At the Higher Education Academy STEM conference in April 2012, I presented a poster offering an outline into a blended-learning tutorial we have produced in order to help undergraduates develop their abilities to evaluate the academic merit of different resources they might find on the internet. The tutorial involves the students working individually to critique [...]
Effective Learning in the Life Sciences
Today I have received my copy of Effective Learning in the Life Sciences: how students can achieve their full potential. As the subtitle implies, the book is targeted first and foremost at students wanting to make the most of their time at university, and at academics helping them to reach that goal. 1. Creativity (David Adams [...]
Threshold concepts and Friendfeed – a window into troublesome knowledge?
On January 24th 2011 we were treated to a very thought-provoking seminar on “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: A Transformational Approach to Learning” as part of the University of Leicester’s Intrepid Researcher series. I won’t make extensive notes on the content of the presentation here because a very similar set of slides can be accessed here [...]
Obituary: the death of a dear friend?
We are all aware that the UK is in a financial mess and savings need to be made. The nearer the guillotine falls to your areas of interest the more intensely you are going to feel the pain. The tragedy comes when cuts kill off services of genuine merit and value. The recent announcement that [...]
Science Education in Europe: Plotting a course for the future?
Somewhat belatedly I have been catching up on a couple of reports about the future of Science teaching in Europe. Both were prompted by widespread concern that school science in its present form is not meeting the needs of society for the 21st Century. The decline in students’ attitudes towards science – apparently universal across [...]
You know when you’ve been viper-ed
A tweet this morning from @jon_scott alerted me to the fact that sometime over the weekend, the University of Leicester has been visited by the PR machine for the Viper service. Paving slabs had been stencilled with the company’s logo and web address. Rather ingeniously, the marketeers have jet-washed the image rather than painting it [...]
“Will this be in the test?”
Amongst the major science research journals, Science magazine has consistently been the most prominent in flying the flag for science education. I was very interested, therefore, in an Editorial by Carl Wieman in the September 4th 2009 issue of the magazine. In his piece Galvanising Science Departments, Wieman describes some fairly radical innovations in Science Education [...]
Educational Research: Reflections of Biopractitioners
The Higher Education Academy Centre for Bioscience Pedagogic Research in the Biosciences day conference brought together about thirty academics, for the most part Bioscience specialists, who have been involved to educational research. The day turned out to be highly informative and thought provoking. Some on the hoof reflections were collated via Twitter – click this [...]
To send is no guarantee of (meaningful) receipt
I was chastised recently (and rightly so) for failure to respond to an e-mail sent by a colleague. It did set me thinking, however, about a possible analogy between e-mail and teaching. This may be old hat, so apologies if I’ve reinvented the round thing with tyres. People tend to make the assumption when an [...]
Marking, remarking and meaningful learning
“Marking, remarking and meaningful learning: an assessment and feedback seminar” was held at the University of Leicester on April 4th 2008. The event was organised by the Assessment and Feedback Working party of the University’s Student Experience Enhancement Committee and was attended by about 60 members of the academic community. The following are personal reflections and things [...]
