Category: Events and Networks

External Speakers: Mini-Conference: Embedding Well-being in the Curriculum

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Mini-conference: Embedding Well-being in the Curriculum

As announced last week, on Thursday 25th March, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit will be hosting second Mini-Conference this academic year. The theme will be ‘Embedding Well-being in the Curriculum’, where will explore the links between mental well-being and learning and how this could help to maximise success for both students and staff.

We are pleased to announce that two excellent external speakers accepted our invitations to present during the conference:

Flourishing at Aberystwyth – Putting Positive Education into Practice

Positive Education is the intertwining of educating for academic outcomes and for well-being and character development in order to enable the learner to flourish. Embarking on a course of academic study, whether at undergraduate or postgraduate level, full- or part-time, is a major life event that can impact on mental health and well-being. The current academic year has been unlike any other and a determined focus on well-being for students and staff – teaching and non-teaching – is more important than ever.

In this highly interactive keynote, participants will learn about key elements of positive psychology in the context of higher education, including:

  • The importance of positive relationships
  • The use of character strengths in teaching, feedback and staff development
  • How time perspectives may influence motivation

Aberystwyth University staff attending this session will have the opportunity to explore how their everyday practices can support their students’, colleagues’ and own well-being. The session will include elements of reflection, discussion, and practising activities that support well-being. Whilst the focus will primarily be on supporting student well-being, this is best achieved when staff are well.

The session will therefore also provide participants with the opportunity to develop their own well-being strategies and to consider how the University’s systems and procedures can underpin a culture of well-being.

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Kate Exley Workshop: Taking your (PowerPoint) Lectures Online

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The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce a special online workshop run by Dr Kate Exley on Wednesday 17th February.

The workshop will be useful for colleagues who are modifying and transferring their traditionally delivered lectures for on-line learning.

Please book your place online [link].

So that as many colleagues as possible can attend, we are running the workshop twice (11am-12pm and 1pm-2pm). Please select which session you want to attend when booking.

Places are limited so please book as soon as possible.

Session Overview:

Many colleagues have been involved in providing blended or on-line learning for many years but the Covid pandemic has meant that we have all needed to quickly provide much of our teaching and learning at a distance. This has involved moving our lectures, previously delivered in large lecture theatres and classrooms, to online platforms. The speed at which this huge change has happened has in itself caused significant challenges for staff and students alike.  This blended workshop aims to provide some guidance, examples and a forum for colleagues to share their experiences and ideas for enhancing this provision.

This workshop is presented in two parts:

  • A set of 3 short videos will be made available on or before the 5th February 2021 and should be viewed independently before joining discussion forum – approximately 45 minutes independent study.
  • A discussion forum hosted via Teams on the 17th February, in which participants will have the opportunity to ask questions, share experiences and discuss the topic – lasting 1 hour.

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Weekly Resource Roundup – 5/1/2021

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Weekly Resource Roundup with Mary Jacob, Lecturer in Learning and Teaching

Happy new year!

As lecturer in learning and teaching responsible for the PGCTHE, I keep an eye out for new resources to help our staff teach effectively online. This includes externally-provided webinars, toolkits, publications and other resources. Because active learning is high on our university agenda, I’m particularly keen to share guidance for moving active learning online. Below I’ve listed items that came to my attention in the past week. In the interest of clarity, our policy is to show the titles and descriptions in the language of delivery.   

Please see the Staff Training booking page for training offered by the LTEU and other Aberystwyth University staff. I hope you find this weekly resource roundup useful. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact our team at lteu@aber.ac.uk. You may also wish to follow my Twitter feed, Mary Jacob L&T.  

UKGCE Good Supervisory Practice Framework – launched bilingually in the University

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Aberystwyth University is launching the bilingual internal process for the UK Council for Graduate Education’s Good Supervisory Practice Framework. The English and Welsh version of the framework can be found here.

“The Good Supervisory Practice Framework acknowledges, at a national level, the wide-ranging, highly complex and demanding set of roles involved in modern research supervision” UK Council for Graduate Education webpage.

Statement from Professor Colin McInnes, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research, Knowledge Exchange and Innovation)

    “Supervising research students can be amongst the most rewarding things we do as an academic community, but also amongst the most challenging. These challenges affect all of us from time to time, and continue to evolve as research practice, methods and epistemologies develop. This Framework will provide us as a research community at Aberystwyth with the tools and confidence to continue our excellent supervisory practices and support our research students.”

Annette Edwards, Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit and Reyer Zwiggelaar, Head of the Graduate School, are collaborating, on behalf of the University, to market and develop an understanding of this framework. There will be an internal process available for all those who are interested in applying for this accreditation. Please visit this webpage for further information and to express an interest in applying via the online form.

Save the Date: Annual Learning and Teaching Conference

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Save the date banner - 30.06.2021-02.07.2021

The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit are excited to announce the date for the 9th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference. The conference will be taking place between Wednesday 30th June and Friday 2nd July 2021.

Look out for Calls for Proposals and the announcement of the conference theme later this month. As usual, we will be updating our Learning and Teaching Conference Webpages and also our blog to keep you up-to-date with how things are progressing.

Weekly Resource Roundup – 23/11/2020

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Weekly Resource Roundup with Mary Jacob, Lecturer in Learning and Teaching As lecturer in learning and teaching responsible for the PGCTHE, I keep an eye out for new resources to help our staff teach effectively online. This includes externally-provided webinars, toolkits, publications and other resources. Because active learning is high on our university agenda, I’m particularly keen to share guidance for moving active learning online. Below I’ve listed items that came to my attention in the past week. In the interest of clarity, our policy is to show the titles and descriptions in the language of delivery.   

Please see the Staff Training booking page for training offered by the LTEU and other Aberystwyth University staff.  I hope you find this weekly resource roundup useful. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact our team at lteu@aber.ac.uk. You may also wish to follow my Twitter feed, Mary Jacob L&T.  

External Speaker: Mini Conference: Advice for Action – Promoting Good Feedback Practice

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Distance Learner BannerOn Wednesday 16th December, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit will host their next Mini Conference.

We are delighted to announce that Dr Naomi Winstone from University of Surrey will be giving a presentation:

From Transmission to Transformation: Maximising Student Engagement with Feedback

Even the highest-quality feedback on students’ work will not have an impact on their development unless students actively engage with and implement the advice. The literature, alongside anecdotal reports of educators, often paint a negative picture of students’ willingness to read and enact feedback. My recent programme of research has focused on students’ cognitive, motivational, and emotional landscapes and how they influence the ways in which students receive, process, and implement feedback on their work. In this talk, I will argue that maximising students’ engagement with feedback is fundamentally an issue of design, where opportunities for students to develop the skills required for effective use of feedback, and opportunities to apply feedback, can transform the role of students in assessment. In particular, I will share a toolkit of resources that we developed in partnership with students to support the development of feedback ‘recipience skills’. Through this approach, I demonstrate how the responsibility for ensuring that feedback has high impact can, and should, be shared between educators and students.

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Welsh-Medium Continued Professional Development – What’s on?

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The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit offers several sessions for Continued Professional Development (CPD) covering a range of topics. We offer sessions in both English and Welsh and Welsh-medium sessions will appear in Welsh on the staff training website. Here is an overview of the Welsh-medium sessions that we are offering throughout the rest of the semester:

November 2020

16.11.20 (11:00-12:30): CDU: Datblygu eich arferion addysgu (D & A: Ar-lein)

17.11.20 (14:00-15:30): CDU: Defnyddio MS Teams, Offer yr Ystafell Ddysgu ac Addysgu syncronaidd (D & A: Ar-lein)

20.11.20 (14:00-15:00): Hanfodion E-ddysgu: Cyflwyniad i Turnitin (D & A: Ar-lein)

25.11.20 (11:00-12:00): Hanfodion E-ddysgu: Cyflwyniad i Panopto (D & A: Ar-lein)

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Weekly Resource Roundup – 26/10/2020

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Weekly Resource Roundup with Mary Jacob, Lecturer in Learning and Teaching As lecturer in learning and teaching responsible for the PGCTHE, I keep an eye out for new resources to help our staff teach effectively online. This includes externally-provided webinars, toolkits, publications and other resources. Because active learning is high on our university agenda, I’m particularly keen to share guidance for moving active learning online. Below I’ve listed items that came to my attention in the past week. In the interest of clarity, our policy is to show the titles and descriptions in the language of delivery.   

Please see the Staff Training booking page for training offered by the LTEU and other Aberystwyth University staff.  I hope you find this weekly resource roundup useful. If you have questions or suggestions, please contact our team at lteu@aber.ac.uk. You may also wish to follow my Twitter feed, Mary Jacob L&T.  

Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol: October Training

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Training for research students
The Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol will be running several workshops for research students throughout the year as part of their Research Skills Programme. Here is a copy of the full programme for 2020/21. You will need to register in advance for each workshop and you can do so through the following link.

Here is a look at the workshops that will be running throughout October:

Tuesday (13 October), 11:00-11:30 – ‘Cyfres Iechyd a Lles myfyrwyr ôl-radd (Edrych ar ôl eich hun)’ – Andrew Tamplin

Friday (16 October), 14:00-16:00 – ‘Sgiliau Addysgu ar gyfer Myfyrwyr Ôl-radd’ – Dyddgu Hywel

Tuesday (20 October), 11:00-12:00 – Rheoli amser a phwysau gwaith (gyda ffocws ar weithio o bell)’ – Mari Ellis Roberts

Friday (23 October), 11:00-12:00 – ‘Rheoli’ch goruchwyliwr (gyda ffocws ar weithio o bell)’ – Nia Gwynn Meacher & Seren Evans.

Training for staff
Also, as part of the Staff Development Programme (2020/21), the series ‘Iechyd a Lles: Chi fel Staff a’ch Myfyrwyr’ continues next Tuesday morning (9:30-10:00). All staff members are welcome to register and you can do so through the following link.