On Wednesday 1st November staff from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences who had received Faculty funding for teaching development projects came forward to showcase their projects for the wider Faculty.
These innovative and diverse projects demonstrated the benefits that can be reaped from relatively small amounts of funding.
“MCQs and deep learning: a possible fix?” Matteo de Tina (Economics)
Matteo used his funding to bring in external speakers for a workshop that stimulated discussion and raised awareness of more sophisticated uses of MCQs for learning. The outcome was that more staff in the Department of Economics now use MCQs in their teaching, and in more advanced ways.
“Practical Innovations in Life Science Education.” Javier Gonzalez (Health)
Javier attended a Physiological Society workshop that introduced ways to enhance teaching of practical skills, with an emphasis on resources for large groups. He highlighted how a gamification approach can motivate students to keep practicing and refining these important skills.
“GW4 Undergraduate Project Consortium.” Kate Button (Psychology)
Kate demonstrated how a collaborative and open approaches to developing student research skills could instil good research practice from the ‘grass roots’ up, thus aiming, in the future, to counter the criticisms that some existing poor practices currently attract.
“Cyber psychology: a blended unit for campus based UG students.” Jeff Gavin (Psychology)
Jeff described the redesign of this unit that aimed to provide an up to date and enriched learning experience for these UG students. Carefully designed online learning activities engaged and challenged students to apply and critic the ideas offered by a wide variety of teaching materials including video conversations from experts in the department and from further afield.
“From Scrapbooks to Death Masks: Stepping into the University’s Archives & Research Collections.” Nina Parish (PoLIS) & Brad Millington (Health)
Nina and Brad sought to raise awareness among students about the archive materials and their potential uses for project and dissertation work. Visits to the archive, a web portal http://www.bath.ac.uk/library/gen/archive-stories.bho and videos of academic staff introducing artefacts were created to draw students in.
Clearly the energy and enthusiasm of these staff were key factors in achieving positive outcomes. Their projects will no doubt inspire others to build on the ideas shared, develop their own projects and apply for future rounds of Teaching Development Funding.
Geraldine Jones (Learning Technologist HSS)
Respond
