Manchester Metropolitan University

One Day Conference on PersonalDevelopment Planning and Employability
The University of Worcester
Monday January 12th 2009

The Conference will , through keynotes, showcases and short parallel workshops:

• Examine the latest research on PDP,
• Explore the potential of PDP as a means of developing studentemployability,
• Provide an employer’s eye view of PDP and employability,
• Share and discuss the variety of PDP and employability provision across the University.

The conference is open to all UW and partner college staff and students free of charge.  It is also open to colleagues working on PDP across UK HE and to regional employers’ organisations and employers for a small fee of £30.
Booking and further details available  at:
http://www.worc.ac.uk/adpu/1066.htm

This workshop will be of interest to you if you are involved in the development of healthcare educators and either already belong to the Resource Archive for Teacher Trainers (RAFTT) community of practice or would like to join.

In late 2005 MEDEV set up the RAFTT blog in order to provide a forum for education developers in the field of health care education to share their expertise and resources. Since its inception there have been more than 100 individual educational development resources added, accompanied with the annotations to explain how they can be used. The resources on the blog are designed to support the delivery of short courses on teaching skills to health care professionals involved in teaching on undergraduate programmes and of teaching certificate/diploma programmes to health care professionals.

If you would like to join RAFTT, or are currently a member but need a reminder of your username and password, then please email Gillian {gillian@medev.ac.uk). Please note that you do not have to attend the workshop in order to join.

The aim of this workshop is to explore strategies to address the development needs of health care educators and to consider how to further enhance and disseminate the RAFTT resources.

By attending this event you will be enabled to:

1. Share and evaluate current approaches to staff/education development
2. Add directly to the bank of subject related learning and teaching resources contained
   in the RAFTT archive
3. Foster an active community of practice
4. Evaluate the scope and potential applications of the existing resources
5. Develop strategies to extend and enhance the quantity and types of resources stored on RAFTT
6. Identify and discuss the key themes and issues of interest to the education
   development community

These outcomes will be achieved through a mixture of:

• Group work and plenary discussion sessions
• Demonstration of how RAFTT works and how to add resources
• Small group work evaluating resources and approaches to education development
• On line practice at accessing, using and adding to the resources

The event will be facilitated by Gillian Brown, Education Advisor at the subject centre for medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine (MEDEV), Nigel Purcell, Senior Education Advisor at the subject centre, Reg Dennick, Professor in Medical Education & Management at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham and John Spencer, Professor of Medical Education in Primary Health Care at the University of Newcastle All of the facilitators have very extensive experience of staff development in the field of medical and dental education.

There is NO CHARGE for this workshop but places are limited to 20 Delegates on a first come first served basis. For further information and to book a place please go to the subject centre website

Wed 21st January 2009 10.30-3.30pm
Manchester conference Centre

Peer assessment has been proven over many years to be an effective activity to enhance learning. Peer assessment is the process by which students provide formative or summative feedback to fellow students enabling all involved to reflect and build on their knowledge and understanding. Technology can also be used to support peer assessment, especially for large student cohorts.

This event, jointly organised with the Engineering Subject Centre and the WebPA Project, will introduce participants to the benefits of peer assessment from a key researcher in this field and hear about how the WebPA project offers a technological solution for supporting peer assessment.

Further details and online registration

Wed 18th Feb 2009, University of Glasgow
A one day meeting of the Higher Education Group of the Institute of Physics sponsored by the Higher Education Academy Physical Sciences Centre.

Presentations will be given by a range of speakers from different institutions who will share good practice. Innovative ways of teaching laboratories and projects will be explored. the purposes of the physics laboratory will be covered, as will the importance of feedback.

Further details and online registration

Liverpool John Moores 30th June-1st July
Website: www.heacademy.ac.uk/forrest

FORREST (FORensic RESearch and Teaching) is an annual international academic conference of interest to academics, lawyers, law enforcement, and forensic practitioners, organised jointly by The Forensic Institute Research Network (FIRN) and The Higher Education Academy Physical Sciences Centre in the UK.

The purpose of FORREST is to present the latest and most relevant work in forensic research and teaching. It is the only conference to deal specifically with the ever-increasing topic of forensic education.

Reviews, case studies, applications, and research programmes are delivered by lectures and workshops that allow every delegate to find and explore something of interest and value to them.

University of Manchester 2-4th September
Conference website: www.heacademy.ac.uk/eurovariety

This conference, which is a European counterpart of the UK conference Variety in Chemistry Education, is devoted to practical aspects of chemical education at tertiary (university) level. It provides a forum for the

• exchange of ideas related to teaching and learning chemistry at degree level
• sharing of good practice and innovation
• dissemination of outcomes of pedagogic research as it relates to chemistry at university level in Europe

The Physical Sciences Centre and The Royal Society of Chemistry Tertiary Education Group are sponsoring this event.

First call for papers and abstracts for:

ALT-C 2009: “In dreams begins responsibility” – choice, evidence, and change 8-10 September 2009, Manchester, UK
Full details at: http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2009/

Keynote speakers:

• Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, USA.
• Terry Anderson, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Distance Education at Athabasca University, Canada.

Submission guidelines for Research Papers and for Abstracts are available from:
http://www.alt.ac.uk/guidelines_papers.html
- a Research Paper Template is also available from this webpage and is a word document so it can be downloaded and used to submit your research paper proposal.

ALT welcome submissions of two broad types:
-  Full 5000 word Research Papers, for publication in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of ALT-C 2009, with a 350 word abstract (taken from the paper) and a 200 word presentation overview both of which will appear in
the conference Abstracts Handbook, and online.
-  350 word abstracts describing 30 minute Demonstrations, Posters, 20 minute Short Papers, 90 minute Symposia, and 90 minute Workshops. All abstracts will appear in the conference Abstracts Handbook, and online.

Key dates:
Proposals accepted from late December 2008 ( link to the submission system )
Deadline for receipt of proposals: midnight UK time on 16 February 2009
Bookings open during May 2009
Presenters’ registration deadline 29 June 2009
Earlybird registration deadline is 6 July 2009
Bookings close on 14 August 2009

To sponsor ALT-C 2009 contact Seb Schmoller, Chief Executive of ALT,
seb.schmoller@alt.ac.uk

To exhibit at ALT-C 2009 contact Hayley Willis, Events Manager,
hayley.willis@alt.ac.uk

From the Researchers’ Weekly bulletin, a ‘policy brief’ from a think tank called the Lisbon Council for Economic Competitiveness and Social Renewal. This report looks at alternative ways of comparing national higher education systems and suggests that the criteria of “Inclusiveness, Access, Effectiveness, Attractiveness, Age Range and Responsiveness” would be give the best information about a country’s ability to prepare its citizens for the knowledge-based economy than some of the ‘league table’ approaches . The study looks at national figures but the criteria themselves are interesting in terms of goal-setting.

The introduction to the report says “….the system must be capable (and not simply at a rhetorical level) of empowering and equipping the largest possible number of individuals with the fullest set of tools she or he will need to become well-rounded participants in our social democracy and fully-functioning economic units in that society. It must also stand out – as many systems do today – as a centre of worldleading, independent research, capable of preserving, developing and perhaps even expanding our valuable cultural and scientific legacy for generations to come. But seeking excellence in research should never be allowed to become an excuse for underperformance in the educational tasks.” Who’d argue with that?

Over the next week (3rd to 10th December) CeLT is seeking the opinions of staff about the design of ‘social learning space’ in the new Hub/Business School building. CeLT has a display of  the architect’s plans and images that we hope will stimulate debate and provoke comment about the purposes of such space in the new building and how it can be best designed to support the kind of learner activity that we would wish to encourage.

The space is intended to support learning activities outside the classroom in a range of environments: in ‘touchdown’ where email is checked and folders scrutinised in a passing moment; in informal/social/collaborative settings with group study tables and ubiquitous access to ICT resources, and in quieter settings more conducive to individual work.

Please come along to CeLT during this consultation period and offer your opinions so that we can be sure to make the right decisions as the build progresses. Alongside the display are post-it notes for you to add your comments.

A Guardian supplement published 2nd December looks at the way technology has transformed education over the last decade. Sponsored by JISC to launch its ‘Student experiences of technology’ campaign, the supplement – ‘Digital Student’ – explores the achievements of institutions in this area and some of the future challenges as universities and colleges look to exploit technology and place the student experience at the heart of learning and teaching.

The online version is available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/digitalstudent