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The Future of the Swansea Student Learning Experience

The Future of the Swansea Student Learning Experience. Professor Alan Speight (PVC Student Experience) . Quality Enhancement. QAA defines quality enhancement as “ taking deliberate steps to bring about continuous improvement of the learning experience of students.”

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The Future of the Swansea Student Learning Experience

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  1. The Future of the Swansea Student Learning Experience Professor Alan Speight(PVC Student Experience)

  2. Quality Enhancement • QAA defines quality enhancement as “taking deliberate steps to bring about continuous improvement of the learning experience of students.” • SU quality enhancement strategy will be to ensure that enhancement is built into all of the quality management processes within the University from the institutional level, through Faculties, Schools and subject areas to the level of the individual lecturer.

  3. Themes for 2008-09 • Enhancement led internal review procedures • Student Engagement in QA and QE • Promotion of Good Practice • Quality Enhancement Seminars • Work with students in response to surveys and feedback • A quality enhancement conference event (today) • Identify priority enhancement themes

  4. Themes for 2009-10 • Research-Led and Practice-Driven Teaching (RLPDT) • Research and Practice Showcase Week • Enhancing the First Year Experience; PASS • e-Learning Enhancement • Assessment and Feedback • Revised Policy and Enhancement (HEA) • PDP, LEAP and Pebble Pad • Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching (SALT)

  5. RLPDT in the Curriculum? • Can you clearly identify where research-led and practice-based learning occurs in the programme? • Where are research methods/skills/ethics taught and practiced? Is this progressive?  • Is the research knowledge/skill the student acquires made clear in the module learning outcomes? • Is there is the scope for students to conduct independent research in their programmes?

  6. RLPDT in the Curriculum? • How are the links between teaching and research embedded in the monitoring and review of modules and programmes? • How are students supported in making explicit how research training/knowledge supports their employability? • How are undergraduate students made aware of postgraduate research opportunities?

  7. Promoting RLPDT • How does learning and teaching strategy articulate research and teaching/learning links? And vice versa? • How do research teams and course teaching teams link with each other? How are these links facilitated? • How are new staff and new students made aware of RPLT values and practices? • How is the research culture and activity given visibility to students? 

  8. RLPDT Week - Purpose • To introduce students to the research that is happening in their School and practice in their profession • To integrate staff and students into the research culture of the school • To encourage closer links between the research and the teaching of the subject area • Recruitment and engagement promotion • Encourage ddiscipline-based initiatives

  9. RLPDT Week - Ideas • Staff and student research/practice seminars for audiences of staff and students • Poster presentations of staff research/practice projects • Poster presentations of student research/practice – 3rd years to 2nd and 1st years? • Opportunities for students to interview staff about their research/practice as a part of their studies • Students participate in staff research projects?

  10. e-Learning Benchmarking & Enhancement • e-Mark - electronic marking and student support £36,591 • p-Vox - real people, real experiences £36,991 • e-learning for Higher Education EAP learners £15,000 • Web 2.0 Student-Centred Learning £13,900 • Peer Support Platform £ 4,500 • Appreciative Inquiry £ 1,000 • Total £107,982

  11. e-Mark • e-Mark is an electronic marking management system. • Assignments submitted electronically through Blackboard into the eMark system, marked and moderated by (teams of) lecturers using eMark's Web interface, then checked by external examiners. • After the marks are ratified, marking sheets with marks and feedback are emailed automatically to the students.

  12. e-Mark • Important aim is to improve support for students who submit assignments by providing timely feedback on their work and by identifying areas that require support: (1) allow markers to select common strengths and weaknesses in assignments and automatically insert appropriate comments into feedback reports, (2) identify recurring problems for individuals so that they can be guided towards relevant support (3) identify problems affecting larger groups of students so that assignments can be clarified or more support provided.

  13. p-Vox • The “people's voice", a web-based e-learning resource centred around talking-head video clips of real patients and clients talking about their real-life experiences. • Simple in concept but rich learning resources that help to understand care from the patients' and family's perspective. • The idea of pVox, therefore, is to take this idea one step further and create a library of video clips of real people talking about their real-life experiences. This would be based on a web site.

  14. p-Vox • To enrich the learning experience, each video clip would be linked to additional learning opportunities including questions and answers about the patient, discussion areas and links to other relevant resources. • The principle of clients talking about their real-life experiences so that students could learn from their experiences is equally valid for social care, child development and even legal scenarios.

  15. e-learning for Higher Education EAP learners • A framework for e-learning English for Academic Purposes (EAP) delivered through the existing BlackBoard VLE as a self-study facility • Directed and subject-specific personalised English language learning, to expose learners to the academic or professional language they encounter in their studies. • Tutor-directed individual tasks, support and individualised feedback, through support and progress from a “menu” of tasks with standardised feedback and information.

  16. e-learning for Higher Education EAP learners • Source of material will be existing video or audio lectures. Onto these video or audio materials would be grafted a range of supporting materials: • Critical Vocabulary Support; Orientation questions; Post-listening content questions; Quizzes, Flash-cards and Games to support vocabulary retention and recycling; Extension work on grammar. • Presented as a menu-driven set of choices and prepared at a variety of learning levels. Users free to choose their own pathway.

  17. Web 2.0 Student-Centred Learning • Will encourage the use of Web 2.0 technologies in the Swansea learning environment: Podcasting; Blogs; Video-blogs; Wikis • Will create a series of exemplars using existing tools to encourage the adoption and integration of Web 2.0 technologies. • Students will be encouraged to develop and share resources using blogs, wikis, audio and video, to create a growing set of material for future cohorts of students to use.

  18. Web 2.0 Student-Centred Learning • The exemplars will be linked to undergraduate and Level M modules in the following areas, each of which has one or more modules and a significant web site that is a research tool: • The history of computing; Greek archaeology; Archaeological ethics; History of ancient science and technology • A series of on-line guides for creating and developing Web 2.0 resources will be prepared and distributed via the Swansea Learning Lab (learninglab.swan.ac.uk/).

  19. Peer Support Platform • Students as supporter of other students on a module. To explain and clarify things to others is an effective way of clarifying one’s own understanding. • Technology can facilitate this process: Discussion boards/blogs; Knowledge bases; wikis can hold communally written documents. • Chat or instant messaging applications can allow for “shouts for help” and social networking can provide cohesion between disparate individuals from different disciplines.

  20. Peer Support Platform • Trial on a math-intensive module taken by a several disciplines in L2 Engineering: Control Systems, 130 students. • Blackboard mediated tests in weeks 3, 6 and 9. Each test made available for two weeks prior and students encouraged to seek assistance with understanding from the peer-support platform. • Blackboard will give feedback and additional feedback will be added as appropriate.

  21. Appreciative Inquiry • During the Benchmarking process we used the Appreciative Inquiry approach for staff and student surveys • Used as an approach to organisational change based on the premise that (a) whatever you want more of already exists somewhere in the organisation and (b) organisations move in the direction of what they study. • Student Interviewswith Student Course Reps where the process will be outlined and they will be asked to conduct appreciative interviews with a partner.

  22. Appreciative Inquiry • Staff Interviewsto include at least 50 staff interviews. As with the student interviews, the staff interviews will be conducted by peers who have themselves been interviewed. • Data collection and synthesis is conducted by people who have an active interest in improving e-learning within the University rather than consultants who try to capture high level themes and then tell the organisation what they already know.

  23. SALT • In order to promote excellence in teaching and provide a single home for learning and teaching resources and promotion it is proposed to establish a Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching, broadly along the lines of a Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. • SALT will operate on a hub and spokes model with a small central team and spokes within academic schools.

  24. SALT • Centrally the SALT will comprise of the Quality Enhancement Officer and the two E-Learning Officers currently employed within the library. This core group will provide a teaching and learning team combining E-Learning and conventional Learning and Teaching functions. • The central SALT team will work closely with the Staff Development Unit, Student Services and the Library to provide co-ordinated and enhanced learning and teaching support and resources.

  25. Purpose of the SALT • To raise the importance and status of excellent teaching within the institution • To provide a focus for promoting teaching excellence • To provide a network for communicating and sharing teaching excellence • To provide a co-ordinated learning and teaching support function incorporating staff development, learning and teaching resources, e-learning and quality enhancement

  26. Purpose of the SALT • To provide a single source of learning and teaching resources online for staff through dedicated high quality webpages with a high profile on the institution’s website • Identify sources of funding for Learning and Teaching projects and developments externally and internally and assist in applications for these funds. (e.g. HEA Subject Networks) • To provide a point of contact for institutional and external contact with the HEA

  27. What happens next…

  28. Diolch yn fawr • Thank you

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