We are inviting submissions for the two-day Foundation Year Network Annual Conference, hosted by the University of Sussex on the 10th and 11th July 2019.
Much recent research in transitional pedagogies has sought to critique the ‘deficit model’ of learning which begins from the assumption that students lack certain skills, proficiencies, knowledge, and/or cultural capital, and that the task of educators is to remedy that deficit. Read more ›
Learning, Teaching & Student Experience (LTSE) is the UK’s leading conference on business and management education. The collegiate atmosphere makes it an ideal opportunity for learning, idea-sharing, personal development and networking.
We are now accepting submissions for the 2019 conference and encourage all members of the Chartered ABS to get involved. Read more ›
What do you do when you detect 16% of your cohort engaged in academic misconduct? Besides a lot of paperwork and administration (250 hours worth), I was surprised by students’ reasons for cheating – and it was mostly driven by a lack of understanding of how to study with integrity. Students cheat for many complicated reasons, and often rationalise away the act of cheating with the misconception that it is a victimless crime. Thus began my search to try and find a way to help my students understand what academic integrity meant and how to avoid misconduct. Read more ›
Dr Liz Sage
During the ten years I’ve been teaching at Sussex, I’ve taught in some pretty varied contexts. Freshly-built lecture theatres and porta-cabin classrooms that tremble as people walk past. Seminar rooms full of light and up-to-date AV equipment and rooms where the projector screen comes down across the only whiteboard in the room. Rooms where I’ve had space to be inventive and spaces where the number of students we can accommodate according to the room listings has been ambitious to say the least. Read more ›
Let me say at the outset that in many disciplines, there are few problems caused by assessed essays – they may not even be used at all. Before 1791 when it is said that the University of Cambridge introduced the first unseen written examinations to Britain, assessment used to be mostly oral, with face-to-face questioning of students about what they knew and didn’t know. There are many advantages of oral assessment – not least the ability to use ‘probing’ questions to delve deeper into what students can do. Questions such as the following can give us far deeper information about the student’s knowledge status:
Each year, the Library and Technology Enhanced Learning coordinate ‘Digital Discovery Week’, a programme of events themed around innovation and technology. The week provides opportunity to discuss, learn and explore the different contexts, practices and effects associated with emerging technologies and how we engage with them as researchers, teachers and students.
How can we prepare students for careers which may not exist yet and a world which is changing so rapidly that no one can predict what it will look like? What tools and strategies can help to empower learners as independent researchers and creators of content in their own right? Read more ›
The call for papers for the 2019 conference is now open. Read more ›
Alice Shepherd
“One day, you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again.” (C.S. Lewis dedication of, ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’). Given that many texts we ask our students to read are very distant from the vivid world Lewis created, how can we understand more about our students’ academic reading practices so that we can more effectively support them as they progress through their university studies? Read more ›
We are excited to launch the Teaching Perspectives blog with an entry from Professor Kelly Coate, Pro Vice Chancellor, Education and Students.
I am very excited to be joining the University of Sussex at the same time as the Strategic Framework 2025 is launched and implemented. The language and values of the Framework very much speak to me as someone who has long (and from afar) admired the foundational values of Sussex and the distinctiveness of a Sussex education. Returning to these values, and re-imagining them for the 21st Century student, is a hugely exciting challenge ahead for all of us.
We are currently finishing the draft of the Education Strategy which will underpin the aims of the Strategic Framework: we are calling it #Learn2Transform. Once the Strategy has been signed off by Council, we will be very pleased to visit Schools and/or Departments to discuss ways in which we can realise the aims within it together. One of the first activities we will undertake is to establish a #Learn2Transform Network, which will bring together staff and students who are interested in, and already active in, shaping and enhancing our education provision. We have much exciting work taking place across campus (and now beyond, through our exciting new distance provision) that we need to harness, find synergies between, celebrate and disseminate.
Just to give a flavour of our ambitions: one of the main aims of the Strategic Framework is to make our students partners in the big decisions that will shape our University’s future. There are many ways in which to develop relationships of partnership with our students, some of which I am sure colleagues in the Business School have already developed. For me, it will mean asking at every opportunity where the student voice is in our deliberations, and where the opportunities are for students to join in and participate meaningfully in our meetings, teams, working groups and events.
Inevitably, we will have ambitions which will require different types of support for staff who are interested and capable in developing new activities or innovations, but who will need time or developmental opportunities of some kind in order to make them happen. We will need to help ensure this support is in place. A related issue, in my view, is that one of the biggest influences on culture is motivation: colleagues who teach need to see that education has parity of esteem with research, and will have to see that research and recognition for education leadership is in place. This is an area of work that is already underway, and which has support from the highest levels of the University.
I am very much looking forward to working with colleagues and students in the Business School.
Kelly will be presenting at our Teaching and Learning Seminar on Monday 1 October in Jubilee G32, 2.15-3.45pm. All welcome!
