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Key note - The Pursuit of Meaningful Learning: A key to an inclusive learning, teaching and assessment experience

During the 2009 Claude Bernard Distinguished lecture, the noted physiologist and great teacher, Stephen DiCarlo gave a speech entitled: “Too much content, not enough thinking, and too little FUN!” This got me thinking deeply about meaningful learning in HE. Learning is at the heart of effective teaching and teaching without learning is of no use. This is not a new concept. In the 19th century, Pioncare stated: “Science is built with facts as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more science than a heap of stones is a house”. We therefore need to ensure our students engage with meaningful learning, if their time at university is to be of value to self and society. Increasing numbers of students are now accessing HE and many are first generation scholars from non-traditional backgrounds. Their cognitive development as learners depends on faculty engaging with effective methods of teaching and assessments, as well as possessing an understanding of barriers that may exist to students’ learning. With the Teaching Excellence Framework, future employability, the burden of student fees and graduate debt, the student overall learning experience is critical to the success of the University. This is therefore an opportune time to explore the pursuit of meaningful learning in the delivery of an inclusive learning, teaching and assessment experience.

The pursuit of meaningful learning [PPTX 9.56MB]

Biography 

Professor Buge Apampa MRPharmS is the Director of Pharmacy and Director of Teaching & Learning in the School of Life Sciences. She is a registered pharmacist with over 30 years of combined academic, primary care and community/hospital pharmacy experience. In 2012, she was awarded the University of Kent’s Sciences Faculty Teaching Prize; and in 2017, her Sussex Pharmacy team won a teaching excellence award for Outstanding or Innovative Undergraduate Teaching.

Buge, the first professor to be appointed through the teaching and scholarship route at the University of Sussex is a passionate academic. Buge believes that learning is at the heart of effective teaching, and teaching without learning is of ‘no use’. This starts with the design and delivery of curricula that are optimised for Higher Education. Technology plays a key role in the support of in-class discussions, collaborative problem solving, and other inquiry-based activities. This helps to inspire in our students, a love for learning, makes learning fun, and ultimately facilitates meaningful and inclusive learning!

Workshop 1 - Supporting student partnerships in assessment and feedback

This practical workshop will introduce the principles of effective feedback that help improve the learner’s ability to self-assess and reflect on their own learning.

Focus groups have been conducted with International students at Sussex ISC and addressed the issue of engaging students with assessment criteria to develop student friendly criteria.

The session will include an introduction to the concept of the self-regulated learner and give strategies for encouraging students to engage with feedback.

By the end of the session you should be able to;

1. Choose feedback methods that provide learning opportunities for students.
2. Use self and peer feedback to help students develop their skills of self-assessment.

Supporting student partnerships in assessment and feedback [PPTX 1.39MB]

Biographies 

Sarah Williams is the Director of Quality and Innovation at Sussex International Study Centre. Working previously as an education consultant in HE and International education she has a specific interest in International education and pedagogic innovation in enhancing student engagement. 

Katharine Gilmore has worked in education for over 30 years as an English secondary school teacher both in the UK and overseas and at the International Study Centre for the past ten years. She was the Foundation Programme Manager and is now Head of Social Science and Law at the ISC. She has a particular interest in student experience with a focus on student directed learning and has helped students set up a peer- mentoring programme at the International Study Centre as well as supporting students with fundraising activities for the ISC charity.

Katrina HU is a Premasters Management and Finance student at the International Study Centre, who is part of the ISC feedback focus group, and has helped develop student-friendly criteria.

Ali Hassan Hadadi is a Foundation Law student at the International Study Centre, who has also developed the student friendly criteria as part of the feedback focus group.

Workshop 2 - How can technology make your teaching more inclusive?

As the range of learners that we teach becomes more diverse, the need to consider accessible design when producing or incorporating learning materials has never been more important.

This interactive workshop will explore some techniques and tools that we can use to design and plan our modules and sessions with inclusive approaches for engaging and supporting diverse cohorts.

Learning Technologists from Technology Enhanced Learning will facilitate a discussion which aims to explore how technology can help lecturers and tutors to communicate with diverse student groups, create inclusive learning materials, and engage students with active learning.

In this interactive workshop, participants will:

• Reflect on the range and diversity of teaching methods used in their current practices.
• Share ideas to promote inclusive teaching practice with colleagues across the institution.
• Consider ways to use technology to develop inclusive teaching resources and learning activities.

How can technology make your teaching more inclusive? [PPTX 955.95KB]

https://padlet.com/kitty_h/tandlconf2017.

Biographies 

Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) offers a specialist service to staff at the University of Sussex focused on enhancing teaching practices and enriching student learning, providing assistance with the planning, design, delivery and evaluation of a range of approaches to using educational technology. TEL provides a range of services, from professional development workshops, to collaborative projects working with staff who want to develop digital learning resources or use technological tools to achieve particular teaching goals.

TEL take a cluster based approach to supporting the various academic Schools with individual Learning Technologists supporting Schools. When working with the Schools, the Learning Technologists provide guidance on for example how to: build interactivity into your teaching, make effective use of multimedia, mark using electronic tools, record your lectures, make most effective use of the University’s virtual learning environment (VLE) Study Direct.

• Head of Technology Enhanced Learning – David Walker
• Social Sciences - Tab Betts and Pete Sparkes
• Arts and Humanities - Anne Hole and Antony Coombs
• Science - Kitty Horne

Workshop 3 - Overcoming barriers to inclusive learning: Is team based learning (TBL) the answer?

Pharmacy delivers an integrated curriculum that is designed to provide an inclusive learning experience for students. A blended approach, predicated on Team-Based-Learning pedagogy was adopted for the delivery of its integration workshops. This involves a flipped classroom methodology that requires students to prepare in advance by engaging with directed readings and videos. Students are also required to work in teams as part of the process. Thus at the start of each term, a designated faculty creates diverse teams of students (based for example, on previous experiences, performance, age, ethnicity) further supporting inclusive learning.

In the Pharmacy TBL class, students participate in a readiness assurance process comprising of individual readiness assurance tests (IRATs), team readiness assurance tests (TRATs) and application exercises involving problem solving.

Our workshop will focus on delivering a TBL session. Participants will complete IRATs-MCQs based on learning resources that will be provided in advance of the workshop. After submitting their individual answers, participants will be placed into diverse teams and will retake the same tests (TRATs-MCQs), using the ‘Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique’ (IF-AT) scratch cards.

The evidence base for TBL pedagogy asserts that the IF-AT facilitates learning and improves participants’ retention of course-material. Participants will receive immediate affirmative feedback if the answer is correct, and corrective feedback if the selected answer is incorrect, since participants continue answering a question until they get it right.

These tests are immediately followed by an application exercise, during which participants engage in deep thinking focusing on the material provided, and are thus empowered to construct their own conceptual framework for learning.

Participants’ feedback will be collected on their learning experience and shared with the wider audience.

Overcoming barriers to inclusive learning: Is team based learning (TBL) the answer? [PPTX 12.18MB]

Biographies

Dr Geeta Hitch MRPharmS, FHEA is lecturer in pharmacy at University of Sussex and has a keen interest in use of digital technologies in pharmacy education. Geeta graduated with a PhD in Medical Microbiology and a Masters Degree in Pharmacy, both from UCL, London where she was also the Maplethorpe Teaching and Research Fellow. Geeta is passionate about how students learn and has previously presented on various areas of learning and teaching in pharmacy education at both national and international conferences.

Professor Buge Apampa MRPharmS, FHEA is the Director of Pharmacy and Director of Teaching & Learning in the School of Life Sciences. She is a registered pharmacist with over 30 years of combined academic, primary care and community/hospital pharmacy experience. In 2012, she was awarded the University of Kent’s Sciences Faculty Teaching Prize; and in 2017, her Sussex Pharmacy team won a teaching excellence award for Outstanding or Innovative Undergraduate Teaching. Buge, the first professor to be appointed through the teaching and scholarship route at the University of Sussex is a passionate academic. Buge believes that learning is at the heart of effective teaching, and teaching without learning is of ‘no use’. This starts with the design and delivery of curricula that are optimised for Higher Education. Technology plays a key role in the support of in-class discussions, collaborative problem solving, and other inquiry-based activities. This helps to inspire in our students, a love for learning, makes learning fun, and ultimately facilitates meaningful and inclusive learning!

Mrs Tara Hadley, AFHEA is the senior registered pharmacy technician at University of Sussex. She has an enthusiasm for helping the pharmacy department develop use of digital technology into the curriculum, and extend this further into the Dept of Life Sciences. This is her first role within academia after qualifying as a technician and working within Western Sussex NHS Foundation Trust. She has recently completed the starting to teach module and gained her AFHEA award, and is currently undertaking her PGCertHE.

Workshop 4 - Writing into meaning together: Inclusive approaches to supporting doctoral students to write

This workshop involves reflecting on developing inclusive pedagogical approaches to supporting doctoral students with academic writing and the meanings and consequences of this. In so doing, we draw on our experiences of facilitating a 'Writing into Meaning' group for doctoral students and early career academics, the purpose of which is two-fold: first, to explore and develop academic writing; and second, to engender an inclusive and productive space by bringing together academics who can all too easily feel isolated and unsure. Research into best practice for developing advanced academic writing suggests such pedagogical initiatives should go beyond discussions of technique and process and instead promote space to encourage a ‘sophisticated awareness of how to project oneself within a variety of social, cultural and linguistic settings’ (Aitchison, 2009, p. 906). Consequently, in the group we embrace the academic writing process as an always uncertain production where writing is conceptualised as an emergent, embodied process of reflexive undoing and reshaping. We believe such an approach offers a more inclusive and democratic model, in drawing on and being responsive to, the diverse writing experiences, stages and expertise of the facilitators, students and colleagues taking part.  

Workshop participants will be invited to engage with us in some emergent writing in the session. This will be stimulated by a range of innovative tools and techniques we use in our Writing into Meaning groups, drawing on reflexive methodologies of generating possible new meanings through processes of personal reflection. We will close the workshop by inviting participants to speak back to our analytic work in order to think collectively and creatively about how best to support doctoral students (and each other) in our ongoing academic writing endeavours. 

You can visit the blog for Writing into Meaning at https://writingintomeaning.wordpress.com/. 

Writing into meaning together: Inclusive approaches to supporting doctoral students to write [PPTX 2.54MB]

Biographies 

Tamsin, Rebecca and Emily are colleagues working in the School of Education and Social Work who have shared interests in inclusive pedagogies, academic identities and feminist and qualitative research methods. Tamsin is a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education and Course leader for the University's Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCertHE); Rebecca is a Lecturer in Early Years and Primary Education and Course leader of the MA in Early Years, and Emily is a Lecturer in Higher Education and Co-Director of the Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER)

Workshop 5 - The inclusion and engagement of international students in the classroom

International students come from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds and different academic experiences. They may have clear ideas of their role as students or have expectations of the role of their tutors which are currently being challenged.

StudyGroup works in partnership with the University of Sussex and has extensive knowledge of delivering both Academic English and degree subjects to undergraduate and postgraduate international students. We would like to provide an interactive workshop to investigate how international students can integrate better, suggest ways of making learning spaces more communicative, and help the students adapt to unfamiliar teaching pedagogy.

In this session, we will look at ways of helping students with varying degrees of language proficiency to be able to participate more fully on their courses with simple, effective tips. These strategies we believe are part of good teaching practice and effective pedagogy and are beneficial to all students.

Outcome of the session:

• Practical strategies to facilitate learning in seminars and enable International students (and students who may encounter barriers to learning)  to participate more actively.

The inclusion and engagement of international students in the classroom [PPTX 163.65KB]

Biographies 

Diana Amadis is Head of English at Sussex International Study Centre. She has worked in higher education for 27 years, both as a researcher, EAP lecturer and head of languages in both the UK and France. She has published EAP course books for French university students and has extensive experience of working with international students from a wide variety of cultures and nationalities.

Vic Stephenson is the Head of English Curriculum for International Study Centres, UK and Europe. She has been in language teaching and testing for over twenty years, working as a teacher of English in Poland and Hungary before moving into teacher training, academic management and curriculum and assessment development. She has completed her Masters in Applied Linguistics at Sussex in 2009 and recently became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Vic as recently developed the curriculum and assessment for the Academic English Skills, which is a core module for overseas students progressing to 17 UK Universities.

Workshop 6 - From bolt-on to embedded: Inclusive approaches to teaching study skills 

Hockings (2010) defines inclusive teaching as, ‘engag[ing] students in learning that is meaningful, relevant and accessible to all…’ This workshop will explore the challenges of teaching study skills and practical ways that you can make learning more accessible by helping students to develop these skills.

Research suggests that the most effective way to help students to develop their study skills is to actively teach them to all students (Cottrell 2013, Hocking 2010, Lea and Street 1998, Wingate 2006). By incorporating advice about effective approaches to studying into your teaching you can ensure that:

• Study skills are made explicit and taught. You can help your students to meet your expectations of good academic practice by openly discussing with them what this means.
• Students will perceive the advice as relevant and an important part of their course.
• Students gain skills experience to equip them for careers and life beyond university at the same time as gaining subject-specific skills, including digital, presentation, teamwork and writing skills.
• Study skills are for everyone. Teaching study skills for all students reinforces the message that all students can benefit from improving their skills and that study skills training is not remedial support for a few struggling students.

In this workshop we will:

• Explore the challenges of teaching study skills to a diverse group
• Hear from Sussex students about their experiences of developing their skills
• Share examples of resources at Sussex to help students develop their skills (e.g. Skills Hub, student mentoring scheme, Royal Literary Fund Fellows, study skills workshops)
• Invite participants to share successful study skills activities
• Try some short skills teaching activities that participants can adapt and embed in their own teaching.

From bolt-on to embedded: Inclusive approaches to teaching study skills [PPTX 3.72MB]

Biographies

Cath Senker is a professional non-fiction writer and editor, experienced ESOL teacher, and former Royal Literary Fund (RLF) Fellow at the universities of Sussex (2008–10), Chichester (2011–12) and Southampton (2013–14), where she offered one-to-one tutorials to students across all disciplines from pre-university to PhD level. From 2012–13 she acted as an Advisory Fellow, mentoring other RLF Fellows in universities.

Since 2013, Cath has run regular workshops on all aspects of the writing process as part of the Study Skills team at the Careers and Employability Centre, University of Sussex. The participants include undergraduates and postgraduates from all disciplines. She has also co-facilitated workshops tailored to specific subjects.

Clare Hardman is the Study Skills Development Coordinator in the Careers and Employability Centre at the University of Sussex. Her role includes, developing the Skills Hub website,  providing a range of study skills workshops for students, training student mentors and supporting staff at Sussex to embed study skills in their teaching.

Catherine Putman is a second year BA Film Studies student at Sussex. Catherine is a mature student and came to Sussex after completing an Access course at Varndean She works as a Student Mentor for the School of Media, Film and Music.

Helena Vestfjord is studying Pharmacy which is a new degree for Sussex. She is a part of the first cohort of students for the 4 year MPharm degree. Helena is a mature student and a mother of 4 wonderful children. She completed an Access course at Sussex Downs College and after viewing SU at a open day she knew she had found the perfect match.

Hannah Chisnall is a mature student studying in her first year of the BA Social Work degree at Sussex. Hannah has worked for over ten years within the field of early years education, currently working for Brighton and Hove Council within the children centres team as an Early Years Educator alongside her degree.

Workshop 7 - Creating a human-scale university in the context of massification and diversification

“People need to know not just about the young person’s history in care, but about where they can go in life.” (Gazeley and Hinton-Smith, 2017,Evaluation of the HE Champions Coaching Programme)

This session will explore the concept of a human-scale university in the context of national policies that have seen the expansion of the sector alongside a focus on opening up access to those from less advantaged social groups. Inspired by the findings from a number of small scale research projects recently conducted for local widening participation organisations the session will discuss what needs to be done to ensure the academic and social integration of young people coming to the university from the care system and/or first generation backgrounds. The kinds of questions that will be debated include: Where does the support remit of an academic member of staff begin and end and how does this relate to the role of specialist services such as recruitment and student support? What are our assumptions about the preparedness of students and how do these shape our academic expectations and the support for learning that is provided? Are these individual responsibilities or do they require different kinds of thinking about students, services and structures and if so, what kinds of changes might be required, both prior to entry and once here? The session aims to provide a collaborative space in which to draw together an alternative, more human-scale vision of what HE can be, based on an understanding of its transformative potential.

Creating a (more) human-scale university in the context of massification and diversification [PPTX 2.26MB]

Biographies 

Tamsin is a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education. Her main teaching and research interests are around higher education inclusion, marginalisation and inequalities; particularly relating to gender, class and ethnicity. This includes an interest in higher education curricula, classrooms, and wider cultures.

Louise is a Senior Lecturer in Education. Her teaching and research focuses on the intersection of educational with social disadvantage and issues of inclusion and exclusion. This includes a specific focus on widening participation to HE.

Jacqui is a Lecturer in Education and is Course Leader for the BA in Childhood and Youth: Theory and Practice. She also co-ordinates the SEND provision for trainee teachers within the department and supervises research students with interests in special educational needs, autism, disability and inclusion.

Tales @ the conference - Decolonising Higher Education: What does that mean in practice?

In this session TaLES brings together student and staff voices to explore what ‘decolonising’ means in a higher education. We build on dialogues started earlier this year at the Student Union’s Decolonising the Curriculum conference and ask how these can inform our understanding of what ‘inclusive’ teaching can be.

• How do our current practices impact on students’ learning and identity?
• What kind of practical steps can we take in our day to day teaching to bring about a wider change in HE culture?
• How does the decolonising agenda sit with the inclusive approach?
• How do we negotiate the tension between our expertise and decolonising our teaching?

We’ll hear from staff and students at Sussex about the barriers they’ve encountered in their teaching and learning, and the ways in which they have worked to bring about change, from small changes in day-to-day teaching through to facing the larger sector-wide challenges. We’ll then open the floor for group-wide discussion and your chance to share your experience, ask questions and learn from colleagues and students from across the University.

Bio 

Liz Sage is a Teaching Fellow in Teaching, Learning and Assessment in HE and convenor of the Starting to Teach programme at Sussex. Alongside her work with new HE teachers, she also co-ordinates the Teaching and Learning Experience at Sussex series (TaLES) and the Teaching and Learning Toolkit on Study Direct in order to allow new and experienced teachers here at Sussex share good practice, particularly around rethinking traditional educational approaches to bring about meaningful change in HE.

Malcolm James is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at University of Sussex, UK. His research interests are in post-colonial and critical race approaches to youth, urban culture, migration, music and sound. He is author of Urban Multiculture: Youth, Politics and Cultural Transformation published by Palgrave.

Savannah is the Undergraduate education officer at the students union. She studied Philosophy and English at Sussex, and was president of I Too Am Sussex society last year which is a student lead campaign addressing racism on campuses and in the broader structures of society. In her current role she represents undergraduate students to the university on academic matters and is working on the decolonizing education campaign at Sussex. 

Rose has been the Postgraduate Education Officer at the Students' Union for the past two years. She studied her undergraduate degree at Sussex in History and then a masters in Social Development. In her current role she represents postgraduate students to the university on academic matters.

Panel Session 1 - Digital innovation 

This session will include 2 presentations of 20 minutes each with an opportunity for 30 minutes of questions and discussion. 

Presentation 1 - Creating a multi-modal inclusive teaching approach

Dr Claire Smith, Dr Andrew Dilley, Dr Rocardo Governo, Ms Catherine Hennessy, Ms Lucinda Evans

Developing inclusive approaches for teaching should be based on understanding the needs of the learners, which includes understanding the psychometrics of the cohort (learning approaches, personality traits or spatial ability). Within Brighton and Sussex Medical School, the anatomy team have developed a range of learning opportunities that meets the learning background of all learners (visual, kinesthetic, auditory) We also ensure that the range of learning activities involves both the formal and hidden medical curriculum applied both inside and outside the classroom. The final aim for learners is to become safe medical practitioners. However, increasing amounts of clinical and scientific information poses new challenges for students and faculty alike. This has to a degree been addressed with the new core syllabi. Taught sessions include large group lectures, small group tutorials, laboratory sessions, and living anatomy and ultrasound sessions. E-learning technologies include NearPod and Polleverywhere, which are used to increase student engagement in these sessions. Laboratory classes incorporate active dissection and exploration of prosected specimens that help develop both fine and gross motor skills. IPads are used to supplement the learning experience with QR codes guiding students to background information about relevant pathological specimens. Before or after taught sessions, students can access a range of e-learning resources including ‘showmes’, vodcasts and podcasts. BSMS anatomy has a twitter account and uses hashtags to post short quizzes and recommended resources to students. 3D prints of anatomical structures are produced from CT imaging data, which are used by students to continue learning three-dimensionally in their own time. Student evaluation and assessment confirms that this multi-modal approach creates a learning environment that is fully inclusive.

Presentation 2 - Use of digital technologies in inclusive learning: A snapshot of students’ views and experiences

Dr Geeta Hitch, Professor Buge Apampa

Pharmacy faculty utilise a range of digital technologies to promote social and inclusive learning. These include Articulate, Poll Everywhere, Padlet, Lecture Capture, YouTube videos, Values Exchange and iPads. The views and experiences of 6 diverse students regarding their ease of use of the technologies were explored. Whilst most students agreed that they found it easy to look up information in the university’s online library, access information from online fora and easily engage with social media like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, mature students were unsure.

Articulate - Students found the articulate packages extremely interactive, “packed with information” and engaging; one student with a learning disability would have liked less information.

Padlet - A majority felt Padlet did not add any value to their learning.

Poll Everywhere - Students described Poll Everywhere as being highly inclusive and an engaging approach to identifying gaps in their knowledge. An international student, who noted that questions were not usually made available afterwards, expressed a preference for printed resources finding them easier to access than digital resources.

Lecture capture - Lecture capture enabled students to revisit learning material after lectures and was recognised as an excellent revision resource. However, where the class size was large, its availability meant they did not attend lectures. A clear preference for a small class size and use of videos was expressed.

iPads - The use ofiIPads during workshops was deemed extremely useful, allowing instant access to information on the Internet.

Values Exchange - Students found this to be complicated as its portfolio tool was problematic. A student with a learning disability found difficulty navigating this website and another student felt “it was a waste of time”.

This snapshot of student views and experiences focuses upon the diverse experiences of our students in engaging with digital technologies. In summary, technologies that are easy to use and visually interactive appear to promote inclusive learning.

Use of digital technologies in inclusive learning: A snapshot of students' views and expereiences [PPTX 3.89MB]

Biographies 

Dr Claire Smith is Head of Anatomy at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. She is the Research Lead for the Department of Medical Education and Deputy Phase 1 Director for the MBBS programme. Claire’s research is in understanding the anatomy learning experience, especially in spatial ability and 3D printing. Claire holds international roles in education including Chair of the Education group for the Anatomical Society, member of the Court of Examiners Royal College of Surgeons, Secretary General European Federation of Experimental Morphologist and is a member of the Trans European Research in Anatomy Pedagogy Group.  Claire has received several teaching awards including the University of Sussex Teaching Excellence Award 2016 and has been awarded Educator Innovator 2017 by the Association for the Study of Medical Education.

Dr Andrew Dilley is Deputy Head of Anatomy at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. He is the module leader for Immunology and Musculoskeletal for the MBBS programme. His seminal work leads the field in understanding pain research. Andrew supervises PhD and MSc laboratory projects in the field of pain. Andrew has been awarded several teaching awards including the University of Sussex Teaching Excellence Award 2016 and BSMS Top Teacher Awards. Andrew has been instrumental in implementing ultrasound into the MBBS curriculum.

Dr Ricardo Governo is a Lecturer at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. He is the Deputy Director of Student Support. He is the module leader for the Gastrointestinal system module and is the theme lead for the Endocrinology and Reproductive module. Ricardo’s research background is in neurology. Ricardo supervises Individual Research Project students. Ricardo has been awarded several teaching awards including the University of Sussex Teaching Excellence Award 2016 and BSMS Top Teacher Awards.

Ms Catherine Hennessy is a Teaching Fellow at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. She is the theme lead for the Heart, Lungs and Blood module. She teaches across the broad areas of anatomy including MSc to radiologists. Catherine is also a PhD student at BSMS, her PhD is investigating the use of social media in medical education. Catherine has been awarded a University of Brighton Teaching Excellence Award 2016.

Ms Lucinda Evans is the anatomy Technician at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. She is responsible for the ‘behind the scenes’ preparation for teaching. She contributes to the preparation of donor cadavers, the printing of 3D models, the material on the iPad. Lucinda has been instrumental in the production of QR codes and improving the iPad interfaces for students. 

Dr Geeta Hitch MRPharmS is lecturer in pharmacy at University of Sussex and has a keen interest in use of digital technologies in pharmacy education. Geeta graduated with a PhD in Medical Microbiology and a Masters Degree in Pharmacy, both from UCL, London where she was also the Maplethorpe Teaching and Research Fellow. Geeta is passionate about how students learn and has previously presented on various areas of learning and teaching in pharmacy education at both national and international conferences.

Professor Buge Apampa MRPharmS is the Director of Pharmacy and Director of Teaching & Learning in the School of Life Sciences. She is a registered pharmacist with over 30 years of combined academic, primary care and community/hospital pharmacy experience. In 2012, she was awarded the University of Kent’s Sciences Faculty Teaching Prize; and in 2017, her Sussex Pharmacy team won a teaching excellence award for Outstanding or Innovative Undergraduate Teaching.

Buge, the first professor to be appointed through the teaching and scholarship route at the University of Sussex is a passionate academic. Buge believes that learning is at the heart of effective teaching, and teaching without learning is of ‘no use’. This starts with the design and delivery of curricula that are optimised for Higher Education. Technology plays a key role in the support of in-class discussions, collaborative problem solving, and other inquiry-based activities. This helps to inspire in our students, a love for learning, makes learning fun, and ultimately facilitates meaningful and inclusive learning!

Panel Session 2 - Flipped learning 

This session will include 2 presentations of 20 minutes each with an opportunity for 30 minutes of questions and discussion. 

Presentation 1 - Four seasons of flipped learning 

Dr Lorraine Smith 

The biosciences foundation year cohort are diverse both in terms of their prior academic exposure to biology and in terms of their learning needs, so teaching and learning strategies adopted must reflect this. As well as ensuring students are academically able in both biology and chemistry this course must also prepare students for HE study, including the ability to engage in independent study. For these reasons, a four-way flipped approach was trialled this year to support learners with many different needs, in a number of different ways. These included:

a) journal papers to pre-read before workshops;
b) availability of lecture notes prior to lectures;
c) basic reading handbook & pre-seminar slides for Study Skills;
d) online study module for IT.

Students engaged with and rated the usefulness of these resources very differently. This talk will explore the specific outcomes and insights gained from each flipped method trial from the point of view of the lecturer and the student.

Four Seasons of Flipped Learning [PPTX 783.40KB]

Presentation 2 - From “Paddling” to swimming- a new approach to flipped learning in seminars

Dr Wendy Garnham

Flipped learning has been well documented as enhancing student learning outcomes (O’Flaherty and Phillips, 2015) and is increasingly being explored as a means of enhancing inclusivity (Gilmartin and Luckett, 2015). This presentation will report the results of a new “flipped” approach to seminar participation that has been trialled with students studying on the Foundation Year Programme in Psychology.

In an effort to improve engagement by all students, not just the more confident ones, a flipped learning approach has been implemented in conjunction with Technology Enhanced Learning. Each seminar group has their own Padlet wall which they take ownership of. Each week students are given a core paper to read which can form the basis of their seminar task.

During the seminar, students work in small groups of three to meet the 48 hour challenge. This requires them to produce a Padlet post of their choosing within 48 hours of the seminar beginning. Students are encouraged to engage with the latest in educational technology and to research more widely from the core paper to other research in the area. By using a range of apps, all students can actively contribute using a medium that they feel comfortable with, thereby promoting inclusivity.
Following the seminar, each individual student is expected to re-visit the Padlet wall and post a discussion comment on at least one of the new posts. By developing online discussion, this removes much of the anxiety experienced by many students about having to speak up in front of the whole group and ensures that discussion can continue beyond the boundaries of the allocated seminar time.

The presentation will be given by both myself and some of the Foundation Year students from the seminar groups and will explain both the successes and the potential pitfalls of our new seminar structure.

From "paddling" to swimming: a new approach to flipped learning in seminars [PPTX 9.37MB]

Panel Session 3 - Student-centred learning 

This session will include 2 presentations of 20 minutes each with an opportunity for 30 minutes of questions and discussion.

Presentation 1 – The role of peer review in communities of practice

Dr Wendy Maples 

Understanding peer review, and assessment more generally, as a dialectic involving critical thinking and the application of evaluative criteria (whether extrapolated from QAA benchmarks, or co-constructed) reflects a student-centred approach to teaching and learning. It also accords with a form of inclusivity practice by positioning students as members of our own disciplines and academic cultures who are engaged in developing themselves and each other from novice to expert in their field and from novice to expert learner.

The presentation will consider the role of peer review in inclusivity practice, particularly in engendering learning in and through disciplinary and learning communities. It will outline examples – successful and less successful – of implementing peer review in an HE context.

The role of peer review in communities of practice [PPTX 4.18MB]

Presentation 2 - Learning from Lived Experiences: Students and service users as co-producers of knowledge

Dr Denise Turner along with students and members of the service user/carer network

This collective presentation will address inclusivity by showcasing outputs from two successful collaborations between first year MA and BA social work students, together with members of the service user/carer network. Inclusivity will be demonstrated throughout the presentation, firstly through the module design and delivery which directly involved service users and carers and secondly through the group assessments. These assessments were delivered via an online platform in which student’s technological skills and competencies were fully enabled, thereby creating an environment of mutual learning between academics and students, whilst further embedding inclusivity.

Within the presentation members of the service user and carer network will describe the collaborative design and delivery process used in the modules and students will explain how this enhanced their learning, as well as showcasing their vibrant online assessment work.

Service user involvement has been mandatory in social work education since 2002 (Warren, 2007) but often remains at the margins, in ways which unwittingly maintain the power relationships seen in social work practice. Academics may be loathe to share the design and delivery of student learning (Braye, 2000) whilst similarly ignoring the ‘emotional dimension ‘(Munro, 2011) and thereby failing to prepare social work students for complex practice challenges (Green and Wilks, 2009). In parallel with this, the rapid growth of technology creates a different threat to traditional academic expertise, producing a potential reluctance to engage with new technologies in the face of greater student proficiency (Wheeler, 2015). In addition to the discussion of service user involvement, this presentation will demonstrate how the use of technology within the group assessment also created an opportunity to move outside of traditional power relationships and learning constraints, enabling students to become co-producers of knowledge in ways which embed inclusivity at the heart of the curriculum (Wheeler, 2015).  

Learning from lived experience: students and service users as co-producers of knowledge [PPTX 5.20MB]

Biographies 

Wendy Maples is a Senior Fellow of the HEA (2014) and was a Staff Tutor with the Open University for 15 years. In that role, in addition to creating learning and teaching materials (text, A-V, interactive), Dr Maples provided academic staff development for Associate Lecturers. She produced an online MA-level professional development course, ‘e-LATE’ (e-Learning and Teaching Enhancements), which enabled academics to be students and to explore the theory and practice of online learning. e-LATE’s assessment focused on a fully embedded process of peer review. Wendy is a recipient of an OU Teaching Award (2015), and holds an MA in Online and Distance Education (2016). Her most recent publication is the popular and highly-regarded Good Essay Writing (Redman and Maples, 2017, Sage). Wendy joined the Sussex Centre for Language Studies as an ‘Academic Development’ (Foundation course) Tutor in September 2016.

Dr Denise Turner is a Lecturer in the Department of Social Work at the University of Sussex. She is the recipient of numerous teaching Awards, including a University Excellence in Teaching Awards, 2015 and 2016; a University Teaching Innovation Award and a Technology Enhanced Learning Award, 2016. Her teaching is characterised by innovation, creativity and co-production with service users and students.

Jill Scholl: Service User and Carer Coordinator and Associate Tutor,Department of Social Work.

Debs Pawley: I have been an AT and member of the Service User & Carers group at the university since 2012 I count it a privilege to be able to share something of my experience of the Social Work system, having been brought up in foster care from the age of 8 to 18. I sincerely hope what I have to say resonates with those embarking on this tough, demanding; & ultimately rewarding career.

Stanford Manzini: Stanford Manzini is the father and carer of his 33 year old autistic son and a member of the US service user and carer network . He has participated widely in all aspects of teaching and assessment and will speak about his involvement with the Human Growth and Development module in 2016.

Hannah Chisnall: Hannah Chisnall is a first year BA Social Work student, alongside working in a Children Centre Team in Brighton and Hove City Council as an Early Years Educator.

Alice Marjot: is a first year BA social work student with a background working in residential care with teenage boys and a huge interest in end of life care.
Darren Hoole: is a first year BA Social Work student, also working for East Sussex Adult Social Care. The online tool he will demonstrate was used in the Human Growth and Development module for an assessed group presentation. 

Lorna Miller Cooper: I am an first year MA with a background in supporting service users and their families. I have a particular interest in understanding children's experiences and promoting children's rights. I am currently on my first placement with East Sussex County Council, Duty and Assessment Team.

Maria Redoles Rios: MA in Social Work-First Year Student. Currently at placement in Brighton and Hove, Adults Assessment Team.

Olivia Benge: Olivia is an MA1 social work student and currently Student Rep for the Dept.