RUSTLE Spring Term 2009
Welcome to the first edition of RUSTLE, the new publication from the Teaching and Learning Development Unit (TLDU) with a focus on Sussex colleagues doing exciting and innovative things in teaching and learning. There will also be regular features on pedagogic research and publications by Sussex staff, introductions to the Subject Centres, top teaching and technology tips and useful web links. This first edition includes a report on the innovative use of artefacts in teaching, news of some research into doctoral supervision and an introduction to the Maths, Stats and OR network. We are already planning the Summer term edition, so would be delighted to hear from you if you have something really useful you would like to share with colleagues, or if you would like to contribute a report or opinion piece on a teaching and learning topic. Please contact a.hole@sussex.ac.uk. in the first instance. We’d also like to announce this year’s Teaching and Learning Conference – ‘How am I doing?: new approaches to providing student feedback and advice’, on June 2nd, from 9.30 – 4.00 in Bramber House. Further details will be posted on the TLDU website shortly, and in the Bulletin.
Three-Dimensional Learning: Interacting with artefacts and exploring new assessment methods
Teaching & Learning Innovations: RUSTLE will be bringing you regular reports on interesting and exciting teaching at Sussex. It might be news of technological innovation in learning, or new ways to stimulate student learning in traditional settings. In this first edition we have details of a project which looks at new ways to use artefacts to challenge and inspire students .
Deborah Schultz and Chana Moshenska of the Centre for German-Jewish Studies have been using the Arnold Daghani Collection which is held in the library Special Collections with their students. They have also run a seminar for members of faculty at Sussex and Brighton universities, giving participants the opportunity to become familiar with the collection, engage with it at first hand and consider using the Collection in teaching. The collection contains many drawings, paintings, collages, sketchbooks and writings which document Daghani's experiences from the 1940s in the slave labour camp at Mikhailowka and the ghetto at Bershad, through time spent in Bucharest and Israel, the south of France, Switzerland, and latterly in Hove. The seminar began with an introduction to the project and an overview of Daghani’s life and career, explaining key events and how they impacted on his experiences as an artist. Participants were then given the opportunity to handle and to look at the works. The atmosphere was informal and while participants were looking at the items there was discussion of issues raised in teaching difficult and emotional subjects, the use of artefacts in teaching and the value of hands on contact with the Collection. The stimulating final discussion demonstrated the wide variety of ways in which the Collection might be used and its diverse potential to a range of subjects. Points raised by the participants included: • surprise at a number of items and qualities in the Collection which challenged preconceptions • awareness of one’s own in-built self-protective mechanisms when viewing difficult material and a tendency to pass over it
• the ways in which a single image might be a powerful way to start a discussion and then work backwards to the context, challenging preconceptions of Holocaust representation and drawing the viewer into the material; • comparison with teaching on genocide and similar emotional responses from students and how to address and incorporate the emotional responses of students • a feeling of going into another world when viewing the Collection • the way in which the items showed an artist’s thought patterns • that the material made the Holocaust feel closer due to the perspective of an individual • the powerful colour palette of the works • the identity of the artist. All participants agreed that the direct hands on experience of viewing the Collection would benefit students’ learning. Another seminar is taking place in the library on 25th February. The event is from 3.00-5.30pm and you can book a place on the TLDU website. Related links: Arnold Daghani Collection:
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cgjs/1-2-14.html Centre for German-Jewish Studies:
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cgjs/ Booking for the seminar:
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/sapp/booking/course_list.php
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Research from Sussex
RUSTLE will be bringing you news of educational research projects at Sussex and we start in this first issue with details of a recent publication by Barbara Crossouard of the Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER).
Doctoral supervision has had little empirical or theoretical scrutiny, is often considered in individualized or managerialist ways and has not been related to advances in formative assessment. Crossouard's article reports on empirical case study research which focused on a blended learning environment within a professional doctorate in education (EdD) programme. Dr John Pryor of the Sussex School of Education (SSE) directed the project, conceptualizing doctoral learning and formative assessment through socio-cultural learning theories, where learning entails processes of identity formation within different communities of practice. This makes engagement with the wider community of researchers important. In some environments this may happen as a matter of course (e.g. in laboratory environments), although in others doctoral study is a more solitary enterprise. The data presented suggests the usefulness of online environments for supporting students’ development within their research
community, although hierarchical power relations were also salient. In addition to suggesting the value of bringing insights from formative assessment to doctoral supervision, the paper highlights the importance of attending to the design of doctoral learning environments so that the doctoral community becomes a resource for learning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the value of developing more collective forms of doctoral supervision. The full article can be read in Studies in Continuing Education, 2008, 30(1) which can be accessed via the University of Sussex electronic library.
Related websites: CHEER: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/1-4-24.html Electronic Library: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/electronic/
Publication News - Congratulations to Ben Dyson (formerly of the Psychology Department) who has had an article published in Active Learning in Higher Education. The article entitled 'Assessing small-scale interventions in large-scale teaching – a general methodology and preliminary data' is based on a research project Ben carried out for his PGCertHE whilst at Sussex. The journal is available online via the electronic library and Ben's article is in volume 9, number 3, November 2008.
Teaching and Learning Development Events At the start of the academic year TLDU launched an exciting new programme of seminars and workshops on a wide range of topics related to teaching, learning, assessment, supervision and innovation. These events have been designed to be of value to all staff with teaching or tutoring responsibilities and are varied in terms of format, timing and location, as well as content, so that as many colleagues as possible can take part. Everyone is welcome, but we would appreciate you booking your place in advance as numbers are sometimes restricted – and we want to make sure enough resources and refreshments are provided. Further events will be added to the programme during the year, so if you have any suggestions for future sessions, or you would like to deliver a topic as part of the TLD events, please e-mail Tina O'Donnell at Tina.O-Donnell@sussex.ac.uk. For the programme of events for this year and how to book go to http://www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu
Sussex Teaching Awards
Top Technology Tips: images on the www
Nominations for the Sussex Teaching Awards 2008-09 are now open with a deadline of Monday 16 February at 12 noon for first stage nominations. Staff may be nominated by students, alumni, colleagues or themselves. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to develop a second stage portfolio application during March and April 2009.
Do you want to use images in your presentations or on your Study Direct site? Are you concerned about copyright issues? Or not sure where to find suitable images? Then Internet for Image Searching could be for you. The Higher Education Academy and JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) have funded TASI (Technical Advisory Service for Images) and Intute to produce a tutorial that improves the way you search for images. The free, interactive tutorial covers the pros and cons of using search engines to find images, the legal and financial issues, and some key places to start looking for images. Each section can be tackled separately so you can learn just what you need, at a time that suits you.
Further details are available on the TLDU website at
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/1-5-9.html
The tutorial is at: http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/imagesearching Related URLs: TASI: http://www.tasi.ac.uk Intute: http://www.intute.ac.uk HEA: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk JISC: http://www.jisc.ac.uk
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Subject Centre News Kerstin Hesse introduces the Maths, Stats & OR Network The Maths, Stats & OR (MSOR) Network is the Subject Centre for Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research (OR). It is one of 24 Subject Centres of the Higher Education Academy, and its aim is to help institutions, discipline groups, and individual members of staff to provide the best possible learning experience. Teaching in MSOR subjects is somewhat different from teaching in many other disciplines, since all material has to be taught in sequential order, with each lecture course building on knowledge acquired in previous ones. Another peculiarity of MSOR subjects is the “delayed understanding”: students very often understand some of the material long after it has been “learnt”. Since August 2008, I have been the local MSOR Network contact in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Sussex. In September 2008, I attended the twoday “Induction Course for Lecturers New to Teaching Mathematics & Statistics” run by the MSOR Network at the University of Birmingham. The event included some plenary talks addressing various issues related to teaching MSOR subjects, some workshop-style sessions with a short presentation and a group discussion, and two laboratory sessions giving an introduction to a computer environment for teaching and assessment. I found the plenary talks particularly interesting, since they addressed many issues that lecturers in mathematics encounter in their daily practice, such as how to deliver good lectures, how to best present examples and exercises, and how to get students to engage more deeply with the material. There is no simple solution to these issues, and every lecturer has to find out individually how to best deal with them. However, the talks gave a good insight into the practice of very experienced lecturers, and I certainly left with some new ideas to try out in my own teaching practice. The workshop-style session on assessment and marking would have been useful to anyone who was fairly new to teaching. The laboratory session was interesting but generally seemed to confirm my impression that only fairly basic MSOR exercises can currently be assessed by a computer system. Overall I found that attending the two-day course was definitely useful, since it gave me some new ideas. It was also interesting to talk to some researchers in mathematics education. I would recommend attending this course (which has been running since 2001) to any new lecturer in MSOR subjects who has limited teaching experience. Related Links and Contacts: MSOR : http://www.mathstore.ac.uk/ Other Subject Centres: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ Dr. Kerstin Hesse, MSOR Network Contact : K.Hesse@sussex.ac.uk
Useful Web Links - LearnHigher, one of the Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), has launched a website providing resources to support student learning. LearnHigher ‘develops and collates peer reviewed resources in twenty learning areas that underpin activity across all academic subjects’ such as academic writing, assessment, critical thinking, information literacy, report writing and more, so there will certainly be something that relates to your teaching practice. LearnHigher is at http://www.learnhigher.ac.uk
Top Teaching Tips RUSTLE will be featuring selections of our favourites teaching tips, collected from colleagues, so please get in touch to share the ideas that have worked well for you.
Nominated Questioners: Student seminar presentations are all too often met with
silence by their audience and the tutor ends up having to kick-start the discussion. If you want to stimulate student discussion and develop good audience skills 'nominated questioners' can help. Before the presentation starts, the tutor nominates three students from the audience to be the first to ask questions at the end. These three have the whole presIf you have any comments on these tips entation to think of a question and will need to engage with the presentation in an active and critical way. After the presentation they take it in turns to ask their questions and by – or some good ones of your own, the time all three have been asked, answered and discussed the rest of the group are please e-mail Anne Hole on likely to be contributing too. Next time, choose different people to be the 'questioners' so a.hole@sussex.ac.uk that everyone gets a turn at developing those skills.
Contentious Statements: Some colleagues like to start a seminar with an outrageous or contentious statement on the topic which students are likely to dispute. They can then be led to give reasons for their disagreement, preferably drawing on the reading or lecture to support their views. Alternatively, students can be asked to bring with them a contentious statement or question based on the reading and say a few sentences about it – why it is true or false, why it is the wrong question to be asking etc. This can be a stimulating way to start a discussion of set reading and encourages the critical skills we value at Sussex.
TLDU
We are now in Arts E304 and welcome visitors - so why not pop in for a chat or come and browse our teaching and learning resources?
Profolio shortlisted for national education award Profolio, an innovative professional development programme for Sussex doctoral students developed by the Teaching & Learning Development Unit and the Career Development and Employment Centre, was shortlisted in the ‘Outstanding Support for EarlyCareer Researchers’ category of the Times Higher Education Awards 2008. Profolio introduces participants to two innovative and complementary professional development tools in the context of a series of workshops focused on the professional and career development of doctoral researchers. Although Profolio did not in the end take the prize, the programme received a special mention from a member of the judging panel, Dr Alison Hodge, QinetiQ’s University Partnerships Director. Dr Hodge noted: ‘The standard was such that choosing a winner was very difficult. Sussex’s entry, ‘Profolio’, for example, combined a number of innovative ideas to help PhD students in their career development, from a pen drive pre-loaded with the latest applications and custom- built templates, enabling students to store and manage all their research in an easily portable format, to online profiles to increase visibility for potential employers’ (Award winner helps early career researchers to ‘Finish Up, Move On’ , Research Council UK , http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/news/081024.htm, 24/10/2008. To find out more about Profolio see the website at: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/sp2/profolio
Study Success at Sussex (S3) has been developed by TLDU for all first-year undergraduates at Sussex. S3 offers online study skills support and information including advice on preparing for study; how to get the most from teaching and learning at university; tips from Sussex students and online study skills tutorials. For more information or to order some promotional S3 postcards for your students contact Clare Hardman at c.l.m.hardman@sussex.ac.uk. We are working with students and staff over the next year to create more online resources for the S3 website so please contact Clare if you would like to be involved in future S3 developments. S3 is at: www.sussex.ac.uk/s3
The New PGCertHE TLDU have been delivering a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education for new faculty since 2002, but this year the programme has been modified to be more flexible, individual and work-based so that colleagues from across campus can gain the qualification and FHEA status (Fellow of the Higher Education Academy) in a way that is relevant to them. PGCertHE participants are supported by an individual advisor who works with them to match their knowledge and experience to the requirements of the PGCertHE and identify specific areas for development through a tailored programme of workshops, reading, observations and/or external events over two years. If you are interested in finding out more, please contact Jan Pryse, extension 2558 or email j.e.pryse@sussex.ac.uk
***Write Right*** Writers in Residence, 2008 – 2009 Once again, TLDU are pleased to host Royal Literary Fund Writers in Residence at Sussex University. This year the RLF fellows are: Cath Senker, children's non-fiction writer and experienced ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher and Stephen Wyatt, award winning writer for radio, television and theatre. Cath and Stephen offer one-to-one tutorials to help students to improve their writing skills for essays, projects or dissertations. For further information, please see our website: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/rlf
Vitae
is a Research Council funded body with the mission of championing the personal, professional and career development of doctoral researchers and research staff in higher education institutions and research institutes. It was launched in June 2008 to replace the UK GRAD programme which, since its inception in 2003, had supported the academic sector in embedding skills development for postgraduate researchers within research degree programmes.. Like UK GRAD, Vitae works in partnership with eight regional Hubs that are based in host institutions. The Teaching and Learning Development Unit at Sussex is home to the South East Hub – Gill Johnston is the Hub Coordinator and Ross English is the Hub Manager. During 2008 the South East Hub ran events in institutions across the region focussing on issues concerning the development of researchers. Vitae workshops are free and open to anyone involved with or interested in the development of postgraduate researchers or research staff. In June, we held a successful workshop “Doctoral Supervision: Diverse Perspectives & Practices” at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School which was opened by Sussex’s Vice Chancellor Michael Farthing and attended by over 50 colleagues from 10 institutions. Other events were held at the Universities of Surrey, Portsmouth, Southampton and Canterbury Christ Church. Vitae also runs national events, including a major two day national conference and the annual Roberts Policy Forum. We are currently putting together the programme for 2009. Related Links: If you would like to be added to the South East Hub mailing list or just find out more about Vitae, please contact Ross on sehub@vitae.ac.uk or visit the website at www.vitae.ac.uk/sehub.