Manchester Metropolitan University

5th International SOLSTICE, Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, Conference
Thursday 3rd June 2010,
Edge Hill University, Ormskirk Campus

Keynote Speakers:
Professor Gilly Salmon, Professor of eLearning & Learning Technologies, University of Leicester  & Professor Peter Hartley, Professor of Education Development, University of Bradford  

Conference Website   

Universities are dedicated to providing the best possible student experience, characterised by high levels of success, retention and satisfaction on which reputation and recruitment are dependent in the 21st Century HE sector.

This conference will focus on the use of technologies in teaching to support and challenge learners, to bring efficiency and added value to assessment and feedback, to impact on employability and to support research activities that face towards the curriculum. Creative and inclusive deployment of technologies to add value to student support and guidance and communications are an additional focus of interest.

Call for Proposals:
SOLSTICE is committed to TEL practices that are informed by and generative of research. To that end, proposals for papers, workshops, presentations and posters are invited which consider:

• knowledge that has been applied and integrated to inform practices 
• how we know and predict that practices  may work  through using evidence? 
• what has been learned  that may positively influence the student experience in the future?
• insights gained into existing challenges and into new research agendas that are unfolding

The deadline for receipt of proposals has been extended to 5pm on Tuesday 2nd February 2010 due to the effects of the adverse weather, proposals should be submitted via the electronic proposal form, where full details of the call are available. 

Registration and Fees:  The conference is open to everyone working in further and higher education, both nationally and internationally. You can register a place at the conference by completing the online electronic registration form .

Fees for the conference, pre-conference workshop and evening seminar are detailed below, package prices are available if booking for more than one event.

SOLSTICE Conference fee – £100  Pre-conference Evening Seminar fee – £40  Pre-conference Workshop ‘Engaging with Open Content’ fee – £40

These events are also being run back-to-back with the CLTR conference offering delegates a rich variety of related experiences over a two-day period.

The conference will be held on the University of Plymouth campus, on 8th and 9th April, 2010.

The 5th Plymouth e-Learning Conference will examine the theme of e-learning in a time of change, and will challenge notions of traditional boundaries, learning spaces and roles. We will focus on new practices, new technologies, new environments and new learning.  There will be primary, secondary and tertiary education threads. We invite papers on the digital divide, e-learning methods and case studies, mobile and pervasive technologies, digital games, multi-user virtual environments, informal learning, new classroom technologies (PDAs interactive whiteboards, etc), personal learning environments, visual media (videoconference, digital photography), e-portfolios and social software (wikis, blogs, podcasting, etc).

The conference will also feature the conference dinner in one of the most spectacular dining venues in the South West of England, and demonstrations of our innovative Immersion Vision Cinema. We look forward to welcoming you to Plymouth and meeting you at the conference.

Keynote Speakers:
Josie Fraser, Social Media Expert and Educational Technologist of the Year, 2008
Donald Clark, Former CEO of Epic Group plc, and board member of UfI (Learn Direct)

Please visit the conference website to register or submit proposals (3000 word abstracts by 29th Jan)

A Joint seminar organised by BMAF Internationalisation SIG and the ‘Teaching International Students’ project.

Seminar co-leaders: Julia Pointon, DeMontfort University & Jude Carroll from Teaching International Students project.

Programme

Session 1:  ‘I never expected that.’

An interactive session linking research findings by Julia Pointon on international students’ expectations/ experiences before, during and after they gain UK awards with teaching practices in UK unversities.

Session 2: ‘I never knew that!’

The session hears from students from Saudi Arabia about their experiences and considers the more generic issue as to whether and how knowing about students’ academic experiences before travelling to the UK is beneficial – and what about the dangers?

Session 3:   ‘I know it’s not something we usually talk about but….’

This is an open space for discussion of issues linked to assessment and especially, challenges that are not often discussed such as:

• Assessment standards:  are we passing people we should more rightly fail?
• Validity:  are we marking language or content?
• Fairness:  are we setting some students up to always get the lowest grades?
• Plagiarism:  Are their ways to demonstrate graduate skills for citation and attribution without requiring skilful use of Harvard-type referencing?
• Adaptation? :  Must students do all the changing or do teachers, too, need to adapt?  Can teachers adapt what they think as well as what they do?

The session will end with an evaluation of the relative benefits of this type of open discussion and pointing to resources and good practice designed to address these issues.

To book a place please email bmaf@brookes.ac.uk

The second in the 2009/10 Educational Research Seminar Series, hosted by Educational and Staff Development at Queen Mary, University of London. The seminar takes place on Monday 25th January at 3pm in Room 602 on the sixth floor of the G. O. Jones Building (formerly known as the Physics Building) on the Mile End campus of the College.

This seminar is presented by Gwen van der Velden, the Director of Learning and Teaching Enhancement at the University of Bath and is entitled The student voice: enhancing learning, not just satisfaction

As spaces are limited, please email Matthew Williamson if you wish to come along to this seminar.

About the seminar:

This seminar sets out the approach taken at the University of Bath which aims to engage students in a role of academic citizenship, rather than just as consumers. Despite Lord Mandelson’s suggestions to the contrary, most of our students still engage with their studies as an experience rather than a product.

Bath is a university that was founded in the 1960s as part of a socio-economical effort to broaden access to the intellectual wealth of universities. Many of the principles of democracy are still present in our efforts to encourage academic citizenship for students and this realisation has transformed our quality management in recent years. Based on good preparation and full access to university information, students at Bath not only take part in setting teaching enhancement agendas, they also share with staff the responsibility for implementing change. In recent years the National Student Survey, Students’ Union’s surveys and other sources have shown us that our students are appreciative and very aware of this approach, whilst external indicators show us this may be a way of avoiding the consumerist attitudes that are promoted in current discussions about the student fee-cap.

The seminar will set out the underlying principles of student engagement at Bath, what this means in practice for quality and educational management, and provide an insight in the ways in which impact of this approach are measured. Gwen will be accompanied by the Vice President of Bath Students’ Union, to give a student perspective on the issue.

About the speaker:

Gwen’s career started in the Netherlands and included student activist, teacher and educational innovator. At the Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen (now Radboud University, NL), she supported individual staff in the Science Faculty developing advanced teaching practices. On her departure to Britain, she received an award for Excellence from the University of Nijmegen and was put forward for a national award for HE teaching innovation.

Having joined the University of Kent in 1995, Gwen worked with a number of Universities on institution-wide implementation of e-learning. Since the mid nineties, she has led teams of academic staff developers, student learning advisors, quality officers and teaching innovators and took on advisory
roles for national HE organisations. Her current professional interests include the professionalisation of educational development, supporting governance change to empower the student voice and the re-alignment of quality assurance and enhancement.

Gwen also holds a number of roles at national level, including membership of the Planning Executive of the Standing Conference for Academic Practice (SCAP), chair of the Learning, Teaching and Quality Network within the ’94 Group and membership of the planning group for the Heads of Educational Development Group.

The remaining seminars for this year are:

22nd February
Dr Roni Bamber, Head of Centre for Academic Practice, Queen Margaret University Evaluation: institutional needs versus individual motivations

29th March
Dr Margo Blythman, Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design, University of the Arts Implications of change for the working worlds of staff in higher education

26th April
Dr Chris Trevitt, Director of Studies, Oxford Learning Institute, University of Oxford Research supervision at Oxford: tales from the development experience coalface

24th May
Professor Stephanie Marshall, Director of Programmes, The Leadership Foundation for Higher Education Leadership in Learning and Teaching

28th June
Dr Matthew Williamson, Education Adviser, QMUL, and Dr Giles Martin, Learning and Teaching Development Adviser, QMUL Transitions to Higher Education: reflections on a three-year study

Educational and Staff Development Queen Mary, University of London

Theme: The conference will address four distinct and connected areas of the Higher Education system – prior learning, experience, the learner, the learning environment and the graduate output

Location: Crewe Campus
Date: 4th February 2010
Time 10:00 – 16:00

The conference is jointly organised with UCLAN, supported by the HEA and advertised nationally. In addition to guest keynote presenters there will be a series of workshops and of course the free lunch! For further details, see the main MMU Website or follow this link.

This is a Faculty initiative and is supported by the Dean.
Enrol today (or by 22nd January) by contacting Linda Mitchell (l.mitchell@mmu.ac.uk) or Barbara Cooper (b.cooper@mmu.ac.uk) (Quality Enhancement Team)