Category: Academy Forum

Welcome to new staff joining Aberystwyth University

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We’re the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit. Based in Information Services, we work with staff across the university to support and develop learning and teaching. We run a wide range of activities to do this.

All the information that you need is on the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit webpages. Our Supporting your Teaching webpages will help you with various teaching solutions.

We write a blog full of the latest updates, details on events and training sessions, and resources.

If you need to get in touch with us, you can do so using one of two email addresses:

  • lteu@aber.ac.uk (for pedagogical and design questions, or to arrange a consultation) or
  • elearning@aber.ac.uk (for technical queries regarding our e-learning tools listed below).

Introduction to E-learning Tools

Virtual Learning Environment: Blackboard

Each module has its own dedicated course in Blackboard. These courses contain online content, such as reading lists, and teaching staff details. This is the main point of information for your students for any given module, including access to lecture recordings and assignment submission. The University has a Blackboard Required Minimum Presence policy for all modules. Please see our staff guide for further information.

Lecture Capture: Panopto

When teaching in person, be aware that all lectures (that is, teaching where the focus is on information being transmitted from staff to students) should be recorded using Panopto, our Lecture Capture software. See details of our Lecture Capture Policy.

E-submission: Turnitin and Blackboard Assignment

At Aberystwyth University, students must submit all text-based and word-processed work electronically as outlined in the University’s E-submission policy. For this, we use our e-submission tools: Turnitin and Blackboard Assignment. Turnitin provides an automatic text matching functionality.

Polling tool: Vevox

Vevox is Aberystwyth University’s polling tool. Polling can be used in learning and teaching activities as well as meetings to make the session interactive and collaborative with many different possibilities for use.

Resources and further help

We have a number of Guides and FAQs to help you use our software.

Training Provision

To support all staff with their teaching, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit runs a series of training sessions. These include:

  • practical sessions to familiarise staff with the different elements of the VLE,
  • the Active Learning agenda,
  • assessment and feedback,
  • accessibility,
  • presentation skills, and more.
  • artificial intelligence

We also offer a range of events and training programmes. You can find details of our annual CPD programme and book your place to attend via our Book a Course page. We deliver some sessions ourselves, while others are delivered by university staff whose teaching features good practice in those areas. Look for (L&T) in the session title.

Events

The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit runs a range of events, including the Annual Learning and Teaching Conference, Mini-Conferences, Mini-Fests, and Academy Forums. All of these are great opportunities to meet people from across the university and discuss Learning and Teaching issues and developments.

Programmes

The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit also runs programmes to support your continued professional development. This includes the Teaching for Postgraduates at Aberystwyth University (TPAU) programme, and the Master’s level Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education (PGCTHE), and a Fellowship (ARCHE) Scheme.

Academy Forums 2023

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Thank you to all who have attended Academy Forums in Semester 1. We’ve had some great discussions around wellbeing in the curriculum, student induction activities, how students are using technology at Aberystwyth University, and Digital Capabilities (Part 1).

All our handouts from our Academy Forums are available on our webpages.

You can now book your place on our Academy Forums for Semester 2.

  • 24 January, 14:00-15:30: Academy Forum 5: Strategies for Feedback Engagement (In-person, E3)
  • 16 February, 10:00-11:30: Academy Forum 6: Using Technology for Reflective Activities (Online)
  • 6 March, 10:00-11:30, Academy Forum 7: Designing Group Assessment using Technology (Online)
  • 19 April, 10:00-11:30, Academy Forum 8: Digital Capabilities (Part 2) (Online)
  • 17 May, 14:00-16:00, Academy Forum 9: Equality and Diversity in the Curriculum (In-person, E3)

If you have any questions, then please contact the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit (lteu@aber.ac.uk).

Academy Forums 2022-23

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We’re really excited to announce our forthcoming Academy Forums for 2022-23. Building on the success of last year’s sessions, and based on feedback, we’ve increased the number of Academy Forums on offer, with 10 running across the academic year.

For those of you unfamiliar with Academy Forums, they’re informal discussions that bring colleagues together from across the University. In each session, we’ll look at a particular topic related to Learning and Teaching. We’ll facilitate the discussion and also provide resources and guidance following the Academy Forum. We then make these available on our webpages. Take a look at last year’s Academy Forum topics:

This year, we are seeing a return of some in person Academy Forums as well as having some run online via Teams. You can view the dates, session descriptions, and book your place on our booking page for the first three sessions – keep your eye out for future sessions.

We’ll be starting our Academy Forums with a discussion around Student Induction. We’ll be thinking about how you prepare students to study. What types of activities do you run in week 1 of your module to familarise your students with the content? Also, we’ll be asking colleagues to share with us how you might use technology in these interactions.

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Academy Forum Materials 2021-22 are available on our webpages

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Our Academy Forums for the academic year have now finished. We’d like to thank our attendees for participating in the discussions.

We’ve made the handouts from this year’s forums available on our webpages.

The handouts contain key theoretical frameworks as well as practical case studies and colleagues’ reflections on their own teaching.

Topics discussed this year:

Owing to the success of the format and the attendance, we’re looking to increase the number of academy forums on offer next academic year. If you’ve got a topic related to learning and teaching that you’d like to discuss with colleagues, then drop us an email (lteu@aber.ac.uk).

External Speaker: Feedback Engagement, Dr Robert Nash

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The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce our next External Speaker.

On Friday 11 March, 10am-12pm, Robert Nash will be running a masterclass on strategies for feedback engagement.

Bookings for the event are open via the CPD Staff booking page.

The workshop will take place online via Teams. A link will be sent to you before the event. 

Please see below for the session description and speaker biography.

Session Description

Why don’t they listen to my feedback?

Most people prefer to perform well than to perform badly, and one of the primary aims of giving feedback to students is to help them improve their performance. So why do our students so often ignore, resist, and reject the feedback we give them, and what can we do about it? To set the scene for this workshop, we will first consider the extent to which these problems are unique to students. In particular, I will share some insights from diverse domains of social psychology that shed light on the very human motives behind avoiding feedback. With these insights in mind, we will go on to explore the perceived and actual barriers that limit students’ effective engagement with their feedback. We will contemplate practical ways by which we, as educators, might play a role in breaking down these barriers. Throughout these discussions, sustainability is key: with academic workloads spiralling ever higher, our fixes cannot involve us always giving more feedback, quicker feedback, and fancier feedback. I will share my own mixed experiences of trying to implement into my own teaching practice what I’ve learned from almost a decade of working on these problems.

Speaker Biography

Dr Rob Nash is a Reader in Psychology at Aston University, where he is currently Director of Undergraduate Learning & Teaching for the School of Psychology. A experimental psychologist, Rob’s primary expertise is in human memory, particularly the ways in which memories become biased, distorted, and fabricated. However, he also conducts and publishes research on the topic of feedback in education, with an emphasis on how people respond and react when given feedback. Rob is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Legal & Criminological Psychology, and co-author of the Developing Engagement with Feedback Toolkit (Higher Education Academy, 2016).

If you’ve got any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us (lteu@aber.ac.uk).

External Speaker: Universal Design for Learning Masterclass, Kevin L. Merry

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The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce our next External Speaker.

On 16th February, 2pm-4pm, Kevin L. Merry will be running a masterclass on Universal Design for Learning and its implementation at De Montfort University.

Bookings for the event are open via the CPD Staff booking page.

You can read more about Universal Design for Learning on the CAST Site.

The workshop will take place online via Teams. A link will be sent to you before the event. 

Please see below for the session description and speaker biography.

Session Description

In 2015, De Montfort University adopted Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as its institution-wide approach to learning, teaching, and assessment in response to its exceptional level of learner diversity. UDL is an approach that incorporates a variety of options to allow it to be accessible and inclusive for diverse groups of learners possessing a wide variety of learning needs and preferences.

In this masterclass, Dr Kevin Merry, will introduce the “Cheese Sandwich” approach to supporting learner mastery. The Cheese Sandwich has become the vehicle by which colleagues at DMU have begun to embed UDL into the design of their teaching sessions, modules, and programmes. Specifically, Kevin will provide a series of practical activities that will help colleagues to uncover the pedagogic foundations of the Cheese Sandwich. Furthermore, Kevin will invite colleagues to begin thinking about some of the key considerations that teachers must make when planning and designing learning experiences from a UDL perspective, and how this can be done using the systems approach of the CUTLAS method.

Finally, Kevin will finish off the session by addressing the elephant in the room – the issue of universally designed assessment. By providing guidance and practical examples from De Montfort University’s own Postgraduate Certificate in Learning & Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE), Kevin will hopefully dispel some of the myths that exist around UDL and assessment, supporting colleagues to adopt more UDL centric ways of assessing learning.

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Academy Forum 2: Designing Blended Learning

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Our next Academy Forum will be taking place online on Thursday 2nd December, 10am-11.30am. In this Academy Forum, participants will be sharing their experiences and approaches to designing blended learning.

In response to the pandemic, many of us had to adapt our teaching practices considerably. For most, this relied on an increase in the use of technology and online activities for students to undertake in their own time asynchronously. Blended Learning design looks at how you might approach or integrate online interactions with face-to-face teaching.

Participants will be reflecting on their current approaches to teaching and how they design online and face to face activities. We’ll be looking at some frameworks that will be helpful in planning for blended learning and be thinking about strategies for successfully and gracefully integrating online teaching into face to face interactions, and face to face interactions into online teaching.

Take a look at our overview of forthcoming Academy Forums and book your place online.

If you have any questions, then please contact us: lteu@aber.ac.uk.

Academy Forums 2021-22

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As the start of term kicks off, we’d like to invite you to the forthcoming Academy Forums over the next academic year. Our academy forums take place around a particular topic or theme relevant to learning and teaching. They’re an informal space to reflect on and share teaching practice, build connections with colleagues from other disciplines, and keep up to date with debates in the HE sector.

Based on feedback from our successful sessions last year, we’ve extended our Academy Forums to 90 minutes.

Our first session is taking place on 2nd November, 11am-12.30pm. In this session, we’ll be taking a look at the results from the Digital Insights survey. The survey is run by JISC and asks students about their digital learning experiences. For the academic 2020-21, we had over a thousand responses. Come along to this session if you want to hear about the findings and also think about ways in which you can build the results into your digital teaching.

Second up, on the 2nd December (10am-11.30am), we’ll be thinking about designing blended learning. Over the past eighteen months, colleagues have delivered purely online, purely face to face, and also Hyflex teaching activities for students. If you want to consider how to blend the online teaching activities with in person teaching activities, then come along to this session. You’ll be able to reflect on the resources that you’ve produced and how you might go about tweaking them for the current teaching context.

Following the winter vacation period, our third Academy Forum session will be taking place on 10th February (10am-11.30am). This session will take a look at strategies for designing authentic assessments. JISC outline, in their paper The Future of Assessment: five principles, five targets for 2025, that one of the key tenets of assessment design is to make it authentic. Participants will be given the opportunity to enhance an existing assessment or design a new one from scratch.

Into spring now, and our fourth Academy Forum of the year will be looking at peer feedback opportunities. Students develop greater cognitive processing through being given the opportunity to work with their peers – from paraphrasing complex theories, through to sensitively critiquing other students’ work, peer feedback activities can be used to great effect. This Academy Forum will be taking place on the 3rd March, 11am-12.30am. 

Our final academy forum will be looking at Students as Partners on 27th April, 11am-12.30pm. There are different approaches that can be used for Students as Partners projects. We’ll be looking at these – from student co-design to enhancement projects. In LTEU, we’ve worked on a number of student as partners initiatives and will be sharing our projects as well as giving you opportunities to establish you own project at session, module, course, or departmental level. 

For now, our Academy Forums will be taking place online. Book your place on our Course Booking site. Hope to see you there.

Mini-Fest: Assessment – 17th May – 21st May

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The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce its first mini-festival. The aim of the mini-fest is to bring together training sessions and workshops offered by LTEU around a particular topic with an external speaker. For this first mini-fest, we’ll be looking specifically at assessment. The mini fest will run from Monday 17th May until Friday 21st May and will be taking place online via Teams. Please book on the sessions that you wish to attend on our online booking system.

We are going to be joined by Professors Sally Brown and Kay Sambell to talk about assessment design post covid on Monday 17th May for a 2-hour workshop at 10.30am. Their paper Writing Better Assignments in the post Covid19 Era has been widely discussed across the sector since last summer:

Improving assessment and feedback processes post-pandemic: authentic approaches to improve student learning and engagement.

This workshop is designed to build on lessons learned during the complex transitions academics made last year when face-to-face on-campus assessment became impossible. A whole range of approaches were used by academics globally not only to cope with the contingency but also to streamline assessment and more fully align it with learning.

We now have an important opportunity to change assessment and feedback practices for good by boosting the authenticity of our designs to ensure they are future-fit.  Drawing on their work undertaken throughout 2020, https://sally-brown.net/kay-sambell-and-sally-brown-covid-19-assessment-collection/ the facilitators of this workshop Professor Kay Sambell and Professor Sally Brown will argue that we can’t ever go back to former ways of assessment and will propose practical, manageable approaches that fully integrate assessment and feedback with learning, leading to improved outcomes and longer-term learning for students.

Professor Kay Sambell is an Independent Consultant widely known internationally for her contributions to the Assessment for Learning (AfL) movement in higher education. A 2002 National Teaching Fellow (NTF) and Principal Fellow Higher Education Academy (PFHEA), she is President of the vibrant Assessment in Higher Education (AHE) conference series, ( https://ahenetwork.org/) and Visiting Professor of Assessment for Learning at the University of Sunderland and the University of Cumbria. Kay has held personal chairs in Learning and Teaching at Northumbria University, where she co-led one of the UK Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning which specialised in AfL, and, more recently, at Edinburgh Napier University.   

Kay.sambell@cumbria.ac.uk

Website: https://kaysambell.wordpress.com

Professor Sally Brown is an Independent Consultant in Learning, Teaching and Assessment and Emerita Professor at Leeds Beckett University where she was, until 2010, Pro-Vice-Chancellor. She is also Visiting Professor at Edge Hill University and formerly at the Universities of Plymouth, Robert Gordon, South Wales and Liverpool John Moores and at Australian universities James Cook Central Queensland and the Sunshine Coast. She is a PFHEA, a Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) Senior Fellow and an NTF. She is widely published on learning, teaching and particularly assessment and enjoys working with institutions and teams on improving the student learning experience. 

S.brown@leedsbeckett.ac.uk

Website: https://sally-brown.net

In addition to Sally’s and Kay’s workshop, LTEU will be offering sessions and workshops over the course of the week:

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Reflections from Academy Forum: How can I make my teaching more inclusive?

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What does insivity mean to you wordcloud

Last week’s Academy Forum on inclusivity was one of the best-attended sessions this year. It was great to see so much interest and commitment in developing more inclusive teaching. This session was delivered in partnership with Student Support Services. Accessibility Advisor Nicky Cashman provided staff with information on demographics at AU as well as support available to students.  

The session started from a broad question of ‘what does inclusivity means to you’ (see the word cloud we created above). After Nicky’s introduction, we moved onto a scenario-based activity. Each group was given one scenario to work with. Every few minutes each group received and an additional piece of information providing them with a broader perspective of the situation.

The scenarios can be found at the bottom of the post.

The activity was followed by a whole-group discussion. Staff talked about a ‘duty of care’ towards their students and the extent to which they are expected and should be monitoring their students. We also talked about the balance between taking care of individual students and the needs of the entire cohort. The group looking at scenario one rightly pointed out that more inclusive practice would be to ensure that students are pre-assigned to groups, to avoid situations when someone is excluded. A discussion on when alternative assessments are appropriate and where additional support in completing existing assessments would be more suitable. Finally, the importance of establishing trust with students as well as checking in with students who may show early signs of difficulties was discussed.

We are very grateful to Nicky and all staff who attended and contributed to this session.

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