Theme for this month: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)

This month we offer a range of online workshops to support your SoTL activities. Pick and choose to suit your needs - or come along to them all! We'd love to see you there:

Workshop (online): Conducting a SoTL inquiry

Dr Kerry Dobbins

Thursday 19th January 2023, 1pm to 2pm (MS Teams)

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) encourages us to ask questions about the influence and effectiveness of our teaching on our students’ learning and gain evidence to draw informed conclusions to act upon and share with others. SoTL can be framed as pedagogic scholarship, which is different to the disciplinary field of higher education research. Pedagogic scholarship is undertaken by staff who teach and whose research expertise is not in higher education studies. This session will explore the nature of SoTL/pedagogic scholarship and its focus on understanding and improving our own teaching context. It will introduce the principles of SoTL inquiries and support participants in considering the inquiries that they may like to conduct. It will also explore dissemination of SoTL activities and the increasing channels that have emerged through which to connect and share with colleagues across the sector. The session will be useful to anyone involved (or interested in becoming more involved) in pedagogic scholarship activities.

You can book onto this session by clicking on this link.

Workshop (online): Taking a student-centred approach to evaluating teaching and learning

Dr Kerry Dobbins

Tuesday 24th January 2023, 11am to 12pm (MS Teams)

This workshop is for anyone who would like to explore the use of more student-centred data collection methods to evaluate their teaching or supporting learning practices. We will begin by considering the purposes of our evaluations and deconstructing terms like ‘impact’ and ‘effectiveness’. After briefly discussing experiences with traditional or common data collection approaches, we will explore what a student-centred evaluation may look like. We will consider how traditional approaches, like surveys, could become more student-centred as well as explore methods that offer opportunities for your evaluations to be engaging learning experiences for your students too. This session will be useful to anyone who is looking to develop their pedagogic evaluation skills.

You can book onto this session by clicking on this link.

Workshop (online): Planning evaluation into your module design

Dr Kerry Dobbins

Monday 30th January 2023, 3pm to 4pm (MS Teams)

This session is designed to offer support for those who may be involved in module development and (re)design. We will consider the various purposes of evaluation in this context and why it needs to be planned into the module design. You will be introduced to some potentially useful evaluation frameworks, which we will use to deconstruct terms like ‘impact’, ‘effectiveness’ and ‘improvement’. You will be supported to consider what these terms may mean in your context and the implications for the evaluation methods that you might use. Throughout, we will consider how a focus on evaluation planning at the module design stage can support evaluations that are more defined, meaningful and inclusive.

You can book onto this session by clicking on this link.

February 2023

Theme for this month: Aspects of curriculum design

Workshop (online): Engaging staff in developing a blended curriculum: Challenges and lessons learned

Abi Ball, Will Haywood and Kirsty Weeks

Thursday 2nd February 2023, 12pm to 1pm (MS Teams)

This workshop is also open to external colleagues

The Centre for Teacher Education at the University of Warwick is in the first year of a five-year project to transform and enhance teacher education. The Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) strand of the project is establishing an evidence-informed process for developing, storing, sharing, and updating a collection of RLOs that are underpinned by the Warwick Teacher Values of social justice, intellectual curiosity, and creativity. RLOs are small instructional design components that can be used for multiple purposes with little or no editing.  

This is a workshop that will be of value to anyone interested in blended curriculum development, who wants to develop their own RLOs or who wants to encourage other staff to make better use of existing learning objects. We will discuss some of the benefits we have discovered and the challenges we have faced. We will also discuss how using a curriculum focussed approach has enabled us to engage staff and produce RLOs for our international postgraduate certificate in Education (PGCE) programmes.

NB: This is not a ‘how to create RLOs’ session.

You can book onto this session by clicking on this link.

Workshop (online): Making feedback work

Jo Kukuczka

Thursday 9th February 2023, 1pm to 2.30pm (MS Teams)

This workshop is also open to external colleagues

If you are interested in uncovering what is often hidden in your students’ writing and then using this knowledge to inform your feedback practice, join us for this online workshop open to all academics involved in providing feedback on student writing assignments such as report, essay, case study, etc.

This workshop will introduce a practical theoretical framework (Halliday, 1994) that enables deeper understanding of what is going on in our students’ writing assignments (such as reports, essays, case studies, etc.). The introduction of the framework will be followed by its application to students’ writing and our feedback practices. To fully benefit from the session, bring a sample of your students’ writing (incl. assignment brief and/or marking criteria) that you wish to analyse and provide feedback on.

This session has been created in response to the sector-wide issues with effective feedback, as well as to comments in literature about the atheoretical, and therefore, potentially insufficiently effective, nature of teaching and learning practices (Haggis, 2009; Jacobs, 2019; Quinn, 2012).

You can book onto this session by clicking on this link.

Workshop (online): The place and case for lectures and lecture capture in the new normal

Guest speaker: Dr Emily Nordmann, University of Glasgow

Thursday 16th February 2023, 12pm to 1.30pm (MS Teams, lunchtime session - feel free to eat and listen)
This workshop is also open to external colleagues

In this talk I will discuss the evolution of research on lecture capture, from focusing on the links between recording live lectures and attendance, to integrating the use of recordings as a generic study skill, to the impact of providing recordings on widening participation and inclusivity. I will argue that the experience of the pivot to online due to Covid has shown that lectures still have a place in the new normal and that the argument that lectures are not an effective way to learn only stands if the sole reason for lectures is to learn what the lecturer is teaching. The session timing ensures that there will be plenty of time for questions and discussion after the talk.

I am a teaching-focused Senior Lecturer and the Deputy Director Education for the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow. I am a vocal advocate of open science and open educational resources and strive to incorporate them into both my teaching and my research design. My research predominantly focuses on the relationship between technology and learning, in particular, lecture capture and how it can be used as an effective study tool and the impact on students from widening participation backgrounds.

Click on this link to book onto this session.

**If you are interested, you can read some of Emily's research ahead of the session: Lecture rapture: the place and case for lectures in the new normal.**

Workshop (online): Writing submissions for teaching and learning conferences

Kerry Dobbins

Friday 3rd March 2023, 11am to 1pm (MS Teams, lunchtime session - feel free to eat and listen)

This workshop offers support for those planning to submit an abstract for this year's TEALfest or Education Conference. It will provide practical guidance about writing submissions for teaching and learning conferences and include dedicated time to work on your TEALfest or Education Conference submission. We will consider the specific nature of teaching and learning conferences and how this translates into writing effective submissions. You will be introduced to sector-wide communities, networks, organisations, etc., that offer a varied diet of conference and event opportunities. We will also explore how you can find and stay updated about relevant events. The second hour will be dedicated time to work on a TEALfest or Education Conference submission in a supported and guided environment. 

You can book onto this session by clicking on this link.

Workshop (in-person): Waving curriculum: A practical approach to cumulative knowledge building

Jo Kukuczka

Thursday 23rd March 2023, 1pm to 2.30pm (Faculty of Arts Building (FAB) room 3.31)

HE curriculum design is a complex and high stakes endeavour that can enhance or constrain deep learning processes necessary for successful knowledge transfer across different contexts.

In this workshop, we will explore a versatile, visual, and practical Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) concept of semantic waves (Clarence, 2021; Maton, 2018) and how it can support our curriculum design practices enabling students to investigate, unpack, and connect theoretical and practical forms of knowledge, and learn cumulatively, and therefore, deeply, over time.

No prior knowledge of LCT and/or semantic waves is required to attend, and all necessary jargon will be minimised and explained as much as possible to make this session accessible and useful for all involved/interested in enhancing their curriculum design practices across all disciplines at Warwick. To fully benefit from the workshop, consider bringing your module’s learning outcomes, scheme of work, assessment briefs, as well as perhaps a colleague involved in your curriculum design and/or related teaching.

This session has been created in response to the recent NSS report, as well as to comments in literature about the atheoretical, and therefore, potentially insufficiently effective, nature of teaching and learning practices (Haggis, 2009; Jacobs, 2019). Moreover, this session supports the current university-wide curriculum refresh initiative.

You can book onto this session by clicking on this link.

Workshop (online): Teaching critical reading

Jo Kukuczka, with Kerry Dobbins

Thursday 30th March 2023, 11.30am to 1pm (MS Teams)

This online workshop is open to Warwick academics interested in learning how to teach critical reading through discussion with a twist. The discussion employs the academic reading circle (ARC) format developed by Tyson Seburn (2015), and the twist involves inviting participants to collaboratively explore a reading text from different critical perspectives. Those different perspectives are typically focused around contextualising the reading, connecting the reading to other texts/concepts, visualising the key concepts in the reading, etc. No prior knowledge and/or experience of the ARC format is required as all will be explained during the workshop.

Critical reading is a complex and often implicitly taught skill required at university level in the UK. Academic reading circles (Seburn, 2015) offer one way of tackling this complexity through an engaging semi-structured discussion. The format, increasingly popular and investigated in the context of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and/or academic literacy pedagogies, has been found to specifically support critical analysis and evaluation skills, as well as knowledge building and knowledge transfer practices (Cowley-Haselden, 2020; Kukuczka, 2021). As such, the approach is a useful tool to experiment with across academic contexts requiring students to read critically.

The session is suitable for anyone teaching UG/PG home/international students on programmes requiring critical engagement with scholarly texts such as books/book chapters, reports, academic journal articles, etc. To prepare for the session, you will be asked to read a short text which will be sent to you a week in advance.