Phil Race

With thanks to Prof Phil Newton of Swansea University, for great discussions two weeks ago, I’ve prepared this little handout about reasons why ‘contract cheating’ may occur, and some ways round it. I;ve also pasted a link to a THE article this week by Bruce Macfarlane, who questions whether it’s a ‘moral panic’. Decide.
Combatting-contract-cheating-w.docx (669 downloads)
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/moral-panic-over-student-cheating-must-end

Thank you for making me so welcome today, especially to Mark and Marie. One apology: the materials I borrowed from my better half Sally come from No.13 on the slides of sources, rather than No.17 (as she reminded me tonight).
Here are most of the main slides we used, not in the order we used them – as you know, I dipped and dived all over the place during the day.  Swansea-2017-7w.pptx (670 downloads) I had to edit out the pictures and video clips to make the file size fit onto my website.
When I return on the 21st, my morning session will run in roughly the same order, but I will choose different workshop activities, so those present on the 7th please expect some new slides on the 21st, and for those on the 21st, please have a look at the slides posted on the 7th to get the best of both worlds.
Looking forward to my family weekend in Wales, and to returning on the 21st.

Below is a link to the HEA web page announcing details of the National Teaching Fellows for 2017. Congratulations to everyone winning this year. Excellent teaching duly recognised. https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/about/news/hea-announces-national-teaching-fellowship-scheme-awards-and-collaborative-award-1

My thoughts are also with all those who didn’t win this year, but still have the kudos of having been selected by their institutions for their excellent teaching. I know what a difficult task it is for reviewers to choose the winners from such a distinguished group of aspirants, and all deserve congratulations.

Today the THE published the overall results of this year’s NSS. Already, on Twitter @Wonkhe has analysed the data, including links to the TEF awards earlier this year, from which a fascinating sortable table can be downloaded. I’ve copied the raw NSS data from THE into the following word document.  nss-2017-w.docx (636 downloads)

Can I try to answer some of your questions about learning, teaching, feedback and assessment? I can not guarantee, of course, that my answers will be sensible!
For most of August, apart from the usual frantic few days in Edinburgh delighting in Festival events, I’m pottering around at or near home in Newcastle. I propose to have a go at answering some questions posed by readers of this site (and of Twitter), so please feel free to email me one or two short sharp questions, and I’ll have a go. If you’re willing for your question and my response to be included in a reply-blog on this site, please indicate so, and include your email or Twitter handle. Over to you…

This week, Sally and I are helping a group of colleagues from Leeds Beckett at an away-days residential at a conference venue in Leeds get going with writing materials on teaching, learning and assessment to submit for publication. Any slides we use will appear on this website later – the handouts are here:  developing-your-writing-w.doc (645 downloads)   Co-authoring-multipuposing-networking-w.docx (511 downloads)   Getting-published-in-Journals-with-top-LT-from-Google-docx-w1.docx (612 downloads)
The main slides Sally and I used are here:  GetPublished-Leeds-Beckett-Sally-and-Phils-main-slides.pptx (576 downloads)
I really enjoyed seeing you all and working with you, and wish you all the best with your future plans to write and get published.

This extract is from my disc version of most of Chapter 9 from the 2014 edition of ‘Making Learning Happen’, where I attempted to provide creative or practical solutions to a number of the problems which can be encountered when teaching in higher education. You may well have better solutions of your own – please share.  Thanks again to all the folk who helped supply the problems.  What-can-I-do-when-...-w.docx (3226 downloads)

Here are the main slides (minus the pictures) I used in my morning keynote.  Thanks for all the Tweets – you were a great audience. Don’t forget you can load loads of detail from the links in the slides.  Smarter-Assessment-Manchester-2017-w.pptx (703 downloads)

Today, the Times Higher published online the TEF results (in a table of “TEF results 2017: gold, silver or bronze? HEIs and alternative providers with university title”. So far, the press coverage we have seen or heard is mostly about some institutions feeling unfairly treated, rather than about those who have done well celebrating. It is interesting to note where institutions with the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2016-2017 (which did not inform the TEF) best scores lie in the new table. Whether the metrics really measure ‘teaching excellence’ is of course a matter for some debate! Sally and I thought it might be useful to have a compact version where all the information could be on a two-sided sheet (if your printer will cope with narrow margins), so here is a version which you can download and print, or look at online.  TEF-table-4a.docx (646 downloads) . For more detail please go to the original on:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/teaching-excellence-framework-tef-results-2017

 

It was a real pleasure to return to my original university to run two half-day workshops on learning, feedback, assessment and lecturing. (Photo of one of the fine views from the 8th floor)

The workshops were supposed to be repeats, but of course were not, as different groups asked different questions to which I responded. Therefore the main slides which you can download here will contain things one or other group didn’t do, so please look carefully at those slides – and better still, get a colleague who attended the other workshop to talk you through them, so that they learn by verbalising.  Newcastle-Business-School-2017-w.pptx (557 downloads)