At the 13th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference, Professor Anwen Jones announced a fund of £10,000 for colleagues to bid against to a maximum of £2,000 for projects related to the conference theme:
Compassionate engagement and assessment
Health and wellbeing in a learning and teaching context
Accessibility and inclusion (inclusive learning and teaching design)
The University is providing half of the total funding, with the remainder coming from Medr, the Welsh universities regulator.
We are looking for a wide range of projects across all areas of our community which would make a difference to our education and student experience.
A warm welcome to new staff joining Aberystwyth University.
In this blogpost we aim to provide you with information related to technology in learning and teaching, our training provision, support channels, and events that we run.
All the information that you need is on our webpages.
We write a blog full of the latest updates, details on events and training sessions, and resources.
Each module has its own dedicated course in Blackboard. Students can expect to find information about the module, learning materials, and e-submission guidance, as well as links to reading lists and lecture capture.
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.
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 andBlackboard Assignment. Turnitin provides an automatic text matching functionality. We use Blackboard Tests to run online exams.
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, we run a series of training sessions across the following strands:
E-learning Essentials: designed for colleagues new to the university, teaching, or who would like to get a refresher. The aim of these sessions is to ensure that colleagues can meet the university’s digital learning and teaching policies.
E-learning Enhanced: designed to build on the skills gained in our e-learning essentials series, colleagues will create an activity or assessment unique to their learning and teaching contexts.
E-learning Excellence: designed to offer colleagues the opportunity to create exemplary learning and teaching opportunities – often unique and sector leading.
You can find details of our annual CPD programme and book your place to attend via Book a Course page.
All of these are great opportunities to meet people from across the university and discuss Learning and Teaching issues and developments.
We look forward to seeing you at a forthcoming event. In the meantime, feel free to get in touch with us via elearning@aber.ac.uk if you have any questions.
This year’s conference boasts a number of external speakers.
Keynote speaker:
Dr Neil Currant will be offering a keynote presentation on Compassionate Assessment. There will also be a masterclass workshop with colleagues being able to apply these principles to their own scenarios. See our blog update for further information.
External speakers:
We’ve got three other external speakers lined up. For further information, click the links below:
Now, we’ve also got Professor John Traxler joining us for a special panel discussion on Generative AI.
This session will be taking place on the afternoon of Tuesday 8 July via Teams.
John Traxler, FRSA, MBCS, AFIMA, MIET, is Professor of Digital Learning, UNESCO Chair in Innovative Informal Digital Learning in Disadvantaged and Development Contexts and Commonwealth of Learning Chair for innovations in higher education. He is Academic Director of the Avallain Lab, leading research on ethical and pedagogic aspects of educational AI. His papers are cited around 12,000 times and Stanford continues to list him in the top 2% in his discipline. He has written over 40 papers and seven books, and has consulted for international agencies including UNESCO, ITU, ILO, USAID, DFID, EU, UNRWA, British Council and UNICEF.
He was a pioneer of mobile learning, starting in the 2000s with technology and pedagogy but, in the 2010s, concerned with the impact and consequences on societies, cultures and communities of mobility and connectivity, and on the nature of disadvantage. He is interested in the impact of AI on global and individual disadvantage and the decolonisation of the digital technologies of learning and education.
Our full programme will be announced in due course.
We’re delighted to be joined by colleagues from Higher Education Partners (HEP) on the final day of our conference (10 July).
Kate Lindsay from HEP will be presenting and leading a roundtable as part of the conference. Kate is currently SVP of Academic Services at HigherEd Partners, working with UK Universities to grow their capacity and capability in the the design of high quality online learning experiences.
Previously, Kate worked at the University College of Estate Management as Head of Digital Education, leading the transformation of fully-online programmes. Before that Kate was the Head of Technology Enhanced Learning / Director of Academic Services at the University of Oxford. Kate has experience working on teaching, learning and assessment strategy, digital education strategy, learning design consultancy, staff digital fluencies, curriculum design, and IT innovation programmes.
The University has partnered with HEP on the new online learning project as part of the invest to grow strand.
We’ll also be joined by colleagues in academic departments who are working with HEP for the first cohort of courses.
Following the announcement of our conference keynote, we’re pleased to confirm our next external speakers.
On Tuesday 8 July, Professor Lee Elliot Major OBE FAcSS and Beth Brooks from the University of Exeter will be joining us to showcase their pioneering work with social mobility in the South West.
Professor Lee Elliot Major OBE FAcSS is the country’s first Professor of Social Mobility, based at the University of Exeter. As one of the world’s leading social mobility experts, his work is dedicated to improving the prospects of young people from under-resourced backgrounds. Lee was formerly Chief Executive of the Sutton Trust and a trustee of the Education Endowment Foundation. He is focused on the impact of research, working closely with Governments, policy makers as well as schools, universities, and employers across the world, and advocates an ‘equity approach’ in schools based on principles set out in his book Equity in Education.
Beth Brooks is an Executive at the South-West Social Mobility Commission, where she leads on various social mobility projects. Before joining the Commission, Beth worked in Widening Participation at the University of Exeter, and as a secondary school teacher in the South West. She holds a PGCE with distinction from the University of Exeter.
Their University-led Tutoring Service is scalable, sustainable, low-cost tutoring model is a high-quality approach to tutoring with the potential to transform thousands of young lives across the country. Using programmes, undergraduate tutors boost key skills of school pupils, gaining work experience and credits towards their degree, forming invaluable relationships with pupils falling behind in class while considering a career in teaching. Unlike other programmes, it is free for schools. We call it the ‘win win win’ scheme.
On Tuesday 8 April, we co-hosted our latest Mini Conference with colleagues from Careers and Employability Services. We hosted 50 attendees from across the University and had 5 sessions.
The conference started with a welcome from Professor Anwen Jones, Pro Vice Chancellor for Education and Student Experience. Following Anwen’s address, Dr Aranee Manhoaran from Kings College London gave a fantastic keynote. In her keynote, Aranee identified an Employability framework that can be applied to the curriculum. As well as this, strategies were given regarding how to map this framework onto the curriculum to review assessment.
Dr Saffron Passam from Psychology gave a presentation which focused on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion as an integral employability skill.
Dr Louise Ritchie from Theatre, Film and Television Studies gave an overview of how the Drama and Theatre Curriculum partnered with the Careers and Employability Service to improve visibility and graduate outcomes.
The School of Education’s Annabel Latham outlined innovative assessment design with the Careers and Employability Service. The assessment included workshops, poster creation, and a post assignment discussion.
Finally, Careers and Employability Services’ Bev Herring and Jo Hiatt recapped the morning’s event and ran an interactive presentation for colleagues to reflect on how comfortable they felt integrating employability skills into their curriculum.
A big thank you to our presenters for such engaging sessions and to those who attended.
We are delighted to confirm our keynote for this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference. Bookings for the conference are already open.
Dr Neil Currant will be joining us for an in-person keynote presentation and masterclass workshop on the second day of the conference, Wednesday 9 July.
Neil will be discussing the important role of compassionate assessment, belonging, and inclusive assessment practices.
In the workshop, colleagues will be given the opportunity to reflect on their own assessment practices and ways in which they could incorporate and adapt them based on Neil’s keynote. This work builds on the vital work being undertaken in Student Support Services.
Please see below for a speaker biography and links to selected works and projects:
Dr Neil Currant is a Senior Educational Developer at the University of Bedfordshire. He was previously Head of Educational Development at Oxford Brookes University and the Royal Veterinary College. Neil has been supporting teaching, learning and assessment practices in higher education for twenty years with expertise in inclusion and assessment.
Neil has been involved in JISC funded research projects on the use of learning technology, an Advance HE funded project on global citizenship, institutional research on awarding gaps and QAA funded projects on belonging and compassion.
Neil is a reviewer and accreditor for Advance HE. Neil co-founded the Compassionate Assessment Network in HE and is currently researching assessment practice related to compassion, the affective impact of feedback and ungrading.
We will be announcing further external speakers in due course.
Call for Proposals
Our Call for Proposals is still open, and closes on April 8. We welcome proposals that speak to the conference themes, but also those which showcase the excellent teaching practices taking place at Aberystwyth University.
Bookings Open
Bookings for the conference are already open. Please complete our online survey to book your place.
If you have any questions about the conference, please contact the conference organisers via elearning@aber.ac.uk.
