Really Useful Stuff on Teaching, Learning Etc. Autumn 2011

RUSTLE

Enhancing learning through meditation.

Sussex Teaching Awards.

AHEA successes.

S3 video shortlisted for award.

Comparing Capture.

New events for 2011-12.

Where can students get help with writing?

Group work involving diverse student groups.

Cath Holmström (Social Work) has been rewarded for her excellent teaching with a prestigious National Teaching Fel-lowship (NTF). Only 55 of the Higher Education Academy awards are made each year and competition is fierce, so Cath was thrilled to win and is looking for-ward to making the most of the contacts and opportunities that accompany the £10,000 award.

Talking to Cath it quickly becomes clear that she is passionate about her students and helping them to get the most from their university experience so that they can be-come good social workers, which is why her main focus has been on the transition to professional programmes, admissions and standards. As she says „the first year is fundamental and sets the scene for eve-rything else. If you don‟t get that first year right it is going to be so difficult throughout the degree‟. Cath and her colleagues use this time „to get group dynamics as healthy as we can, to get students learning from each other in an open way and to set the professional context for them‟.

There is concern nationally about stan-dards of entrants and of students leaving social work programmes and Cath has worked at a national level advising and writing documents for the Social Work Reform Board which aims to „develop a system in which there are sufficient high quality social workers to help children, young people and adults, in which social workers are well supported and in which the public feels confident‟.

That professional context is crucial throughout the degree and is one reason that there is such an emphasis on the process of learning in Social Work. Cath explains that „what

we do is quite complex, in addition to the academic content there is a huge personal and professional part to the de-gree‟. Social work students need to develop professional skills during their time at university so tutors „have to think

very hard about how we are teaching and students are learning‟. For exam-ple, group work is used a lot to foster communication and team-working skills and more time is spent with students looking at the impact of personal and professional issues than will be the case in many other disciplines. It is not surprising then, that Cath tends to focus her research energy on pedagogic re-search, focusing on admissions, selec-tion and the experiences of younger students on qualifying social work pro-grammes.

Cath now joins a network of NTFs within the university, in her discipline and across the country. In October, the awards dinner will include an opportu-nity to meet the other new Fellows and they will all then join the Association of National Teaching Fellows to share and discuss ideas across institutions and across and within disciplines. But Cath does not have to wait until October to get together with other NTFs as there

are already 5 others at Sussex including 2 in the School of Education and Social Work, Duncan Mackrill (Education) and Imogen Taylor (Social Work). They are already think-ing about how they can share ideas and good practice within their School but Cath is also looking forward to being able to do that on a national scale: „It is striking how di-verse the group of new Fellows is. There is a fantastic

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National teaching honour for Sussex lecturer.

Social media for teaching and learning.

Cutting out the ‘cut and paste’.

Learning in large groups.

Vitae conference report.

An inclusive approach to teaching.

Top teaching tips.

TLD Events for the Autumn term.

Also in this issue...

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Have you ever solved a problem while day-dreaming or had good ideas just as you were falling asleep? Despite these experiences it is still generally held that learning is an activ-ity demanding a high degree of consciousness, but Diane Simpson-Little (Engineering and Design) believes that it is possible to use these „not fully conscious‟ states to en-hance learning.

Diane has introduced guided meditation and creative visu-alization into workshops for product designers and engi-neering students as a complement or aid in the creative process because although „it is often thought that the es-sence of creativity requires us to be awake, alert and pre-sent to deliberate on a particular problem or theory, intelli-gent thought does not always need our conscious atten-tion‟.

Last year she presented a paper, co-written with Christopher Long (Engineering and Design), to the International Conference on Engi-neering and Product Design Edu-cation in which she shared exam-ples of visualization work with Sus-sex students. Diane first used the techniques with first year product design students, in the InQbate Creativity Zone which she found to be „a great space … such a blank canvas it automatically settles and clears the mind‟. The students were working on a project to de-sign a light for a particular de-signer and Diane wanted them „to have a real sense of who they were designing for, where they were designing for and what they were going to be designing‟. So after they had done some initial research into their chosen designer, other lights on the market, materials etc., Diane introduced the students to the idea of a visualization. She took care to explain the relevance of the activity and allay any concerns that this was going to involve „sitting cross-legged on the floor and chanting om‟, then „relaxed them down into a calm state of mind and openness‟ before start-ing the visualization. Students were asked to imagine them-selves in the designer‟s home and identify where the light they were designing would be and what sort of light it would produce. This was helpful because as Diane points out „product design is about engaging all of the senses, it is not just about how objects look, but about how objects feel, sound, even smell‟.

Design students are not the only ones to benefit from visu-alization, as Diane proved when she worked with Chris‟s students who were engineers taking a „hard-core, very mathematical course on fluid mechanics and heat transfer‟.

Diane and Chris wrote a „script‟ together and she produced a soundtrack to further immerse the students in the visuali-zation. This time the scenario was about getting up, making tea and walking into Brighton, noticing along the way a number of fluid dynamic phenomena such as water going down a plughole, stirring tea, leaves in a vortex and sea-gulls bobbing up and down. At the end of these visualiza-tions Diane gradually brings the students back to „consciousness‟ and asks them not to talk, but to use paper and crayons to draw their emotional response to the experi-ence. This produces some really good interpretations, which the group then look at and discuss, sometimes de-veloping things further by writing words around the images. Despite fears that the engineers might be cynical and not want to participate in this unconventional activity the feed-back was good and the students really liked it. The effect is

not always immediate, though, which makes it difficult to evaluate this sort innovation, but the follow-ing student comments give an idea of the benefits:

“I haven‟t been able to stir my tea in the morning or look at the leaves blowing in the wind without thinking of vortex flows and swirl and pressure!”

“This technique is great I didn‟t once get stuck for ideas, I couldn‟t get them out quick enough”

“The visualization really helped my ideas to flow freely avoiding the usual creative block that I some-times get at the beginning of a project”.

Some students find it very difficult to visualize, but Diane believes that as long as they have stopped doing other things and are „in the now‟ they will get something from the experience because „it allows everything to filter and settle‟. Usually, students don‟t have time to digest the information they are receiving because „we all go at 100 mph these days and are constantly bombarded by external stimuli as well as our own internal chatter that goes on inside our heads. In the past, a bus or train journey would be an op-portunity to stop and gaze out of the window, but now stu-dents are using headsets and mobile phones which are fantastic, but a hindrance. Stopping for a time lets all the information learnt during the day filter through‟.

Diane is keen to take this work further and would welcome the opportunity to work with students from other disciplines, so if you are interested in using visualization as a learning technique on your course please get in touch (contact de-tails below).

Imagine …

enhancing learning through meditation and visualization.

Contact and Web Links „Find the gap – developing abilities in space consciousness for enhanced learning‟ by Diane Simpson-Little and Christopher Long: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/documents/epde10-full-paper213.doc InQbate Creativity Zone: www.sussex.ac.uk/cetl/1-2.html Diane Simpson-Little: d.simpson-little@sussex.ac.uk

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At the recent Teaching and Learning confer-ence Clare Mackie, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Teaching and Learning presented certifi-cates to winners of the 2011 Sussex Teaching Awards.

This year‟s winners come from across campus with awards for teaching excellence in the „established staff‟ and „early career‟ categories and for teams. Winners were put forward by their Schools after nomination by students and/or colleagues and there were some won-derful testimonials to lecturers, tutors and ad-visors from appreciative students.

range of people you can learn from and things we can share‟.

Hopefully, the network of Fellows in her discipline can go some way to fill the gap left by the closure of the Subject Centres, which Cath says is a „huge loss… the Social Work and Social Policy subject centre was a major network for us. We will miss that as a national network for Social Work teaching. They provided funding for research and dissemi-nation and co-hosted conferences. They had fantastic re-sources which were always up-to-date, so for new lecturers or faculty looking to innovate they were incredibly useful‟.

On an individual level, being awarded the Fellowship has given Cath a huge confidence boost because as she says: „Teaching is really important but in terms of performance criteria it is usually research which is prioritised. For those of us who have spent our time with students this award has been a great validation‟. As well as being good for her pro-fessionally, Cath feels that it has also been good for the students who were a big part of her nomination. She ex-

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Sussex awards recognise teaching excellence.

Winners really value this praise from their students and the applause from their peers at the conference was a welcome re-affirmation of their excellent work.

The full list of winners is here and in the com-ing months RUSTLE will be catching up with some of them to ask them about their teach-ing practice and philosophy. You can read the result of the first of these interviews, with Diane Simpson-Little (Engineering & Design) on page 2.

Congratulations and thanks to the Sussex Teaching Award winners for 2011: Business, Management and Economics: Barry Reilly, Veronica Wong and the Entrepreneurship Team of Piera Morlacchi, Sally Atkinson, Victoria Blessing, Shova Thapa and David Storey. Brighton and Sussex Medical School: Bethany Davies and Inam Haq. Careers and Employability Centre: Andy Howard. Education and Social Work: Karen Gladwin, Barbara Crossouard and the D.Ed. and D.SW Team: Pat Drake and Elaine Sharland. Engineering & Design: Diane Simpson-Little. Global Studies: Benjamin Selwyn and Anna Stavrianakis. History, Art History and Philosophy: Alice Correia. Informatics: Blay Whitby. Law, Politics and Sociology: Mary Lee and the Politics faculty team, led by Paul Taggart. Library: the Learning and Teaching Support Team of Emma Walton, Chloe Barnes and Julie Applin. Life Sciences: Simon Morley. Mathematical and Physical Sciences: Kerstin Hesse and Lesley Onuora. Media, Film and Music: Paul McConnell and Dolores Tierney. Psychology: Richard de Visser.

Web Links: Sussex Teaching Awards: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/awards/sta Awards and Recognition (local & national): www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/awards

plains that „Social Work students are trained to be articu-late, to express themselves and to speak up on behalf of others – so they do that with us in quite a clear way‟ and there is always plenty of feedback on ways to improve things, but this award has given students the opportunity to comment, congratulate, and say that overall the course has been a good experience for them.

So what now for Cath? She says that winning the award „feels like that time at school when you got an A+ … and now you have to keep up the standard‟. The pressure to perform will not faze Cath, though, as she is quite clear that excellent teaching is not about one-off performances in lectures but in the totality of the student learning experience from application to profession and that is where her heart is. The money which comes with the Fellowship will allow her to go to conferences and take part in professional de-velopment activities that she would otherwise not be able to justify so we can expect even better things from her in the future.

You can read some of Cath‟s teaching tips on pages 6-7.

Web Links: National Teaching Fellowship Scheme: www.heacademy.ac.uk/ntfs Social Work Reform Board: www.education.gov.uk/swrb/

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demic career might take them this nationally recognised status will be a valuable addition to their CV.

If you are interested in gaining HEA recognition at associ-ate or fellowship level there are courses and pathways run by the Teaching and Learning Development Unit to help you (see links).

Congratulations to the following new AHEAs:

The Spring and Summer terms saw another two groups of Associate Tutors successfully complete the voluntary AHEA Pathway and achieve recognition by the Higher Edu-cation Academy. These twenty-five tutors have shown that their teaching practice meets the UK Professional Stan-dards at level 1 and demonstrated their commitment to their ongoing professional development. They can now add AHEA after their name if they wish and wherever their aca-

Gabriel Martin Thomas McClelland Robert Oakes Rebecca Raynor Ariadna Ripoll Servent Chalunthi Samaratunga Stijn van Kessel Zana Vathi Dagmara Weckowska Arthur Willemse Rachel Wood Ting-Cheng Yang

Associate Tutors follow the Sussex pathway to HEA recognition.

Web Links: Associate of the HEA pathway: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/events/at/ahea Fellowship of the HEA pathway: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/awards/hea/fhea HEA Recognition: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/awards/hea

Maria Abranches Jill Ahrens Eleni-Marina Ashikali Mirela Barbu Sophie Bisset Amy Caswell Helen Dancer Deniz Duru Jane Eade Joanna Freer Steve Gray Frances Hubbard Sarah Laurence

S3 video shortlisted for award

A short video on „How to Give a Good Presentation‟ created for the Study Success at Sussex (S3) website has been short-listed for the ALT-Epigeum Award for Most Effective Use of Video. This award celebrates and rewards people using video to enhance learning.

Clare Hardman (TLDU) and Phil Watten (Informatics) developed the video with first-year students who contributed to the design of the content, filming, editing and production. The finished video has been added to the wealth of resources on the S3 website where it provides an accessible and engaging guide to presenting. Clare explains that: „Students are often anxious about giving presentations and keen for advice on improving their skills. We decided to use video to help teach presentation skills as it enabled us to show good and bad examples and practically illustrate to students what a good presentation should look like. The video is designed as a series of clips incorporating a game show to add hu-mour and help students remember the key messages‟.

The video is also used as part of some first-year courses to help students prepare for assessed presentations and to teach second year Video Production Techniques, including stop motion, set design and music development. On the S3 website it has proved a very popular resource and feed-back suggests that students like the informal and amusing approach to what could have been a rather dry, technical topic. So far the video has been viewed over 2500 times, but if you haven‟t seen it yet why not take a look?

Web Links: How to give a good presentation video: www.sussex.ac.uk/s3/?id=63 Study Success at Sussex website: www.sussex.ac.uk/s3 ALT-Epigeum Awards: www.alt.ac.uk/get-involved/awards

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have been doing in the studio is very different from using Echo 360: „it is the difference between making a television programme and recording a live performance – one is de-signed for television, the other is designed for a live-only audience and there is a different way of interacting with it. This is not capturing a live lecture, it is producing a lecture for online consumption‟. It is the impact that these differ-

ences may have on student engage-ment that Paul will explore during the year.

By looking at the „hit rate‟ for the different recordings and collecting qualitative data from students Paul hopes to determine whether students are more interested by one format. He will also be looking at attendance rates in lectures as, despite research evidence and his own experience that students do still turn up to re-corded lectures, this remains an area of concern for many academics. By

choosing two different year groups, Paul also hopes to „get a picture of any differences between first and final year students‟ approach to captured lectures‟.

This is the second year of the Sussex Teaching Fellow-ships and Paul is „delighted‟ to be a recipient. The fellow-ship has, he says, „come at the right time … our systems are working in a reliable way and Echo 360 is a bit more mature. We‟ve just submitted our second paper in this area so we are starting to establish a research base in this field and hopefully this will lead to a good journal publication‟.

Last year, RUSTLE reported on the Sussex Teaching Award for Technology-Enhanced Learning made to Paul Newbury and Phil Watten in Informatics. The award was in recognition of their work using a broadcast studio and specially developed production techniques to create televi-sion-quality video recordings of lectures and other learning materials for their media technology students. Now Paul has been awarded a prestigious University Teaching Fellowship and will use the £5000 award to explore the ways in which students engage with 'captured' lectures and look at engagement levels for a range of different types of recorded lecture.

As Paul says, „it is already clear that students like captured lectures and make use of them, but the point of the fellowship is to do a comparative study‟. He will focus on two courses that he is teaching on similar topics, one first year course of 110 students and one third year course with 70-80 students. By capturing lectures in four different formats he will be able to compare the ways in which students engage with them. The formats to be used are: „enhanced podcasts‟ which combine slides with an audio track; Echo 360 which is the system installed in the majority of lecture theatres; the studio recordings Paul has been using and a portable recording system using a single HD camera as used for the Sussex Lectures. The funding will enable Paul to employ a postgraduate student to help with recording using the portable system.

There are significant differences in the various „capture‟ methods, indeed as Phil explained last year, what they

Comparing Capture - what is best for students?

Web Links RUSTLE Summer 2010 Teaching Awards Special: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/resources/rustle Echo 360 web page: www.sussex.ac.uk/elearning/audioandvideo/lecture_capture Sussex Lectures: www.sussex.ac.uk/newsandevents/sussexlectures Review of research on podcasting: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/documents/review-of-podcasting-research

New events for 2011-12 The programme of Teaching and Learning De-velopment Events for this academic year was published in August and the sessions planned for the Autumn term are listed on page 12. Most of the old favourites are running again, covering topics under the general themes of Inclusive Teaching and Internationalisation; Curriculum Design and Development; Assessment and Feedback; Doctoral Student Supervision; Innova-tion with Learning Technologies; and Enhance-ment and Professional Development.

Following requests from colleagues there are a few new sessions this year. The first is an „An overview of support for students at Sussex‟ on 2nd November, which will provide a quick and efficient

overview for tutors enabling them to effectively support and guide students.

A week later, on 9th November the „Introduction to social media‟ workshop will use examples from Sussex to offer social media novices an introduction to using Twitter, Facebook and blogs for teaching and learning.

The „Making the most of your research in teach-ing‟ seminar on 30th November will use case studies to explore how a tutor‟s research can be used in undergraduate teaching beyond optional courses and supervision of project students.

For details of these, and all TLD Events see the links be-low.

Web Links An overview of support for students at Sussex: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/events/tldevents/incl#supp Introduction to social media: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/events/tldevents/innlt#socmed Making the most of your research in teaching: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/events/tldevents/enh#res Full programme of TLD Events 2011-12: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/events/tldevents

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Hone your negotiation skills and print off your room booking confirmations for those inevitable times when

someone else is in your teaching space.

Arrive in plenty of time, because al-though job descriptions rarely make mention of furniture removals, I have found that at least 10 minutes is often needed in the busier seminar rooms to move things around to their 'proper' posi-tion or to a 'custom made' position prior to the start of the session.

Try to embed all the standard recom-mended adjustments for disabled stu-dents into your teaching and pedagogic practice. This is good for ALL students but also makes your task easier.

For general information, advice and how-to guides de-signed for Sussex students and with a focus on the transi-tion to university, the Study Success at Sussex (S3) web-site is a great starting point. It has accessible resources covering such topics as critical thinking; referencing; plan-ning, drafting and proofreading; planning time and dealing with distractions; further reading and using the Internet for research; and a Guide to Punctuation.

An excellent complement to the online resources provided by S3 is the sup-port offered by the writers-in-residence funded by the Royal Liter-ary Fund (RLF) Writing Fellowship Programme. Siân Rees and Jackie Wills will be returning for a second year to offer one-to-one tutorials for students to help them develop their writing skills in a particular piece of work.

For international students who might be having difficulties with the lan-guage or studying in the UK, the Eng-lish Language and Study Skills Sup-port offered by the Sussex Centre for Language Studies (SCLS) is a good place to look for help. The service is used predominantly by postgraduate students, but undergraduate students are also welcome. Tutorials, writing workshops and drop-in sessions focus on academic and English language skills and include subjects such as note-taking, summarizing and paraphrasing, structuring an essay, understanding and writing essay titles, paragraphing, referencing and writing a bibliography, introductions and conclusions and advanced

These tips come from Cath Holmström (see page 1) and range from the simple and practical to the more pedagogic and philosophical, so whether you are just starting to teach or have more experi-ence there is likely to be something here for you.

Make sure you carry white board pens (not for the interactive boards!) at all times - these tend to 'walk' from teaching rooms.

Have a look at any less familiar rooms ahead of the teaching session (things like automatic window opening can take a while to control and can intrude on teaching time).

language skills. Tutorials and workshops can be booked online and booking slots are open a week in advance, but workshops which run in weeks 3 to 7 each term can be booked further in advance.

If a student wants help on writing skills, but does not have a particular piece of work in hand the Royal Literary Fund website offers „Writing Guides‟ on essays and dissertations.

There is also a Study Skills Pack for students and tutors which you might find useful.

Most students will find that S3, the RLF website or SCLS will provide the support they need to improve their academic writing, but for those want-ing to sit down and talk through the details of a particular piece of written work with a professional wordsmith the „Better Writing with the RLF‟ Study Direct site is the place to go to make an appointment with Siân or Jackie.

If you are referring a student to the RLF Fellows or the SCLS please remember that these services are

always in great demand so it is not usually possible to get a tutorial at short notice. Students can help by planning ahead if they are seeking help with assessed work that has a deadline, and making sure that they attend any booked sessions or cancel in good time so that tutorial slots can be offered to others.

Where can students get help with writing?

Web Links: Sussex Royal Literary Fund Fellows: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/studentskills/rlf Better Writing with the RLF: https://studydirect.sussex.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=8705 Study Success at Sussex (S3): www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/studentskills/s3 SCLS Academic Development: www.sussex.ac.uk/languages/english/acadev

Top Teaching Tips

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If teaching in a large seminar room, change your teach-ing position from time to time - move around and invest in a remote PowerPoint device so you can move slides on whilst moving around. This prevents students from feeling able to drift off at the back of the room!

Model reflective practice. Students may like certainty and may assume staff teaching them know everything(!) and how to best deliver it, but soon appreciate the fact we can return to them with thoughts following the last session or something similar.

Plan some team teaching for some sessions each year. Use these as well as more formal peer observation to ob-

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Earlier this year the University was pleased to welcome back Jude Carroll from the Teaching International Stu-dents project. Jude gave a keynote presentation at the 2010 Sussex Teaching and Learning Conference on Inter-nationalisation, and on this visit led a workshop on the par-ticular issue of group work. During the session, colleagues looked at the challenges and opportunities that arise when introducing group work to diverse student groups and Jude sought to untangle some of the issues involved in „putting diversity into … group work which is inherently complicated anyway‟.

Out of class group work is particularly valuable for diverse groups as it provides „an opportunity for authentic, valued integration and inclusion‟ but that outcome is not inevitable - it takes planning by the tutor and effort by the students. One of the keys to successful group work is getting stu-dents to understand why group work is worth the effort that they need to put into it, which can be about explaining the „real world‟ benefits of this type of learning and/or assess-ing group work so that it counts towards their degree.

If students are to get the most from group work the tasks need to be authentically collaborative. Jude argues that any task that could be done as well alone should not be a group task. For example, writing a report is often better done alone, whereas compiling a catalogue is a more authenti-cally collaborative job and likely to be better done by a group. If group-work tasks can come close to the types of work undertaken by teams in the work-place so much the better, but this can be harder to manage in some disci-plines.

Whatever the task, much of the success or failure of group work can be traced back to the group formation stages and

Group work involving diverse student groups.

time invested in helping students to find common ground at the start can reap great rewards. It is helpful to make clear, early on, what is expected and to provide early opportuni-ties for group-members to interact and get to know each other. Setting ground rules is also important and Jude sug-gested using a „negative brainstorm‟ activity where students are asked to share, not how they hope the group will func-tion but „what would really screw it up for me‟. With the pos-sible pitfalls identified from the start, it becomes easier for the group to navigate around them.

If you would like to find out more about using group work

with international students there is more information on the

TIS website which also includes ideas and resources on all

aspects of the international student lifecycle from pre-arrival

to employability (see links below).

Web Links Teaching International Students project: www.heacademy.ac.uk/teaching-international-students International Student Lifecycle resources: www.heacademy.ac.uk/international-student-lifecycle TIS group work page: www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/internationalisation/ISL_Group_Work TLDU Internationalisation web pages: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/ideas/internationalisation Sussex Teaching & Learning Conference 2010: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/events/conf/2010

tain feedback on your own teaching and also observe your colleagues‟ styles.

Bored with marking the same assessment tasks time and time again? Change it! Make sure of course that the assessment task and mode fits the learning outcomes and nature of the course, but make it current, creative and en-joyable for the students and the marking becomes much more interesting

Crucially, enjoy it!! Students know when we enjoy teach-ing and they often comment that even though they do not feel drawn to the topic initially, they cannot help but be pulled in by a passionate lecturer!

Web Links Collected Teaching Tips from RUSTLE: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/resources/rustle/tips Designing Assessment: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/ideas/assessment/desass Reflective Practice: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/ideas/profdev/refl Using peer observation to enhance teaching (Leeds Met): http://tinyurl.com/65wf5u7 Inclusive Teaching: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/ideas/methods/incl Room bookings and timetabling: www.sussex.ac.uk/sas/1-6-9.html

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Social media are becoming part of everyday life and in-creasingly people are seeing the potential of things like Twitter, Facebook and blogs to develop learning communi-ties. Some colleagues at Sussex have been using social media to address challenges and provide opportunities for learning so RUSTLE asked two of them, Fabrizio Salvatore (Physics) and Kate O’Riordan (Media Studies), to share their experiences.

Fab teaches a course for students from the Universities of Sussex and Surrey which involves giving lectures by video-conferencing. Beyond the lectures, Fab was concerned with how he could form a community from two classes separated by distance. He considered using Twitter as a way of maintaining communication with and between the students throughout the course. When he suggested using Twitter, however, the students expressed a preference for Facebook as that was what they were used to using. This is an important point to consider when introducing social media. If there is a technology that stu-dents are already familiar and comfortable with that is likely to get better use than something new, and at the moment it seems that Twitter is less popular with younger people.

There used to be concerns about separating the public from the private when using Facebook with students, but it is easy to set up „community pages‟ that avoid that issue. After each lecture Fab posted a message asking if there were any questions that had not been answered in the lecture and students were able to post their questions and comments. They engaged well, starting conversa-tions between themselves as well as asking questions and Fab was able to post general messages about the course and join in threads to clarify points as necessary.

As Fab points out, in teaching „there is no recipe that works for everything, but this seemed to work … it is another tool to be used when appropriate‟.

In Media Studies Kate O’Riordan and Sharif Mowlabocus have been using Study Direct (SyD) forums and blogs to make visible the kind of work students are doing such as taking notes, discussing ideas, meeting with study groups and being in seminars. As Kate explained, „students are doing all those things – but making it visible to each other develops a sense of a learning culture across the peer group and that is something we have found quite helpful‟. That sort of peer learning culture would be helpful across a range of disciplines and web presentation skills are also becoming more important in many fields. As Kate says „people are looking for students‟ ability to present them-selves online and to curate their own online materials. Cu-rating a web presence indicates employability across a range of different sectors‟

For Media Studies, there were discipline-specific reasons for moving on from SyD forums to public blogs. „Using

blogs can be seen as students engaging with social media, making media and thinking about developing their work as a media object…. The blogs are like media practice without needing many media practice skills‟.

For Fab, Facebook was the ideal solution, but Kate chose not to use it because she was interested in „getting stu-dents to take forums/blogs seriously and think about them as somewhere where other people are looking at them and they are also engaging with other people, so there is a de-gree of publicity about them‟. Because of this public aspect it was decided to give students the chance to „work things out in SyD forums in the first term‟ where tutors could pro-vide „a bit of moderation and provide pointers‟.

Another of the strengths of using those technologies is that „it gives students different opportunities for working and for visibility‟. Media Studies have „had a lot of very positive

feedback from international stu-dents particularly who found it an appropriate forum to try out ideas or to be able to prepare their ideas before putting them into a public conversation. Which is sometimes quite difficult for them to do in a seminar group where the conversation is often quite extemporaneous and in fast Eng-lish‟. Other students who have issues with confidence, or speak-ing, or students who are hearing impaired also appreciate the chance to engage in a different way.

Kate and Sharif are „keen on sup-porting as many ways of contrib-uting to the teaching and learning environment as possible, be-cause not everything works for everyone and people do find it

intimidating talking in a seminar group. Sometimes it takes people a couple of years to get used to the idea of taking responsibility for contributing and the forum can be like an extended virtual seminar with different options going on‟.

Of course, as with Twitter or Facebook blogging doesn‟t work for everyone. Kate finds that „some students find fo-rums and blogs too formulaic and prefer the seminar envi-ronment and they get recognition in that context, but it is important for all students to access some form of recogni-tion and positive feedback and you can‟t do that just in a one hour seminar with increasingly large groups of stu-dents‟.

Most of Kate and Sharif‟s students have enjoyed engaging with social media but feedback over the years made it clear that they would like to be given credit for taking part in those technologies and to have it taken more seriously as part of the course. So for the last couple of years these activities have been assessed. In the first term that‟s quite easy because courses are assessed by course report, but this year Media Studies have faced the challenge of „how to assess, have useful criteria and give meaningful feedback for something like a blog‟.

(Continued on page 9)

Social Media for Teaching and Learning

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focus on argument, comparison and/or specific examples; or that assignments record work over time. If peer learning and/or group tasks are to be used it is particularly important to be clear about where the boundary is between working as a team and individually.

Inevitably, however, not all academic misconduct can be eliminated and the web pages also offer guidance to staff on detecting plagia-rism and collusion as well as directing students to the resources and advice pro-vided for them across cam-pus to help with good study skills and offer support in the event of problems.

These new pages for staff and students complement the information provided by the Academic Office which is responsible for the Pla-giarism and Academic

Misconduct rules and procedures. Their Advice for staff on the Academic Misconduct Procedures includes definitions of assessment, collusion, plagiarism and personation, mis-conduct in unseen exams and fabrication of results as well as the procedures for examining cases.

When considering using social media to enhance the learn-ing on one of your courses it is important to think about which of the many available options will work best for you and your students. For Fab, it was about using a technol-ogy that students were already familiar with to build a sense of community, while in Media Studies there is strong motivation for students to engage with forums and blogs

(Continued from page 8) because there is a clear disciplinary purpose and there are marks to be earned.

If you would like to find out a bit more about social media and see some examples of how they can be used for learn-ing there is a new TLD Event on 9th November that is de-signed as a novice‟s guide to Twitter, Facebook and blog-ging and will include examples from Sussex.

Web Links Web links on social media for learning: www.delicious.com/tlduteam/social_media Introduction to Social Media TLD Event: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/events/tldevents/innlt#socmed

Much discussion around plagiarism focuses on detection and punishment, but at Sussex there is also a strong em-phasis on helping students to develop sound study habits and designing assessments that encourage good academic conduct. To support this approach, new web pages have been added to the TLDU website offering ideas and guid-ance on planning teaching and assessment in ways that foster good academic conduct and minimise the circumstances under which students might be inclined to plagiarise or commit other forms of academic misconduct. A companion page for students points them to relevant resources on the S3 (Study Success at Sussex) web site.

The staff pages offer sug-gestions for helping stu-dents to develop good study habits and academic skills by modelling good academic practice, using in-class activities and planning formative assessment that focuses on those skills. Design-ing courses and assessments to reduce opportunities for plagiarism can also make a big difference. This might mean making sure that the overall assessment load is not too heavy; assignments are staged; essay titles and questions

Cutting out the „cut and paste‟.

Web Links Academic Office: www.sussex.ac.uk/academicoffice/index.php Advice for staff on Academic Misconduct procedures: www.sussex.ac.uk/academicoffice/1-4-1.html TLDU Academic Misconduct pages: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/ideas/acadmiscon Study Success at Sussex (S3): www.sussex.ac.uk/s3 TLDU bookmarks on: academic misconduct: www.delicious.com/tlduteam/academic_misconduct assessment: www.delicious.com/tlduteam/assessment plagiarism: www.delicious.com/tlduteam/plagiarism

Extending the learning conversation. At the recent Sussex Teaching and Learning Conference Clare Mackie (PVC Teaching and Learning) discussed the Na-tional Student Survey (NSS) results and delegates attended a range of sessions on successful initiatives to develop learning conversations with and between students. These included innovative assessment and feedback methods, face-to-face events and use of Study Direct and social media. You can read about the conference in a special issue of RUSTLE soon.

Web Link: Sussex Teaching & Learning Conference 2011: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/events/conf/2011

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What constitutes a „large‟ group will vary by discipline, but across campus groups are getting bigger and colleagues are looking for ways to develop courses and methods to ensure the best possible learning experience for all stu-dents. There are aspects of small group teaching that are highly valued, such as getting to know individual students and having time for everyone to contribute to discussions or ask questions. The expectation that everyone will partici-pate also encourages students to read in preparation for small group sessions. Lectures to large groups are an ef-fective way of imparting information, but a reliance on lec-tures or large seminar groups can lead to passivity and large groups can make it difficult to see the differ-ent levels at which students are working. The anonymity of students in large group settings can reduce motiva-tion and more students are likely to feel uneasy about expressing themselves. Increased numbers also provide a challenge when it comes to feedback on as-sessed work or in the class-room. This article will outline some approaches to learn-ing in large groups and you can find more detail and lots of resources on the TLDU web pages (see links below). The challenge is to recreate the best aspects of small group teaching in a curriculum for large numbers and that starts with planning. The bigger the group, the greater the need for strong structure and support so it is worth focusing on anticipated student numbers when beginning to design a course. Introducing different assessment modes and feed-back practices can help to ensure that students get the formative feedback they need without a huge marking bur-den. Technology can help here, with online quizzes in Study Direct (SyD) offering quick individual feedback throughout a course. You might also want to consider using group work and group assessment to develop important transferrable employability skills alongside subject knowl-edge and understanding. Students can also give each other valuable feedback if that is planned into courses or ses-

sions and innovative methods such as „Just-in-Time Teach-ing‟ can work very well with large groups. Lectures need not follow the old one-way transmission model of teaching, but can become interactive, giving stu-dents the opportunity to become actively engaged in their learning. With small groups it has always been possible to ask questions or encourage students to ask questions, but as group sizes increase it becomes harder to persuade individuals to speak up. Short pair or small group activities can be introduced during lectures to involve all the stu-dents, or clickers can be used to get responses from every-

one. Many of these activities are useful across a range of disciplines while others are subject-specific so links to examples from a range of disciplines have been added to the TLDU web pages. As numbers increase in seminars and tutorials, ses-sion planning becomes more important. An unstruc-tured discussion may work well with a few students that you know well, but with 20 students or more a plan that encourages everyone to participate with a range of activities and structures the time available, is invaluable. The TLDU web pages offer

guidance on session planning including the ways that learn-ing outcomes can be used to provide a framework for a seminar or tutorial. One of the easiest ways to capture the benefits of small group learning in a large group is to split the students into smaller groups for part of the session. This works best when there are clear instructions and an explicit outcome. That could be an informal presentation, a poster, a set of answers to questions or any number of other things depending on disciplinary context. You can make good use of the available time and avoid repetition by breaking up a task and getting each group to tackle a differ-ent part – the „reporting back‟ phase then produces a whole. These are just a few suggestions but the links below pro-vide more information and resources.

Web Links: TLD Event on Learning in Large Groups: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/events/tldevents/enh#large TLDU web pages on: Large Groups: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/ideas/methods/lgegrp Assessing Group Work: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/ideas/assessment/grp Lectures: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/ideas/methods/lecturing Peer Assessment and Feedback: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/ideas/assessment/peer Just in Time Teaching: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/ideas/methods/jitt E-learning page on „clickers‟: www.sussex.ac.uk/elearning/prs TLDU bookmarks tagged: Large groups: www.delicious.com/tlduteam/large_groups Lectures: www.delicious.com/tlduteam/lectures Just-in-time teaching: www.delicious.com/tlduteam/just-in-time Interactive: www.delicious.com/tlduteam/interactive Methods: www.delicious.com/tlduteam/methods Clickers: www.delicious.com/tlduteam/clickers

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Steefan Hermans (Director of Skills at the European Com-mission) spoke of the importance of research in assuring future economic prosperity and argued that there was still work to be done in promoting research careers. He noted that the percentage of EU researchers who work with in-

dustry is considerably lower than in other areas of the world and raised a concern over the number of women leaving research ca-reers - a trend that presented a challenge to efforts to increase the number of researchers active within the EU.

The conference also heard from Professor Paul Hagan (Director of Research and Innovation at the Scottish Funding Council) on the importance of research and re-searchers within the Scottish HE system. He noted significant pres-sure from Scottish Government to see economic benefit from re-

search and hence a need to ensure that they are engaging with businesses.

There is a podcast from the conference available on iTunes and you can find out more about the work of Vitae nation-ally and locally by following the links below.

Ross English (Vitae South East Hub Manager) joined over 350 delegates at the Vitae Researcher Development Inter-national Conference in September. One of the key themes was building international competitiveness and representa-tives from institutions in Japan, Belgium, Malaysia, Ger-many, Croatia, Ireland, Luxem-burg, Spain and The Netherlands joined UK participants for the first time.

The packed 2-day conference included over 50 workshops and special interest sessions at which delegates explored strategies and practice to enhance the profes-sional development of doctoral researchers and research staff. There was a particular focus on issues such as the European Commission‟s „Innovation Union‟ initiative, the UK Government and Research Council strategic priori-ties, the Research Excellence Framework and the Researcher Development Framework. Iain Cameron (Research Councils UK) also took the oppor-tunity to reaffirm the RCUK‟s commitment to developing UK research leaders and to researcher development over the longer term.

Trend towards an inclusive approach to teaching In the past, when university students were a more homogenous group, it was usual practice to make special provision for students with particular needs. Now, however, people teaching in Higher Education are more likely to take an inclusive approach that works for students who come from various backgrounds and have differing levels of prior learning and expectations, as well as different learning needs. Inclusive teaching helps to ensure that eve-ryone‟s needs are met, enabling students to learn effectively so that they feel that they belong in the classroom and the university.

Inclusive teaching can mean relatively small adjustments to teaching prac-tice. For instance ensuring notes and handouts for lectures, seminars or lab sessions are available electronically in advance (preferably 7 days); giving instructions verbally and visually; and using a variety of learning activities in your teaching.

Two years ago a StudyDirect (SyD) site was developed to help staff to adopt a more inclusive approach. The site hosts a range of subject-specific and generic resources and as new material has been created it has been added to the site. The site also includes information on how to support students with specific learning needs.

If you would like to find out how to make your teaching more inclusive, have a look at the Inclusive Teaching SyD site or sign up for one of the TLD Events on this topic (see links below).

Web Links: Inclusive Teaching SyD site: https://studydirect.sussex.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=8611 TLDU Inclusive Teaching web page: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/ideas/methods/incl TLDU web links on Inclusivity: www.delicious.com/tlduteam/inclusivity TLD Events on Inclusive Teaching: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/events/tldevents/incl

Building international competitiveness amongst researchers.

Web Links Vitae: www.vitae.ac.uk Vitae South-East Hub: www.vitae.ac.uk/sehub Vitae researcher development international conference on iTunes: http://vitae.podomatic.com/

RUSTLE

RUSTLE is produced by the Teaching and Learning Development Unit (TLDU)

and is online at www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/resources/rustle

If you wish to comment or contribute please e-mail tldu@sussex.ac.uk

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Teaching and Learning Development Events Autumn 2011 The TLDU organises Teaching and Learning Development Events for staff with a teaching role. There are short sessions of 1-2 hours right up to whole day workshops and days and times are varied to allow as many colleagues as possible to participate. Events cover a wide range of topics related to teaching, learning, assessment, supervision and innovation.

The Autumn term events are listed here and session outlines and online booking are available on the TLDU website. All events are free. Colleagues from partner institutions can book by e-mail.

PGCertHE Briefing, Wednesday 5th October 2011, 14.00-15.30.

Using Study Direct as part of your teaching, Tuesday 11th October 2011, 14.00-16.00.

Academic Advising, Thursday 13th October 2011, 11.00-13.00.

Planning Sessions, Thursday 13th October 2011, 14.00-16.00.

Using an Interactive White Board, Wednesday 19th October 2011, 10.00-12.00.

Learning in Small Groups, Thursday 20th October 2011, 10.00-12.00.

Mental Health Awareness, Wednesday 26th October 2011, 10.00-11.30.

Marking & Feedback (text-based subjects), Wednesday 26th October 2011, 14.00-16.00.

Marking & Feedback (numerical based subjects), Thursday 27th October 2011, 10.00-12.00.

Effective Lecturing, Wednesday 2nd November 2011, 10.00-13.00.

An Overview of Support for Students at Sussex, Wednesday 2nd November 2011, 14.00-15.00.

Working with Students who Experience Panic Attacks, Thursday 3rd November 2011, 10.00-12.00.

Turnitin originality checking software, Friday 4th November 2011, 10.30-11.30.

Using Clickers: student voting in the classroom, Friday 4th November 2011, 12.00-13.00.

Introduction to Asperger's Syndrome, Monday 7th November 2011, 10.00-11.30.

Introduction to Social Media, Wednesday 9th November 2011, 10.00-12.00.

Play it again: Lecture or Personal Capture with Echo360, Wednesday 9th November 2011, 14.00-16.00.

UK Education for New International Staff, Thursday 10th November 2011, 14.00-16.00.

Inclusive Teaching, Tuesday 15th November 2011, 10.00-13.00

Course Design & Approval, Wednesday 16th November 2011, 14.00-16.00

Understanding Dyslexia, Monday 21st November 2011, 10.00-12.00

Designing Assessment, Thursday 24th November 2011, 10.00-12.00.

Making the most of your Research in Teaching, Wednesday 30th November 2011, 14.00-15.30.

Preparing a Teaching Portfolio, Thursday 1st December 2011, 11.00-12.30.

Technology Hands-on Drop-in, Monday 12th December 2011, 11.00-13.00.

Supervising Doctoral Students, Tuesday 13th December 2011, 09.30-16.30.

Web Link and Contact TLD Events 2011-12: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/events/tldevents E-mail: tldu@sussex.ac.uk