Abstract
Recent developments in the Higher Education sector have resulted in the creation of increasing numbers of teaching-focused positions, whose imcumbents are commonly referred to as ‘Teaching Fellows’. Individuals in these roles face a variety of unique challenges compared with their more traditional research-focused colleagues and they often lack access to tailored support and mentoring structures. In this report we highlight the creation of the UK Teaching Fellow Network and describe the online community and discussion forum that have been set up to support these individuals. The pilot programme targeted physics Teaching Fellows; below, we outline our plans to expand membership to encompass other STEM subjects in order to promote a content-rich, vibrant and supportive community in the long-term.
Highlights
Recent developments in the Higher Education sector have resulted in the creation of increasing numbers of teaching-focused positions, whose imcumbents are commonly referred to as ‘Teaching Fellows’
In conjunction with this an online community was set up to facilitate discussions between TFs on topics such as pedagogical practice, educational research and general advice: all of the things that would normally be available to a discipline specific researcher in a traditional research group but may well not be available to an individual with a teaching-focused role embedded in a research department
Area for discussion of existing pedagogy Subforum where current funding can be posted – please feel free to add any that we may have missed! Area to ask advice from more experienced Teaching Fellows Subforum intended to highlight a variety of different areas of good practice and promote discussion of existing practices Subforum for the posting and discussion of all forms of useful resources Subforum collating all aspects of research, from calls for collaborators to final results Area for dissemination and discussion of ongoing and completed projects
Summary
Teaching has always gone hand in hand with research in the Higher Education (hereafter HE) sector; the Dearing Report (NCIHE 1997), Brown Report (Browne et al 2010) and guidelines from the QAA (2012) have placed an increasing emphasis on the quality of teaching within these institutions. The final choice for the forum software was phpBB (https://www.phpbb.com – last accessed 23 May 2013), partly due to the core administration team’s previous experience of the software and for the following functionality: the overall display of individual discussion threads is very easy to follow; responses are stacked in chronological order on screen without requiring further clicks to view; content is presented on a single, navigable and searchable website with no need for separate curating activities, allowing the forum to build into a valuable reference resource that is useful for silent users; the posting interface allows rich text formatting, embedding images/files/hyperlinks either by using the simple editing interface or with a bare minimum of coding Official News and Announcements* Technical Support/FAQ* Introduce Yourself Events (Conferences/Meetings/Workshops)
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