Phil Race

I am delighted to announce that I have been given the title of Visiting Professor within the Centre for Learning and Teaching, at Edge Hill University – and so indeed has Sally!
I am also delighted that we are visiting Edge Hill next week for the Solstice Conference, and look forward to working closely with the University.

Here are the main slides (minus the pictures, video clips etc which would have made the file too large) from our afternoon workshop today. Durham-2017-ww.pptx (568 downloads)  . The accompanying ‘content’ can be downloaded from the link in the post below.

On a cool, damp Bank holiday I set myself the task of extracting things from the respective chapters on lecturing in the 3rd edition of ‘Making Learning Happen’ and the 4th edition of ‘The Lecturer’s Toolkit’, to make the main ideas more accessible to anyone who might benefit from them. The resulting download is here:  Phil-on-lectures.docx (8500 downloads)

Here are the main slides we used at today’s workshop. Thanks for being such a great group, and allowing me to boss you around and keep you to time!  We covered a great deal I think, and I hope your afternoon planning meeting went really well.  Thanks for all the Tweets too. Also, special thanks to Helen who organised it all, and to Nicole who booked my travel and accommodation so effectively. It was a pleasure to visit (very wet) Worcester – I think the rain is on its way North now!
Do raid my website for anything else which helps you make assessment and feedback work well for students and for yourselves. Towards-assessment-as-learning-Worcester-2017-W-.pptx (576 downloads)

Thanks for participating in this workshop. Here are the main  slides. Do also download the materials from my webside mentioned in the slides.   reinventing-assessment-15-2017-rgu-w.pptx (550 downloads)

Great being in Aberdeen on a gloriously sunny day for this conference. Here are the main slides I used in my keynote.  Thanks for being such a warm audience. Looking forward now to joining in to the rest of the conference.  Towards-assessment-as-learning-RGU-2017-W.pptx (555 downloads)

Here also are all the replies to ‘Making assessment and feedback work more effectively and efficiently for myself and my students would be much better if only I…’  LTC-17-Keynote-Exercise-Phil-Race.docx (512 downloads)

Great to be at this conference in Bristol. Here are the slides I used in my morning keynote, and the bits I didn’t use, including Question 6 and the conclusions. You were a fabulous audience, thanks for joining in so heartily. How-students-really-learn-CABS-Bristol-2017-w.pptx (660 downloads)

On Monday 27th March, Sally and I are flying to Venice then on to Padua where we are delighted to be presenting alongside Kay Sambell, Fabio D’Arico and David Nicol at a conference on assessment at the ancient University of Padua. We will be seeing some Giottos while  we are there as well as visiting the oldest university botanical garden in the world. We also saw Galileo’s desk (pictured)
Then later in the week we are going to Venice for a three day break with no work at all! Our slides for our workshop and presentation at Padua are here:  Padua-1st-sessionn-2017-2.pptx (498 downloads)   Padua-Assess4Engagement-pr2.pptx (519 downloads)

I enjoyed leading this workshop today, with participants consisting of colleagues from Leeds Beckett, Leeds University, Bradford University, Salford University, Bolton University, Sheffield University, the Open University, Doncaster College, and Cumbria University, and with Cathy Brown representing the HEA, and hosted by Professor Ruth Pickford (NTF). I ran this on behalf of the Committee of the Association of National Teaching Fellows. The CANTF slides I used are attached here:  ANTF-prospective-NTFs-2017-New-Deadline-pr2.pptx (545 downloads)
Participants thought of the following great questions, which we tried our hardest to address and answer:

• Does the marking scheme apply in the same way to each of the three criteria i.e. impact internally and externally?
• How can excellence be evidenced?
• What is meant by ‘show us rather than tell us?’ What would that look like in practice?
• What examples of excellence are beyond the day job?
• What is the success rate for applications? How many apply and how many are awarded?
• How many achieve NTF on second application?
• How can we standardise outstanding?
• What more can the HEA do to assist institutional contacts and nominees (from HEA Rep)?
• What is acceptable in terms of evidence from colleagues?
• What are the key common characteristics of successful/unsuccessful applications?
• If each section is read separately do you have to repeat context scene setting?
• Please provide clarification of what ‘the student voice’ looks like in an exceptional NTF application?
• Is there a requirement for the scope of impact of a practitioner’s work?
• I need a better understanding of what ‘five points’ and ‘outstanding’ means
• How many initiatives should be discussed in each section or is one long project okay?
• What are reviewers looking for in terms of distinctive practice?
• What do we need to do to support a series and succession planning for applications year on year?

I hope the workshop helps aspirants to achieve NTFs this year or next year – and good luck.

I failed in my proof-reading! They put Question 5 in twice, in Chapter 1. The question at the top of p.19 should be as follows:

Question 6
(a)   Still thinking of the first time you helped other people get a grip on that particular topic, think back to the first time you attempted to see how well they’d ‘got it’. Think of the first time you tried to measure their learning of the topic.

(b)   To what extent did you find that after that first occasion of measuring or assessing their learning, you yourself had made sense of the topic even more deeply? Choose one of the three options which follow:

• Very much better
• Somewhat better
• No better

(Many thanks to Will Haywood for spotting this and sending me a message on Twitter).