News Archive

Amidst the shock of post-beach blues and approaching grant deadlines, somehow we need to face our students with glee, full of new and exciting ideas for our teaching.

For those who care deeply but are not motivated to teach yet again, that same equation, using the same PowerPoint slides (or dare I say it? overheads) to a group of students who will always ask the same questions, face the same problems and look just as confused over the same issues which you find blindingly obvious - never fear!

This March we will be launching a kaleidoscope of events including a lunch time series (with lunch) where you can relax, unwind, eat AND pick up some ideas to reshape your class. There will be an opportunity to hear about new approaches to teaching and assessing as well as to share your own ideas and things you have tried, to improve student learning, across the Faculty.

The launch event will include a workshop by Professor Erik Meyer of the University of Durham, (March 26 ^th 2-5pm) who will develop some ideas around his (and Ray Land's) original notion of threshold concepts that you will have heard mentioned and wondered what the big fuss was about. He will help us think through those tricky, troublesome subjects which beguile students and yet which are crucial to understand in order to open up new areas of knowledge.

Additional to the lunchtime series, there will be a number of workshops to look at teaching fundamentals, for staff and for graduate student tutors. We will soon be announcing the details of these events and our new web pages dedicated to educational development in engineering, maths and computing.