Transcript Document

The Future of the Swansea
Student Learning Experience
Professor Alan Speight
(PVC Student Experience)
Quality Enhancement
• QAA defines quality enhancement as “taking deliberate
steps to bring about continuous improvement of the
learning experience of students.”
• SU quality enhancement strategy will be to ensure that
enhancement is built into all of the quality management
processes within the University from the institutional level,
through Faculties, Schools and subject areas to the level of
the individual lecturer.
Themes for 2008-09
• Enhancement led internal review procedures
• Student Engagement in QA and QE
• Promotion of Good Practice
• Quality Enhancement Seminars
• Work with students in response to surveys and feedback
• A quality enhancement conference event (today)
• Identify priority enhancement themes
Themes for 2009-10
• Research-Led and Practice-Driven Teaching (RLPDT)
• Research and Practice Showcase Week
• Enhancing the First Year Experience; PASS
• e-Learning Enhancement
• Assessment and Feedback
• Revised Policy and Enhancement (HEA)
• PDP, LEAP and Pebble Pad
• Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching (SALT)
RLPDT in the Curriculum?
• Can you clearly identify where research-led and practicebased learning occurs in the programme?
• Where are research methods/skills/ethics taught and
practiced? Is this progressive?
• Is the research knowledge/skill the student acquires made
clear in the module learning outcomes?
• Is there is the scope for students to conduct independent
research in their programmes?
RLPDT in the Curriculum?
• How are the links between teaching and research
embedded in the monitoring and review of modules and
programmes?
• How are students supported in making explicit how research
training/knowledge supports their employability?
• How are undergraduate students made aware of
postgraduate research opportunities?
Promoting RLPDT
• How does learning and teaching strategy articulate research
and teaching/learning links? And vice versa?
• How do research teams and course teaching teams link with
each other? How are these links facilitated?
• How are new staff and new students made aware of RPLT
values and practices?
• How is the research culture and activity given visibility to
students?
RLPDT Week - Purpose
• To introduce students to the research that is happening in
their School and practice in their profession
• To integrate staff and students into the research culture of
the school
• To encourage closer links between the research and the
teaching of the subject area
• Recruitment and engagement promotion
• Encourage ddiscipline-based initiatives
RLPDT Week - Ideas
• Staff and student research/practice seminars for audiences
of staff and students
• Poster presentations of staff research/practice projects
• Poster presentations of student research/practice – 3rd years
to 2nd and 1st years?
• Opportunities for students to interview staff about their
research/practice as a part of their studies
• Students participate in staff research projects?
e-Learning Benchmarking & Enhancement
• e-Mark - electronic marking and student support
• p-Vox - real people, real experiences
• e-learning for Higher Education EAP learners
• Web 2.0 Student-Centred Learning
• Peer Support Platform
• Appreciative Inquiry
£36,591
£36,991
£15,000
£13,900
£ 4,500
£ 1,000
Total £107,982
e-Mark
• e-Mark is an electronic marking management system.
• Assignments submitted electronically through Blackboard
into the eMark system, marked and moderated by (teams of)
lecturers using eMark's Web interface, then checked by
external examiners.
• After the marks are ratified, marking sheets with marks and
feedback are emailed automatically to the students.
e-Mark
Important aim is to improve support for students who submit
assignments by providing timely feedback on their work and
by identifying areas that require support: (1) allow markers to
select common strengths and weaknesses in assignments and
automatically insert appropriate comments into feedback
reports, (2) identify recurring problems for individuals so that
they can be guided towards relevant support (3) identify
problems affecting larger groups of students so that
assignments can be clarified or more support provided.
p-Vox
• The “people's voice", a web-based e-learning resource
centred around talking-head video clips of real patients and
clients talking about their real-life experiences.
• Simple in concept but rich learning resources that help to
understand care from the patients' and family's perspective.
•The idea of pVox, therefore, is to take this idea one step
further and create a library of video clips of real people talking
about their real-life experiences. This would be based on a
web site.
p-Vox
• To enrich the learning experience, each video clip would be
linked to additional learning opportunities including questions
and answers about the patient, discussion areas and links to
other relevant resources.
• The principle of clients talking about their real-life
experiences so that students could learn from their
experiences is equally valid for social care, child development
and even legal scenarios.
e-learning for Higher Education EAP learners
• A framework for e-learning English for Academic Purposes
(EAP) delivered through the existing BlackBoard VLE as a
self-study facility
• Directed and subject-specific personalised English language
learning, to expose learners to the academic or professional
language they encounter in their studies.
• Tutor-directed individual tasks, support and individualised
feedback, through support and progress from a “menu” of
tasks with standardised feedback and information.
e-learning for Higher Education EAP learners
• Source of material will be existing video or audio lectures.
Onto these video or audio materials would be grafted a range
of supporting materials:
• Critical Vocabulary Support; Orientation questions; Postlistening content questions; Quizzes, Flash-cards and Games
to support vocabulary retention and recycling; Extension work
on grammar.
• Presented as a menu-driven set of choices and prepared at a
variety of learning levels. Users free to choose their own
pathway.
Web 2.0 Student-Centred Learning
• Will encourage the use of Web 2.0 technologies in the
Swansea learning environment: Podcasting; Blogs; Videoblogs; Wikis
• Will create a series of exemplars using existing tools to
encourage the adoption and integration of Web 2.0
technologies.
• Students will be encouraged to develop and share resources
using blogs, wikis, audio and video, to create a growing set of
material for future cohorts of students to use.
Web 2.0 Student-Centred Learning
• The exemplars will be linked to undergraduate and Level M
modules in the following areas, each of which has one or more
modules and a significant web site that is a research tool:
• The history of computing; Greek archaeology; Archaeological
ethics; History of ancient science and technology
• A series of on-line guides for creating and developing Web
2.0 resources will be prepared and distributed via the
Swansea Learning Lab (learninglab.swan.ac.uk/).
Peer Support Platform
• Students as supporter of other students on a module. To
explain and clarify things to others is an effective way of
clarifying one’s own understanding.
• Technology can facilitate this process: Discussion
boards/blogs; Knowledge bases; wikis can hold communally
written documents.
• Chat or instant messaging applications can allow for “shouts
for help” and social networking can provide cohesion between
disparate individuals from different disciplines.
Peer Support Platform
• Trial on a math-intensive module taken by a several
disciplines in L2 Engineering: Control Systems, 130 students.
• Blackboard mediated tests in weeks 3, 6 and 9. Each test
made available for two weeks prior and students encouraged
to seek assistance with understanding from the peer-support
platform.
• Blackboard will give feedback and additional feedback will be
added as appropriate.
Appreciative Inquiry
• During the Benchmarking process we used the Appreciative
Inquiry approach for staff and student surveys
• Used as an approach to organisational change based on the
premise that (a) whatever you want more of already exists
somewhere in the organisation and (b) organisations move in
the direction of what they study.
• Student Interviews with Student Course Reps where the
process will be outlined and they will be asked to conduct
appreciative interviews with a partner.
Appreciative Inquiry
• Staff Interviews to include at least 50 staff interviews. As with
the student interviews, the staff interviews will be conducted by
peers who have themselves been interviewed.
• Data collection and synthesis is conducted by people who
have an active interest in improving e-learning within the
University rather than consultants who try to capture high level
themes and then tell the organisation what they already know.
SALT
• In order to promote excellence in teaching and provide a
single home for learning and teaching resources and
promotion it is proposed to establish a Swansea Academy of
Learning and Teaching, broadly along the lines of a Centre for
Excellence in Learning and Teaching.
• SALT will operate on a hub and spokes model with a small
central team and spokes within academic schools.
SALT
• Centrally the SALT will comprise of the Quality Enhancement
Officer and the two E-Learning Officers currently employed
within the library. This core group will provide a teaching and
learning team combining E-Learning and conventional
Learning and Teaching functions.
• The central SALT team will work closely with the Staff
Development Unit, Student Services and the Library to provide
co-ordinated and enhanced learning and teaching support and
resources.
Purpose of the SALT
• To raise the importance and status of excellent teaching
within the institution
• To provide a focus for promoting teaching excellence
• To provide a network for communicating and sharing
teaching excellence
• To provide a co-ordinated learning and teaching support
function incorporating staff development, learning and
teaching resources, e-learning and quality enhancement
Purpose of the SALT
• To provide a single source of learning and teaching
resources online for staff through dedicated high quality
webpages with a high profile on the institution’s website
• Identify sources of funding for Learning and Teaching
projects and developments externally and internally and assist
in applications for these funds. (e.g. HEA Subject Networks)
• To provide a point of contact for institutional and external
contact with the HEA
What happens next…
Student Led Learning
Distance Learning
(James Callaghan Lecture Theatre)
(Seminar Room B03)
10:30 –
11:00
Professor Dave Clarke, School of
Environment and Society - Why
say the same thing eight times
(when groups understand better)?
The Dissertation Support module
Rita Kop, DACE and Dr Emrys
Jenkins, School of Health Science –
The online TRIO Project: Learning
and Teaching Experiences with
Web2.0
11:00 –
11:30
Dr Tim Davies, School of
Engineering – Group Project Work
– The Micromouse
Alison Walker, Welsh Video Network,
Until there is teleportation there is
always video conferencing
Tea and Coffee (11:30 – 12:00)
Diolch yn fawr
Thank you