Category: External Speakers

Keynote announcement: Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: Professor Lisa Taylor

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The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference speaker.

Professor Lisa Taylor from the University of East Anglia will be joining us to present on employability in the curriculum. Lisa is Professor of Employability and Learning Innovation and Associate Dean for Employability for the Faculty of Medicine and Health.

Lisa is an Occupational Therapist by background with ten years of clinical experience within the NHS whilst also completing her MSc and PhD.

For the last twelve years Lisa has worked in higher education as a lecturer within the Occupational Therapy academic team at the University of East Anglia. Lisa has held employability leadership roles alongside her lecturing role for eleven of those years, initially as employability director for the School of Health Sciences and then as Associate Dean for Employability for the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Lisa is passionate about employability and learning innovations, maximising the impact for students/learners, academic colleagues, and external partners. A prestigious Advance HE National Teaching Fellowship (NTF) was awarded to Lisa based on her sustained ability to facilitate and influence quality student learning.

Lisa has helped developed the wider employability agenda through supporting and engaging with colleagues locally, nationally, and internationally, impacting on student learning outcomes and experience, through teaching, strategic initiatives and learning innovations. The award of an NTF positions Lisa as a sector leader in employability and learning innovations. Lisa publishes and presents widely, helping to steer the national conversation about employability. 

One of Lisa’s learning innovations is the Peer Enhanced e-Placement (PEEP). Lisa has won multiple awards for the pioneering PEEP and has published a book based on its design and delivery principles, Constructing Online Work-Based Learning Placements: Approaches to Pedagogy Design, Planning and Implementation. The PEEP will be presented as part of Lisa’s keynote lecture.

The Learning and Teaching Conference will be taking place between 10 and 12 September. Colleagues are welcome to submit proposals and bookings are now open.

External Speakers: Pedagodzilla Book Launch and Pod Attack 

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The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to welcome our next external speakers on 2 and 3 May 2024, Pedagodzilla, the pedagogic podcast with the pop culture core, to Aberystwyth University. They are running a very special series of in-person events and CPD sessions on 2nd and 3rd May 2024.  

  • 2/5/2024 10:00-12:00 Powering professional development with Pedagodzilla 
  • 2/5/2024 13:30-15:30 The Aber Takeover  
  • 3/5/2024 10:00-11:00 Pedagodzilla Live 
  • 3/5/2024 11:05-12:00 Picking Pedagodzilla Panellist Brains 

Staff can book on our CPD booking system. Interested students should contact the LTEU team to be added. 

The Pedagodzilla visit to Aberystwyth starts with an introduction from the team, on who we are, what Pedagodzilla is – and includes us giving away free copies of our newly launched book, Pedagodzilla: Exploring the Realm of Pedagogy. 

The book aims to demystify and disentangle the domains of pedagogy, using the lens of pop culture in a playful and accessible way. The book stems from episodes of the Pedagodzilla Podcast, which has now been running for five years, and has led to collaborations and conversations across the world, conference pieces and journal papers. 

We feel that the book will be useful to anyone interested in education practice – and how theory can inform how we teach. In particular, this book is aimed at practitioners who may be suffering from the common higher-ed occupational hazard, imposter syndrome – giving them an accessible way to use the language of pedagogy to discuss and develop their own practice. We will talk about the book – share a QR code for people to access the pdf – and share some print copies until they run out. 

We then move to a workshop, starting by discussing the development and framework of the Pedagodzilla Podcast as a professional development tool, and then inviting attendees to form groups to ideate their own powerful professional development projects within a framework. We draw it all together with a discussion of the underlying pedagogies, and tips for powering up your own professional development with creativity and authenticity. 

In the Aber Takeover session, we invite attendees to form a team (using self-described roles to break up groups) to design a short segment of a show within a playful structured framework. Groups will record their contributions, which will go into a special Aberystwyth Takeover episode, published on the Pedagodzilla podcast feed. If you’re not a confident speaking or being recorded then don’t worry! This format includes options for non-speaking contributions. 

On the second day, join Pedagodzilla for a recording session! An experiment with our format where we invite attendees to submit their own Pedagodzilla Style ‘pedagogy meets pop culture’ questions, to see if our flustered panellists can somehow blag a legitimate answer within a tight time limit, in a recorded podcast. 

In the final session, we invite the good folk of Aberystwyth to pick the brains of the Pedagodzilla team – HE professionals from high profile universities across the country. Possible topics include but aren’t limited to: 

  • Learning Design theory and practice (All) 
  • The ups and downs of distance learning (All) 
  • Experiential learning in virtual worlds, and the pedagogy (or not) of VR (Mark) 
  • Podcasting for dummies (Mike) 
  • Education futures, and innovations in pedagogy (Rebecca) 
  • Learning behaviours (Elizabeth Ellis) 

About Pedagodzilla 

Pedagodzilla is the pedagogic podcast with the pop culture core, that looks to playfully understand and explore pedagogies and education practice through the lens of pop culture. The Pedagodzilla team will be officially launching their first book, Pedagodzilla: Exploring the Realm of Pedagogy at Aberystwyth. 

Facilitators 

  • Mike Collins: Producer and host of the Pedagodzilla podcast, and Senior Learning Designer at The Open University. Mike also provided the illustrations for the book. 
  • Dr Mark Childs: Mark is a Senior Learning Designer at Durham University. He has a PhD in Education and was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2021 for his research and teaching using virtual reality and videoconferencing. 
  • Prof Rebecca Ferguson: Professor Rebecca Ferguson is an editor-in-chief of the Journal of Learning Analytics, academic coordinator of the FutureLearn Academic Network (FLAN). 
  • Elizabeth Ellis: At The Open University, Elizabeth develops digital learning experiences for OU students as well as OpenLearn and FutureLearn. 

External Speakers at this year’s Learning and Teaching Conference: Part 1: Blackboard

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We’re delighted to welcome a number of external speakers at this year’s Learning and Teaching Conference.

View our full programme and book your place online.

On Tuesday 4 July, we’ll be joined in person by colleagues from Blackboard.

Colleagues will have the opportunity to hear about future developments, work on and enhance their blackboard ultra modules, and provide feedback to the company on enhancements.

Please see below for our speakers’ biographies.

Read More

Keynote announcement: Annual Learning and Teaching Conference 

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The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce our keynotes for this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference (4-6 July 2023).  

Booking for the conference is already open. Book your place today. 

We will be joined by colleagues from Blackboard and Bangor University to ensure that we are well prepared for our move to Ultra. 

There will be opportunities to: 

  • Learn all about the benefits of moving to Ultra 
  • Hear about some exciting new developments that will help enhance your teachingListen to colleagues from Bangor about the lessons that they’ve learned from their move 
  • Take a look at what excellent means with Ultra courses 
  • Attend a workshop to help enhance your modules to ensure that they are the very best that they can be for September 
  • Give your feedback on Ultra to product developers to help it meet our needs 

We’ll be announcing the rest of our programme shortly, but you can expect sessions on Artificial Intelligence, Creative Assessment Design, and developing resilience in students.  

We’re excited to see you in person on 4 and 5 July and online on 6 July.

Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: External Speaker Announcement

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The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce our first external speaker as part of this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference.

Taking place between 4 and 6 July, bookings for the conference are already open.

Michael Webb from Jisc will discuss Artificial Intelligence in the session Navigating the Opportunities and Challenges of AI in Education.

Since the introduction of Chat GPT, colleagues have been finding ways in which the power of artificial intelligence might be used in Higher Education alongside the challenges that it poses.

Jisc’s national centre for artificial intelligence in tertiary education aims to help institutions adopt AI in a responsible and ethical way. We are working across the sector to help institutions navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by generative AI. In this session we’ll review the strengths and weakness of generative AI, the practices and approaches we see emerging, and take a look at how technologies and practices are developing as ever more generative AI applications are released.

Michael Webb is the director of technology and analytics at Jisc – the UK digital, data and technology agency focused on tertiary education, research, and innovation. He is co-lead of Jisc’s national centre for AI in tertiary education, supporting the responsible and effective adoption of artificial intelligence across the tertiary education sector. As well as artificial intelligence, he has worked on projects around the internet of things, virtual reality, and learning analytics. Before joining Jisc, Michael worked in the higher education sector, leading IT and learning technology.

This session will be of interest for colleagues who would like to add AI into their teaching and learning activities, as well as explore ways in which it can be used productively.

Our full programme will be announced on our webpages in due course. Aberystwyth University has been working on its own guidance for Artificial Intelligence. Take a look at ourConsiderations for Generative AI Detection blogpost for further information.

James Wood: Improving feedback literacy through sustainable feedback engagement practices

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Banner for Audio Feedback

On Wednesday 10 May, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit welcomed Dr James Wood from Bangor University to give some ideas around student feedback design and engagement.

The recording from the session is on Panopto and the PowerPoint slides can be downloaded below:

Improving Feedback Uptake Literacy for Aber (002)Download

In the session, Dr Wood outlined

  • The changes to the feedback NSS questions for 2023
  • The purpose of feedback
  • The move away from feedback transmission to one of action
  • Barriers to student feedback engagement
  • Screencasting your feedback

The next big event for LTEU is our annual Learning and Teaching Conference which is taking place between 4 and 6 July. Bookings for this are already open.

If you have any external speakers that you would like LTEU to invite to next year’s series then please email lteu@aber.ac.uk with your suggestion.

Sustainability in the Curriculum: Materials Available

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On 9 March, LTEU welcomed Dr Sarah Gretton and Alice Jackson from the University of Leicester to run a session entitled How to use UN 2030 Agenda Sustainability Development Goals to frame the Curriculum.

Slides and recordings from the session are now available.

University of Leicester Sustainable Development Goals SlidesDownload

In the session, Sarah and Alice gave an overview of how they embed SDGs across all curricula at Leicester, with 100% of their programmes having a module related to an SDG.

Participants at the session were given the opportunity to reflect on modules that they teach on and whether any of the UN SDGs map to them. Participants were also asked if students were aware of this mapping and whether it was captured in the learning outcomes of modules and programmes.

If you’re interested in Sustainability in the Curriculum then the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal targets are a good starting place.

In addition to SDGs, the presenters also linked to the following resources:

This external speaker event builds on our Mini Conference on Sustainability held in December.

Our next external speaker event is on 19 April, 14:00-15:30, where James Wood from Bangor University will be running a session on Improving Feedback Literacy. You can book this session via the Course Booking page.

External Speaker: Dr Sarah Gretton and Alice Jackson: Sustainability in the Curriculum and Education of Sustainable Development Goals for Aberystwyth University

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LTEU is pleased to announce our next external speaker event. On 9 March 14:00-15:00, Dr Sarah Gretton and Alice Jackson from University of Leicester will be running an online workshop on Sustainability in the Curriculum.

Abstract

Sustainable development can be adopted as a driver for change within higher education institutions and as an opportunity to transform curricula (as seen with the recent revisions to QAA Subject Benchmark Statements). This workshop will discuss practical ways to embed Education of Sustainable Development (ESD) and specifically the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into the formal curricula. Dr. Sarah Gretton – Institutional lead for ESD and Alice Jackson – Sustainability Academic Engagement Officer at the University of Leicester – will bring their experiences in integrating the SDGs into teaching and learning and will guide participants on how to evaluate their modules in relation to the goals. During this session, participants will be asked to associate their module’s intended learning outcomes with the UN SDGs and associated targets, to understand how existing learning objectives can support sustainable development.

Biographies

Sarah Gretton is an Associate Professor in Biological Sciences, Director of University of Leicester’s Natural Sciences programme, and Academic Lead for Education for Sustainable Development at the University of Leicester. Sarah is Senior Fellow of HEA.  Sarah has over a decade’s experience in educational development, working on internally and externally funded projects (HEA, Advance HE, Royal Society for Biology, QAA). Her research interests include sustainability, skills development and interdisciplinary science education and have resulted in multiple publications (https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=xv8W6lIAAAAJ&hl=en). She leads the UK Society for Natural Science Scholarship of Teaching and Learning sub-committee and is member of national organising committee for the UK Horizons in STEM Higher Education Conference.  Her educational work has been recognised by a number of accolades which include reaching the finals of the 2017 Green Gown Awards (Sustainability Champion), winning the University of Leicester’s Teaching Excellence award (2017), and receiving a National Teaching Fellowship in 2021.

Alice is a sustainability professional working to deliver the ESD strategy at the University of Leicester. She comes from a sociology background and has previous experience working in employability and graduate skills which has informed her work in engagement and strengthening the sustainability content in the curriculum. She leads on the collection and analysis of data for an annual ESD audit and is enhancing those processes for the institution as part of a QAA funded ESD project. She has worked on the development and teaching of an interdisciplinary sustainable enterprise module to connect students with local SMEs in order to create lasting sustainable impact and has recently been recognised for this work at the 2022 Green Gown awards with a Highly Commended project. She has also developed and delivered Carbon Literacy Training to over 200 staff, students and local businesses as an accredited Carbon Literacy Facilitator.

This builds on our mini conference in December.

You can sign up for the event on our events booking page.

Resources from our previous external speaker series can be found on our blog.

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

External Speaker: James Wood: Improving feedback literacy through sustainable feedback engagement practices 

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The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce their next external speaker. On 10 May from 14:00-15:30, James Wood from Bangor University will be hosting an online session on Improving feedback literacy through sustainable feedback engagement practices.

James Wood is Lecturer in Education, Assessment and Taught Postgraduate Lead at Bangor University. Prior to this position, James has worked with Kings College London, University College London, Birkbeck University, Greenwich University and Seoul National University.

Session Abstract

Despite the importance of feedback in supporting learning in higher education, there is still much to learn about nurturing sustainable skills for seeking, engaging with, and using feedback. In practice, many students fail to access feedback, and even if courses offer formative assessment in principle, it is only sometimes engaged with or used effectively. It is often argued that students require ‘feedback literacy’ before engagement with feedback is possible. However, in this workshop, we will explore how feedback literacy and receptivity to feedback can emerge as students experience well-designed dialogic feedback practices that offer the opportunity to consider how learning from feedback occurs, the benefits, what constitutes quality and how to evaluate it and how to develop and execute plans to close the gap between current and target performance. I will also discuss how social and non-human factors entangle with learners’ agency to engage in ways that can serve or limit their participation. I will finish with an overview of how technologies can be used to enhance learners’ ability to use feedback effectively and develop relationships and communities that can offer powerful collaborative learning opportunities, as well as emotional support and encouragement. 

The workshop will take place online using Microsoft Teams. Book your place online.

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

Contract Cheating: Red Flag Checklist Workshop– Materials Available

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Turnitin icon

On 20 May, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit were joined by Dr Mary Davies, Stephen Bunbury,  Anna Krajewska, and Dr Matthew Jones for their online workshop: Contract Cheating Detection for Markers (Red Flags).

With other colleagues, they form the London South East Academic Integrity Network Contract Cheating Working Group and have been doing essential work and research into the increased use of essay mills and contract cheating.

The session included lots of practical tips for colleagues to help detect the use of Contract Cheating whilst marking.

The resources from the session are available below:

Contract Cheating Detection Workshop_handout_editable_pdfDownload

Further information on Unfair Academic Practice is available in the Academic Quality Handbook (see section 10).

Many thanks to the presenters. We’ve had such great external speaker sessions this academic year; take a look at our External Speakers blogposts for further information.