE sector notably widening participation and internationalisation combined with the more recent introduction of a teaching quality audit in the form of the Teaching Excellence Framework has heightened …
Continue readingThe time has come to make your breakout: opportunities and pitfalls when using breakouts in live online sessions
“When explanations make no senseWhen every answer’s wrongYou’re fighting with lost confidenceAll expectations goneThe time has come to make or breakMove on, don’t hesitateBreakout” (Swing out Sister, 1986) The lyricists behind ‘Breakout’ were prescient, as …
Continue readingWill Covid-19 finally catalyse the way we exploit digital options in assessment and feedback?
The typical child will learn to listen first, then talk, then read, then write. In life, most of us tend to use these abilities proportionately in roughly the same order: listen most, speak next most, …
Continue readingAvoiding being the sage on the screen – Facilitating online sessions
In 1993 Alison King suggested we move our teaching away from ‘sage on the stage’ to a role of ‘guide on the side’ but what does this mean in the blended learning context? In my …
Continue readingAn inclusive approach to the ‘virtual campus’ – keeping student experiences in focus
Institutional responses to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have necessarily prompted a sharp and sudden change in learning and teaching as both staff and students move to what we’re calling ‘a virtual campus’. In the context …
Continue readingThinking about questions
Questions are at the heart of assessment but how you ask them, the types of questions you ask and the way you ask them can actually get overlooked. There are all sorts of ways that …
Continue readingEllie Russell: Student engagement – the never ending story
https://vimeo.com/148495639 This video can be seen alongside others from the Learning, Teaching and Assessment Open Lecture series and annual conferences on the EDU Vimeo channel. Engaging students as partners is a very popular concept but very …
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A path to the Flipped institution?
Flipped classroom practices have been identified as important developments in pedagogy by numerous sector-scanning reports. For example Innovating Pedagogy 2014: Open University Innovation Report (Sharples, et.al 2014), Horizon Report 2014: Higher Education Edition (NMC 2014) and Horizon Report 2015: …
Continue readingDigital Badges: an emerging ecosystem of evidence
Were you ever a Boy Scout, a Brownie or a Girl Guide? Do you remember the thrill and satisfaction of earning a merit badge for some achievement, and the pride of having your accumulated credentials …
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