On Friday 11 March, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit hosted Dr Rob Nash, a Reader in Psychology from Aston University. Rob is an expert in feedback and ran a workshop looking explicitly at ways in which we can enhance and develop feedback engagement.
A recording of the transmission elements of the session is available on Panopto. You can also view the slides that he used.
For those of you who are interested in further exploring the terrain of feedback, you can take a look at the references that Rob used in his session:
Our next External Speaker event is Dr Mary Davies from Oxford Brookes who’ll be joined by other colleagues to discuss how we can detect potential contract cheating during the marking process. This workshop will be on 20 May 2022, 12:30-13:30. Booking for the session is already open.
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).
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.
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.
As part of this year’s CPD programme, we hosted a number of external speakers who provided us with new perspectives and unique expertise in various aspects of learning and teaching. In preparation for the upcoming year, we would like to briefly remind you of some of the topics discussed and the resources available to you. We hope that by building on these and other sessions the Unit organised this year you will feel fully prepared to adapt and innovate your teaching in the upcoming year.
In the first mini-conference of the year, we had an opportunity to listen to Dr Naomi Winstor who argued 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 this mini-conference keynote speech attendees learnt about key elements of positive psychology in the context of higher education and practical strategies for enhancing their own wellbeing.
Kate Lister from Advance HE explored how to create effective digital communities that can support students’ sense of belonging and purpose, facilitate meaningful connections, and provide support without relying on a campus environment.
Dr Kate Exley was invited to deliver a workshop on moving our lectures, previously delivered in large lecture theatres and classrooms, to online platforms.
During our Mini-Fest on assessment, Dr Sally Brown and Dr Kay Sambell led a workshop designed to build on lessons learned during the complex transitions academics made last year and explore the concept of authentic approaches to assessments.
We invited Professor Mick Healey and Dr Ruth Healey to deliver a workshop on student-staff partnerships and consult them on engaging students in projects and provisions we currently deliver.
We also had an opportunity to listen to Andy McGregor from JISC on the future of assessment. A talk based on JISC’s paper: The future of assessment: five principles, five targets for 2025, which ‘sets five targets for the next five years to progress assessment towards being more authentic, accessible, appropriately automated and secure’.
Joe Probert and Izzy Whitley from Vevox, our university polling software, delivered a session on how to make effective use of polling to engage learners.
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 30th June 2021 and should be viewed independently before joining discussion forum – approximately 45 minutes independent study.
A discussion forum hosted via Teams on the 7th July, in which participants will have the opportunity to ask questions, share experiences and discuss the topic – lasting 1 hour.
By the end of the two hour, session you should be able to:
Consider the purpose of the on-line lecture in Covid times
Discuss a range of practical design issues when taking lectures on-line
Share experiences and ideas with colleagues ‘in the same boat’
Begin to plan your next steps & what you can implement from the workshop
This workshop is mapped primarily to A2, A5, K2, K3 on the UKPSF.
As part of our Mini Fest on Assessment, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit invited Professors Kay Sambell and Sally Brown to give a workshop looking at how assessment might change because of changes to practices owing to the pandemic.
As part of the workshop, Sally and Kay recorded sections as part of their workshop: Improving assessment and feedback processes post-pandemic: authentic approaches to improve student learning and engagement.
For those unable to attend, you can catch up with these recordings:
We are pleased to announce our second external speaker for this year’s Learning and Teaching Conference: Andy McGregor. Andy is Director of edtech for JISC.
Andy’s workshop will focus on the future of assessment and is based on JISC’s paper: The future of assessment: five principles, five targets for 2025, which ‘sets five targets for the next five years to progress assessment towards being more authentic, accessible, appropriately automated and secure’.
Andy is responsible for managing JISC’s portfolio of research and development projects which develop new services that help universities and colleges improve education and research.
In addition to Andy, this year’s keynote will be delivered by Dr Chrissi Nerantzi from Manchester Metropolitan University.
The ninth annual learning and teaching conference is taking place online between Wednesday 30th June and Friday 2nd July. You can book your place by completing this online form.
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce that Dr Chrissi Nerantzi will be this year’s keynote speaker.
The conference is taking place online via Teams between 30th June and the 2nd July. Booking for this year’s conference is open and you can still submit a proposal via our online form.
Dr Chrissi Nerantzi (@chrissinerantzi), Principal Lecturer – Academic CPD, University Teaching Academy (UTA), Manchester Metropolitan University
At Manchester Met, Chrissi developed the openly-licensed practice-based professional developmental programme FLEX which incorporates formal and informal pathways of engagement utilising digital professional portfolios and open development opportunities including cross-institutional collaborative initiatives. FLEX has inspired further initiatives internally and externally with staff and students. She is the founder of the the cross-institutional Creativity for Learning in Higher Education community (#creativeHE), the Teaching and Learning Conversations (TLC) webinars and the co-founder of the open courses Flexible, Distance and Online Learning (FDOL), Bring your Own Devices for Learning course (BYOD4L) and the Learning and Teaching in Higher Education tweetchat (#LTHEchat). Chrissi teaches on the MA in Higher Education at her institution and leads Recognising and Rewarding Teaching Excellence and the Good Practice Exchange. She also co-ordinates the NTF and CATE submissions and regularly mentors colleagues. CChrissi contributes to further academic development activities within UTA, including the institutional PSF scheme and supports colleagues in creative curriculum design and is one of the Faculty Links for Arts and Humanities.
Improving assessment and feedback processes post-pandemic: authentic approaches to improve student learning and engagement – Professor Kay Sambell and Professor Sally Brown Workshop
The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce a special online workshop run by Kay Sambell & Sally Brown on Monday 17th May, 10:30-12:30.
Places are limited so please book as soon as possible.
Session Overview:
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.
This workshop is mapped primarily to A2, A5, K2, K3 on the UKPSF.
On Thursday, 25th of March, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit held their second mini conference of the academic year. Focussed on the theme of embedding wellbeing in the curriculum, the conference brought together internal and external speakers on three strands: recognising barriers to student well-being, building resilience in students, and encouraging students to flourish.
The conference boasted a range of speakers from across Aberystwyth University, as well as an external speaker from Coleg Cambria. Topics ranged from the ongoing work on wellbeing by the Student Support team, wellbeing in foundation year programmes, and building student resilience to reframing of mistakes as a learning opportunity, and personalising approaches to engaging with students and their work. Our two keynote speakers, Frederica Roberts and Kate Lister focussed on positive education and online communities respectively. In the spirit of the conference, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit also organised two activities during the morning and afternoon breaks: desk yoga and a guided meditation with local yoga teacher Regina Hellmich, which several delegates identified as a conference highlight. The day concluded with a plenary session in which everyone was encouraged to reflect on their insights and identify concrete applications of best practice going forward.
If you missed the mini conference or could only attend parts of it, you can now access recordings of most presentations here. Simply log in with your Aberystwyth ID and password. In addition, we strongly encourage you to sign up to our next Academy Forum on the 20th of April, entitled “How can I embed wellbeing into the curriculum?” – we look forward to seeing you there.
