Centre For Excellence In Teaching Research Articles

Tourism and hospitality internship experiences overseas: A British perspective

A large number of British university programmes in tourism and hospitality feature an internship of some sort. This element is intended to provide a vocational dimension to what can be a predominantly academic curriculum. Not only do internships provide familiarity with professional practice, they raise graduate labour-market value and, arguably, enhance the individual’s maturity before returning to the final degree year. This paper uses research funded by the UK Centre for Professional Placement Learning, Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning, into the experiences of students on 12 month internship away from the UK.

The Strategic Development of Learner Autonomy through Enquiry-Based Learning

This paper reports on strategic developments to enhance student learner autonomy skills through the use of enquiry-based learning (EBL) in the design of higher education programmes. The UK's Sheffield Hallam University is a recognized Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in the field of developing learner autonomy. Central to the university's learning, teaching and assessment strategy is the conviction that students must become autonomous learners to acquire the skills and knowledge needed for employment, research and continuing professional development. In this context it is imperative that students are increasingly able to manage their own learning, formulate their own lines of enquiry and develop flexible approaches to their studies – the essence of acquiring learner autonomy. It is also important that they can work across discipline boundaries, often in teams, tackling problems that are essentially multidisciplinary. The central theme of this paper is the strategic use of EBL in areas that involve students working together in small groups.

Scholarship in Mathematics Support Services

Mathematics Support is a recognised collective term for a variety of extracurricular mathematics and statistics teaching and learning services and resources provided by many Tertiary Educational Institutions. Typical services currently provided in the UK are described. Even with scholarly Mathematics teaching, the authors argue that, in the current UK Tertiary Educational climate, there is still a need for Mathematics Support services. This paper provides evidence of maturity and scholarly practice within the UK Higher Education Mathematics Support community of practice. Three areas where scholarship can be demonstrated in mathematics support services are explored. Firstly, scholarship in the Mathematics Support community of practice in the UK since the early 1990s is demonstrated through surveys of the extent of Mathematics Support provision. Secondly, scholarly practice in Mathematics Support is explored through case studies of good practice. In particular, a detailed case study of the use of electronic record-keeping in Mathematics Support tutoring to improve support effectiveness is provided. Thirdly, the Mathematics Support excellence rewarded by the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning status given to Coventry and Loughborough Universities is investigated. Evidence is provided of scholarship both leading to this award and in developments in Mathematics Support services provided after it was made. This paper concludes by evaluating how far scholarship has gone within the discipline of Mathematics Support and anticipating how the community of practice will develop in the future.

Evidencing impact of educational developments: the ‘influence wheel’ and its use in a CETL context

Large‐scale educational development initiatives are widely used to trial and introduce change. One such is the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) initiative in England, now drawing to a close. An interim evaluation of this initiative revealed some excellent practice but no major impact. As CETLs strive to gain or sustain funding, their need to evidence their impact gains importance. This article considers the notion of impact and contends that the audience dictates the meaning and measurement of the term. It reviews the evolution and trialling of an innovative tool, the ‘influence wheel’, which attempts to show selected aspects of impact graphically as an interactive web page. Developed through an action research project funded by the Centre for Inter‐professional e‐Learning (CIPeL CETL), the tool employs the doughnut graph facility within Microsoft Office Excel in a novel way. The tool models CIPeL’s influence at local, national and international levels. A small‐scale evaluation of the tool found that it communicated aspects of impact effectively despite issues of usability and data completeness. The particular context is illustrative of how the influence wheel can be used. The tool has potential to reflect alternative understandings of impact, and may therefore be of interest to others in further and higher education seeking to communicate project achievements visually.

Lost in Translation: Cross-Cultural Experiences in Teaching Geo-Genealogy

This paper reports on a cross-cultural outreach activity of the current UK ‘Spatial Literacy in Teaching’ (SPLINT) Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), a past UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant, and shared interests in family names between Japanese and UK academics. It describes a pedagogic programme developed for Japanese postgraduates and advanced undergraduates that entailed quantitative and qualitative analysis of the spatial distributions of Japanese family names. The authors describe some specific semantic, procedural and theoretical issues and, more generally, suggest how names analysis provides a common framework for engaging student interest in GIS.

Undergraduate medical research: the student perspective

Background:#All authors contributed equally to this work.Research training is essential in a modern undergraduate medical curriculum. Our evaluation aimed to (a) gauge students’ awareness of research activities, (b) compare students’ perceptions of their transferable and research-specific skills competencies, (c) determine students’ motivation for research and (d) obtain students’ personal views on doing research.Methods: Undergraduate medical students (N=317) completed a research skills questionnaire developed by the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in Applied Undergraduate Research Skills (CETL-AURS) at Reading University. The questionnaire assessed students’ transferable skills, research-specific skills (e.g., study design, data collection and data analysis), research experience and attitude and motivation towards doing research.Results: The majority of students are motivated to pursue research. Graduate entrants and male students appear to be the most confident regarding their research skills competencies. Although all students recognise the role of research in medical practice, many are unaware of the medical research activities or successes within their university. Of those who report no interest in a career incorporating research, a common perception was that researchers are isolated from patients and clinical practice.Discussion: Students have a narrow definition of research and what it entails. An explanation for why research competence does not align more closely with research motivation is derived from students’ lack of understanding of the concept of translational research, as well as a lack of awareness of the research activity being undertaken by their teachers and mentors. We plan to address this with specific research awareness initiatives.

Using Facebook to improve communication in undergraduate software development teams

As part of the CETL ALiC initiative (Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning: Active Learning in Computing), undergraduate computing science students at Newcastle and Durham universities participated in a cross-site team software development project. To ensure we offer adequate resources to support this collaboration, we conducted an experience survey amongst teams and a content analysis of their reports. This article reports on the findings of that investigation, and shows that success in the project was often determined by the students' communication strategies and use of available technology. Significantly, students often abandoned the technologies provided and adopted Web 2.0 technologies such as Facebook instead. Based on these findings we have developed a tool called CommonGround, designed to run on the Facebook platform, which harnesses the students' engagement with the service. CommonGround couples the communication and ‘social awareness’ features inherent in the Facebook platform with basic meeting, schedule and project planning facilities. Initial feedback from students using CommonGround is encouraging.

Intersections: The utility of an Assessment for Learning discourse for Design educators

This paper explores the productiveness of the intersecting knowledge domains of Teaching and Learning and Design. More specifically it examines the utility of an Assessment for Learning (AfL) framework developed by researchers at the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) at Northumbria University for articulating the curriculum design, delivery and assessment strategies employed in the Global Studio a design module conducted at a UK university. Using a case study methodology with the aim of compiling rich, practice-based knowledge (Denzin and Lincoln 2005), we draw on data gathered throughout the development and delivery of the Global Studio in order to undertake our analysis. We suggest that many Assessment for Learning elements were implicitly embedded in this module. We propose that Assessment for Learning may provide a useful conceptual frame for exploring pedagogical practices and student learning experiences more generally in the design studio.

Writing about design pedagogy and designing pedagogical writing

The Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design (CETLD) has funded 40 research projects. These set out to explore innovative ways of developing resources and sharing the expertise between HE and collections-based partners for the benefit of students, teachers and institutions as a whole. In the CETLD's final year of funding, an additional research study is being carried out into the 40 projects, from a type of outsider perspective. This research will rearticulate findings in non-specialist terms, analyse the researchers' experiences and explore the thematic relationships and disjunctions between the two. Using an ethnographic approach, both formal reports and experiential accounts of the research are analysed.

Threshold concepts and the transport and product design curriculum: reports of research in progress

In 2005, Coventry University was successful in bidding for Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) funding from HEFCE, which led to the creation of the Centre of Excellence for Product and Automotive Design (CEPAD). This article discusses pedagogic research carried out by CEPAD to date, with a particular focus on the journey towards identifying one particular threshold concept in student transport and product design education. It also explores preliminary thoughts on how this identification of hitherto tacit knowledge can feed into the design thinking and solutioning process. From this, the article offers some implications for the enhancement of teaching and learning within the design curriculum.

Double-entry journals: developing an embedded programme of writing development for first year Early Childhood Studies degree students

AbstractIn recent years students have been entering higher education (HE) with a diverse range of writing experiences, especially where they come through nontraditional or vocational routes that require different kinds of writing than in many HE courses (Lillis and Turner, 2001). For the past three years a team of researchers at a school of education in a large, urban, post-1992 university has been working on a CETL (Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning) research project which focuses on developing secure writing identities in first-year Early Years students (Ivanic, 1998). Although this is still a work in progress, it is clear from the data so far collected that the project provides suggestions for how lecturers can embed writing activities into subject-specific modules. At the same time, the importance of writing development to the whole learning process has been positively highlighted for staff and students alike.

An exploration into inquiry-based learning by a multidisciplinary group of higher education faculty

This manuscript describes faculty and student experiences and future activities of a multidisciplinary group of university faculty who are implementing inquiry-based learning (IBL) in their classrooms for the first time. This opportunity to implement the IBL instructional method was provided to the faculty through a grant from the university’s Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE). The goal of this paper is to provide a discussion on the implementation of IBL in the classroom and students’ responses to IBL. The multidisciplinary group was from the following disciplines: philosophy, journalism and mass communications, business and technology education, public health, civil engineering, and social work. This manuscript describes the (1) fundamentals of the CTE inquiry grant, (2) fundamentals of IBL, (3) IBL strategies and implementation, (4) students’ responses to IBL, and (5) the implications of IBL for higher education.

Pedagogies of participation in higher education: a case for research‐based learning

This article addresses the question of the role and function of contemporary higher education in western industrialised nations through a focus on the participation of undergraduate students. The discussion examines some of the dramatic changes brought about by neo‐liberal educational policy, in particular the hierarchical division of teaching and research and the negative construction of students as consumers. Drawing on critical debates within the fields of art and education, what it means to participate – in both theory and practice – is interrogated. Research‐based learning is then presented as a participatory form of pedagogy. Combining evidence from the wider literature with that provided by the recent activities of a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in the UK, it is suggested that research‐based learning has the potential to reconfigure students as intellectual producers through their active engagement with research and their participation in the research cultures of their departments and disciplines. In so doing, such pedagogies present scope for critical and constructive intervention in relation to some of the damaging trajectories of educational reform in the UK and elsewhere.

Partnerships for skills training in the care-home sector

Aim: This paper describes an initiative in North East London that aimed to facilitate access to training for care-home staff by using a mobile skills-centre in the form of an adapted bus. Background: It has proved difficult to take a strategic approach to quality assurance in care homes and the first comprehensive national training strategy for the sector was not published until 2000. Staff value and benefit from training, but organizing the provision of education and training may be problematic, given resource constraints and staffing levels that make it difficult to release staff to go off-site. Method: Collaboration between the School of Community and Health Sciences, City University London; My Home Life, an initiative led by Help the Aged in collaboration with the National Care Forum and City University London; local care homes; local primary care trusts (PCTs); and the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at City University London and Queen Mary University of London. The project involved facilitation, training in the mobile skills-centre and evaluation through questionnaires. Findings: The project was successful at a number of different levels: providing training to care-home staff; fostering collaborative relationships between care homes and PCTs; providing a forum to enable a wider educational discussion of care-home needs; and stimulating the planning of future education programmes for care-home staff and of the provision in care homes of student nurse placements.

Interactive screen experiments—innovative virtual laboratories for distance learners

The desirability and value of laboratory work for physics students is a well-established principle and issues arise where students are inherently remote from their host institution, as is the case for the UK's Open University. In this paper, we present developments from the Physics Innovations Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (piCETL) in the production and technology of the virtual laboratory resources, interactive screen experiments, and the benefits and drawbacks of such resources. We also explore the motivations behind current implementation of interactive screen experiments and examine evaluation strategies and outcomes through a series of case studies.

Paying it Forward as a Teacher-Mentor: An Interview with Bill Hill

Bill Hill received his PhD from the University of Georgia in 1979 and has been on the faculty at Kennesaw State University (KSU) ever since. He is currently director of the KSU Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. His professional activities and research revolve around faculty development. In 1989, he founded, and continues to coordinate, the annual Southeastern Conference on the Teaching of Psychology. He has held leadership roles in the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, serving as president (2001–2002) and director of programming (2004–2008); he also coordinated the annual “best practices” in teaching psychology conference from 2002 to 2008. He received the 1985 KSU Distinguished Teaching Award and the 2004 American Psychological Foundation Charles L. Brewer Distinguished Teaching Award. Bill is a Fellow of Divisions 1, 2, and 52 in the American Psychological Association. Linda Noble completed her PhD at the University of Georgia in 1985 and began her career at KSU the same year. She served as chair of the Psychology Department, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and associate director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. She has held several leadership positions in the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, including president (2003) and editor of the Methods and Techniques section of Teaching of Psychology. She is now serving as the assistant vice chancellor for Faculty Affairs at the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, where she oversees faculty policies and procedures at all 35 state institutions and coordinates systemwide faculty development events.

The Adjunct Advocate @ Fit: Bringing Part Time Faculty into the Mainstream

The Adjunct Advocate @ FIT is an online, faculty development program at FIT, part of the State University of New York. This convenient new resource, developed by the Center for Excellence in Teaching, reaches out to adjunct and off-campus faculty with professional development that includes printable materials, video, discussion boards, and video-conferencing. This work-in-progress will be fully launched in spring 2009.

The Learning Development Team: Three developers, one pedagogy

With the inception of Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs), the demand for learning developers has increased in many institutions across the UK. Operating largely in small teams, yet within the remit of facilitating large-scale institutional change, CETLs often find themselves outside established institutional structures, with developers fulfilling newly defined roles and responsibilities. This short paper focuses on the way learning development support has been integrated in one particular CETL, in order to explore issues, challenges and experiences that are part of the role.

Design for Inquiry-based Learning Case Studies

The past six months have witnessed the development and dissemination of a number of case studies of inquiry-based learning (IBL) projects supported and developed by the Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences (CILASS), a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Sheffield (www.shef.ac.uk/cilass/cases). The cases aim to provide practitioners with accessible, informative and inspiring resources that illustrate ways in which inquiry-based learning is conceptualised, designed and facilitated in different disciplinary contexts. They are intended to communicate something of the experiences of students and staff who have been involved in inquiry-based learning activities at Sheffield.

Lancaster Postgraduate Statistics Centre - creating enterprise and innovation in teaching statistics across disciplines

The Lancaster Postgraduate Statistics Centre (PSC) encompasses all aspects of Postgraduate Teaching and Learning within the Mathematics and Statistics department. It is the only UK HEFCE-funded Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning that uniquely specialises in postgraduate statistics, and rewards the research and teaching excellence of the Statistics Group. The award-winning purpose-built PSC building opened in February 2008, and features many modern state of the art facilities. Our popular MSc courses and short course programme provide excellent training for those wishing to further their knowledge of statistics. We hold regular Teaching and Learning Seminars that focus on innovative teaching methods and technologies, and offer a visiting fellow scheme as well as specialist training at all levels through master classes and workshops run by experts in the field. This article describes the work of the PSC as we proceed past the third year of grant funding. For more information about activities in the Postgraduate Statistics Centre please see our website at http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/psc.