The Future of the Swansea Student Learning Experience

1
(No Transcript)
2
The Future of the Swansea Student Learning
Experience
Professor Alan Speight(PVC Student Experience)
3
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.

4
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

5
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)

6
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?

7
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?

8
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? 

9
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

10
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?

11
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

12
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.

13
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.

14
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.

15
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.

16
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.

17
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.

18
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.

19
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/).

20
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 ones 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.

21
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.

22
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 Interviews with Student Course Reps
  where the process will be outlined and they will
  be asked to conduct appreciative interviews with
  a partner.

23
Appreciative Inquiry

• Staff Interviews to 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.

24
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.

25
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.

26
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

27
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 institutions 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

28
What happens next
29

• Diolch yn fawr
• Thank you

30
(No Transcript)