Staff development TEL Workshops: Oct 2014

We'd just like to disseminate the details of the technology enhanced learning sessions we are running during October, as part of the wider Learning Services development provision.

The following workshops are intended for staff (both lecturers and support teams), the details are below, and the online booking form is available from:

• Learning Services Workshops

Flipping your teaching model: the how and the why (21st October: 12:00 to 13:00)

The flipped classroom is a teaching model which integrates the use of online and face to face teaching spaces to maximise the learning experience. The broad approach is to use the online for pre and post session activities, to enable the face to face teaching to be more active and problem based. This workshop will discuss what it is, and provide hands-on experience at developing a flipped classroom approach.

Getting more out of your LearnUCS module (21st October: 13:00 to 14:00)

This workshop is intended as a question and answer session, around how you might get more out of your use of LearnUCS. The session will weave actual uses by lecturers at UCS around effective uses of video, collaborative tools, reflective tools, and assessment tools.

Using social media to become a connected educator (22nd October: 11:00 to 12:00)

Social media is becoming increasingly important as a means of sharing ideas and work. This workshop will explore ways you can harness social media to enhance your own personal learning environment. The session will focus on the application of Twitter and YouTube to discover material and resources.

How clickers can change the way you teach (22nd October: 12:00 to 13:00)

Clickers (audience response systems) offer the lecturer a simple, non threatening way to enhance the effectiveness of student participation within a teaching session, and open up opportunities to improve formative feedback mechanism. This session will introduce clickers, question writing and work through deployment strategies.

Monitoring student engagement and performance in your LearnUCS Course (22nd October: 13.00 to 14.00)

With the inclusion of more interactive tools and learning designs within LearnUCS lecturers are able to make use of the Retention Centre. This new feature allows lecturers to check on student progress within their course according to criteria of their choice. Students' participation and engagement are visually displayed, alerting the lecturer to any potential risk and students who are excelling.

Creating talk over powerpoints and similar videos (22nd October: 14.00 to 15.00)

A popular request from staff is, how can they create short talk over powerpoints / presentations which they can share with their students? This session will cover the rationale, what do you want to create and how is this embedded within your learning model, and providing the hands-on experience of creating the video and embedding within LearnUCS.

Designing a group based learning activity (23rd October: 12:00 to 13:00)

This workshop will discuss the opportunities for enhancing learning through group based learning activities, and how technologies might more effectively facilitate this learning model. The technology enhanced, group based learning activities will focus on the group tools within LearnUCS, and the social media. We’ll be exploring activities where they will create and share content.

Getting started with the LearnUCS Quiz engine in your teaching and assessment models (23rd October: 13:00 to 14:00)

Objective testing in LearnUCS (the quiz engine) is probably one of the most under utilised tools with the VLE, and it tends to be viewed as only useful for lower order learning skills. This session aims to challenge this perception as it is argued the tool offers significant benefits as a formative and summative assessment feedback tool, and we'll ensure you have the technical skills to design and develop an objective test using LearnUCS.

We hope to see you at one of these sessions. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please email elevate@ucs.ac.uk

Academic support for ESOL students

Time: Wednesdays 2-3pm 

Place: Library Seminar Room L107

I am offering academic writing and English language support this semester for all students who are studying with English as a second or additional language. So… I would like to cordially invite you along to some workshops which will take place on Wednesdays in the library seminar room (L107). The workshops run from Wednesday Sept 24 until Wednesday December 3 and take place from 2-3pm. The sessions will allow you to meet other international students, hopefully have some fun, and get up to speed with your academic writing. The first couple of workshops will give you the chance of a short writing task from which you will get feedback with recommendations for developing your English language. Then there will be five sessions focussing on academic writing and English language development, followed by sessions for individual assignment support. By the end of the course I hope you will be well prepared to submit your first assignments. I very much look forward to meeting you and getting to know you all.

Further course information.

Mark Illman

Academic Skills Adviser

T: 01473 338728

E: m.illman@ucs.ac.uk

What workshops are we offering in October 2014

We are pleased to announce our October 2014 workshop program is now available. The topics and titles are developed in line with your likely requirements at the start of the new academic year.

Our workshops are one hour each, and they are designed around the principles of active and collaborative learning.

The online booking form is available from: October 2014 Booking Form

If you have any questions, please contact Learning Services (leanringservices@ucs.ac.uk)

Monday 13th October

Session Title	Time	Description
Enhancing your learning with social media	12.00-13.00	This workshop will explore ways you can use social media (Twitter & YouTube) to enhance your learning through accessing and managing resources.
Assignment planning and writing	13.00-14.00	This session will introduce you to the layout of assignments and some strategies to use for planning work.
Reading it right, so you don't get it wrong!	15.00-16.00	An introduction to effectively reading scientific or scholarly journal articles. Find out about the layout and structure of the research articles, this will enable you to interpret and discuss.

Tuesday 14th October

Session Title	Time	Description
Planning your dissertation	12.00-13.00	Aimed at level 5 & 6 students, this workshop will help you to understand the requirements for an undergraduate dissertation and help you to select an appropriate title. Please bring along your dissertation handbook if you have one.
Electronic is the new black: Navigating ebooks	13.00-14.00	This workshop will introduce you to the various electronic book platforms available at UCS, we will also explore techniques for searching and tips for navigating the collection.
Find it, use it, cite it: An introduction to Harvard Referencing	14.00-15.00	An introduction to Harvard referencing.

Wednesday 15th October

Session Title	Time	Description
"Too descriptive, not enough critical analysis": An introduction to critical writing	11.00-12.00	Introduction to the main features of critical writing with a focus on some of the techniques you can use to increase the amount of critical content in your assignments
Keeping your references organised with RefWorks	12.00-13.00	An introduction to using the RefWorks management tool. Discover the functionality of RefWorks as well as investigating the importance of proper referencing skills and techniques.
Becoming employable: creating your online presence	13.00-14.00	A workshop to explore how to create, develop and manage your online presence with a view to future employment.

Thursday 16th October

Session Title	Time	Description
How can you design and develop effective presentations?	12.00-13.00	Introduction to the main features of critical writing with a focus on some of the techniques you can use to increase the amount of critical content in your assignments
Literature searching and search strategies: An introduction to Summon and databases	13.00-14.00	The aims is to introduce types of resources and search strategies to first year students
Seen Text Help (Read & Write) icon on your desktop and wondered what it's all about?	14.00-15.00	An Introduction to a text speech software programme that helps the user to read aloud documents, tint the screen, assist with proofreading and study skills

Friday 17th October

Session Title	Time	Description
UCS Learning Services: getting started	12.00-13.00	An introduction to the key services and resources that will help you make a flying start with your studies
Developing your reflective practice	13.00-14.00	This workshop will introduce the topic of reflection and discuss its purpose and relevance to academic study. We will outline some reflective models and how they can be used
Technologies to facilitate reflective learning	14.00-15.00	This workshop will explore two technologies which can facilitate the development of your reflective skills. these technologies are: Mahara (ePortfolio) and MindMup (mind mapping tool)

How do we choose workshop topics and content?

We are just starting to roll out the sessions we'll be running during October for staff and students at UCS. We are often asked, what influences our choice of topics and content?

We thought it might be useful to outline the process, and explain why it matters to you.

The topics are influenced by a number of factors, including, what people (staff and students at UCS) are requesting. We get this information from a various of sources, including, questions at the helpdesk, questions we are asked in our sessions, the course teams and curriculum development sessions.

When we design our workshop sessions we map the aims and activities to a number of external frameworks. These are:

1. Researcher Development Framework
2. Information Literacy Competencies (informed by Sconul 7 Pillars)
3. Graduate Employability Skills (CareerEDGE)
4. Descriptors for a Higher Education Qualification at Level 6 (QAA)

Why is this important?

We think this approach is really important as it ensures we meet your needs. For instance, an awareness of the Information Literacy Competencies, at the entry (basic) level, ensures the session tasks across a number of workshops meet the requirements;

• Recognize the importance of using good quality information resources to complete an assignment
• Clearly identify and understand the assignment question or problem

This should re-assure you that our the workshops are designed to develop your required skills and meet your future needs.

If you have any questions, please email learningservices@ucs.ac.uk

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Image - With Thanks - https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/24/58299511_2bcff18db2_b.jpg

Get Ahead Report: Science & Technology

We ran the forth Get Ahead course on the 15th and 16th September. This course was intended for students within Science and Technology. Six students attended the whole two days.

This post includes the materials we used (these will be added to over time), and some reflections on the sessions from our perspective.

Workshop Evaluation Posters (in groups of 4 or 5 people)

1. What three things have you taken from the course?
2. Which two things will you take forward into your learning?

Suggested Task: Twitter

An observation from the feedback poster session was the interest across the group in the use of Social Media. Therefore, a useful task when you receive your course handbooks, would be to look at the indicative reading (both people and organisations) and search for them on Twitter. A criteria to following the account, tweet about the appropriate content, tweet regularly.

Slides & Presentations

Get Ahead Report: Applied Social Science

We ran the second Get Ahead course on the 8th and 9th September. This course was intended for students within Applied Social Science. The attendance was good (35 students).

We've had lots of positive feedback from the students. The lego sessions run by Becky, Aaron and David seemed to be well received.

This post includes the materials we used (these will be added to over time), and some reflections on the sessions from our perspective.

However, to get started, what did a student take from the sessions and would they recommend it to a colleague?




With thanks to Sarah King

We encourage our Team members to reflect on the sessions they ran, or the programme. This is to encourage the benefits of reflective practice. The following is by Becky Blunk.

People say, “it’s not the size that counts,” but, in reflecting on our most recent Get Ahead programme for Applied Social Science students here at UCS, I beg to differ.  Numbers were definitely on our side as we were inundated with over 40 students from across various course areas such as Social Work, Early Childhood Studies, Criminology and other Psychology routes for our intensive (yes, it is that dramatic) 2-day programme in which we explored, together, the far sweeping availability of support within our new Learning Services team.  Of course, a large number of participants (so many, in fact, that we had to revise the schedule and include parallel sessions to best accommodate those in attendance) does not equate to providing a successful programme, however, it did provide those of us teaching an extra boost of encouragement to provide effective, meaningful sessions.

Although there is always room for improvement and opportunity to grow in teaching, one of the most positive results of this programme in particular was the way in which our team collaborated and worked together in our new roles within Learning Services.  Whether it was Sarah working with us to develop the timetable, Andy filling in to deliver the welcome and closing or David, Aaron and Jo helping me facilitate two LSP workshops, there was a great feeling that, although running a 2-day programme welcomes any number of problems, issues or confusion, the new Learning Services team was working in just that way- as a team.  And it is because of the way everyone involved seemed to be ready to assist other team members throughout the programme, that our potential for success in the future has been further unveiled to students and the rest of the UCS community.   

 Workshop Evaluation Posters (in groups of 4 or 5 people)

1. What three things have you taken from the course?
2. Which two things will you take forward into your learning?

Selection of Session Materials

Supporting Maths: Data Analysis (1.32 mins to 12.00 mins)




Maths Support: Applied Social Science

Get Ahead Session Report: Nursing, Midwifery & Health

We ran the session on the 1st and 2nd September for Nursing, Midwifery and Health students (15 student in total). Some of the session slides are linked below. The feedback at the end of day 2 was very positive. We'll collect feedback across all five sessions and report on impact, and changes in the future.

I have listed some of the resources used during the 2 days below at the end of this post.

From my perspective, I thought my sessions went well. The two sessions I ran where Maths Support at UCS, and the closing activity using a poster activity. The Maths Support is always a tricky one given the breadth of maths they will do during the year, and their previous experiences. Therefore, the aims were to re-assure and build confidence using typical maths questions they'll encounter and talking through the support routes. The pitch was to re-assure, not shock and awe !!

The confidence building activities are always fun. It involves getting them into groups of three or four, and working through some past paper questions. After which they have to write an exam question based on those we've seen, and these need to be answered by the other groups. One group proposed the following:

Peter is prescribed amoxycillia 250mg, 3 times a day, for 7 days. How many grams will he need in a week? a) 0.525g, b) 5.25g, c) 52.5g, d) 525g

Mark Illman (with help from Jo Calver as an observer/participant) has reflected on his session. The session started with a discussion of the different types of learning activities that were likely to take place in HE and how these activities represented certain styles of learning. This was followed by an introduction to Honey and Mumford’s concept of learning styles, and moving on from this all participants were given a questionnaire designed by Honey and Mumford to find out about their own learning preferences, with statements about learning that participants were asked to either agree or disagree with. The questionnaire was designed to identify preferences for four learning styles: activist, reflector, theorist, and pragmatist.


After the results were interpreted, each student discovered that they had a profile which was quite individual and unique, but which could develop and change over time. This was graphically demonstrated by students drawing their own colour profile on the whiteboard as a diagram for the whole class to see and compare with others. The class then moved on to discuss how learners could choose and adapt learning activities to suit their own learning preferences. For example, people preferring a more active style of learning might benefit from creating mindmaps incorporating colours and diagrams to record lectures or enjoy forming peer discussion groups (chat and coffee?) to reflect on materials presented in lectures. In this way, practical methods of adapting learning activities to suit learning preferences were introduced as a way for people to overcome any frustration or difficulties when faced with a potentially unfavourable learning environment.


It was generally felt that all participants enjoyed the session and came away having learnt something interesting and helpful about themselves, which they were encouraged to discuss with others. Several people commented that the knowledge gained from the session would serve them well throughout their studies at UCS.

Workshop Evaluation Posters (in groups of 4 or 5 people)

1. What three things have you taken from the course?
2. Which two things will you take forward into your learning?

Poster from student group: This is what they took away (networking, referencing, orientation) and will take forward (planning and goal setting)

Selection of session resources

• Harvard Referencing
• Information Sources and Searching