Current Students and Staff

The Centre for Academic Practice once again organised the University’s annual Learning and Teaching Conference, which took place last week on Wednesday 27 June.

The theme for this year’s event was Educating for Success, and revolved around four key strands – digital literacy; engaging students in the learning process; student wellbeing and how students learn.

Over 140 people attended the event which took place at the West Park Teaching Hub from 9am-4pm.

The conference also provided an opportunity to recognise those who had contributed to innovative teaching and research at the University.

The Teaching Innovation Awards recognise a number of projects and staff members which were nominated by fellow colleagues and students.

The winners were as follows:

• Utilising tablets to enhance the lecture capture staff-student experience – Anje Conradie, Dr Sandie Dann, Dr Karligash Glass, Dr Sarah Turner and Dr Sian Williams
• Extension of the Critical Reading and Writing CReW project - Dr Rachel Sandford and Oliver Hooper
• Student engagement: Facilitating critical and criteria-based feedback in large cohorts to improve writing skills - Dr Amanda Harrington
• Developing real-world collaborative project management for digital citizens – Martin Foster
• Know what I mean? Enhancing student understanding of assessment standards and feedback - Dr Hilary McDermott, Julia Sargent, Dr Emma Haycraft and Lee Barnett
• Learn or OneNote – which offers the best learning experience - Dr James Flint

In addition, four STEMLab Teaching Innovation Awards were announced for the first time after the facility opened last year:

• Using pedagogies of technology to address STEM teaching problems - Dr Ash Casey, Dr Liz Akam, Lee Barnett, Nick Cox and Dr Sweta Ladwa
• Improving data analysis skills in engineering labs - Dr Jamieson Christie, Dr Mark Jepson, Professor Steven Kenny
• STEMLab Virtual Reality – taking STEM teaching to the next level - Dr Firat Batmaz, Dr Sandie Dann, Dr Helen Willcock, Mike Walsh, Dr Sarah Turner, Lee Barnett, Samantha Chester and Aaran Grimley
• Revolutionising the Undergraduate Physics laboratory by realising the potential of STEMLab - Dr Mark Everitt, Dr Glyn Spencer and Dr Shaun Atherton

Finally, the prestigious Research-informed Teaching Awards were given to Dr Mark Everitt and Dr Mike Waring.

Dr Everitt from the School of Science was acknowledged for his work disseminating the outcomes of the Quantum Systems Engineering (QSE) research project, as well as helping students to become researchers and develop the learning experience in teaching quantum physics.

Based in the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Dr Waring was also awarded a prize for his contribution to developing a research informed project to improve assessment literacy, feedback and design for staff and students, which was successfully rolled out throughout the School.

For more information about the awards, an online programme is available to view here.