Academic & Digital Development

Active Learning Network Meeting

What has inspired you over the last year? What has made you think? What has made you smile, or given you joy?  In this one-hour get-together, we'd like to encourage you to share something that you have recently discovered that will be informing your practices in the upcoming session.   Maybe it was something that you saw at the UofG Learning and Teaching Conference, something that you came across at an Active Learning Network event or another event that you attended, or some illuminating reading or resources that you found – whatever it is, we’d like to hear all about it.  

Join us at this meeting to share your experiences, hear from others in the network, and help us to plan for future events. 

ALN CPD Series: Assessment and Feedback Practices

Haikus for learning – Dr Jessica Clare Hancock

Padlet Poetry – Dr Melanie Stockton-Brown

The ‘Reflective Elevator Pitch’ – Dr Samuel Saunders

ALN CPD Series: Assessment and Feedback Practices

Assessed presentations to a non-expert audience – Isobel Gowers

Active assessment literacy – Aimee Merrydew and Matt East

Using Active Engagement Assessments (AEA) for active learning – Patricia Perlman-Dee

Writing for the Learning and Teaching Conference

In this session we will look at what makes a good L&T conference submission. Taking the call to the 2024 conference as our starting point, we will consider how we might start to frame an abstract: from choosing a topic, aligning it to the conference themes, and writing an appealing title. We will take some of the successful submissions from previous years and, by using the review rubric for the 2024 conference, evaluate them together.  

By the end of this session attendees should be in a position to write their own abstract for the 2024 session.  

ALN CPD Series: Assessment and Feedback Practices

Using online comic strip generators to enhance the student experience in bioscience education – Dr Shelini Surendran and Geyan Sasha Surendran

Digital storytelling: encouraging active learning through collaborative team projects – Richard Beggs 

Story Game-Based Learning – Tab Betts

ALN CPD Series: Become an Active Learning champion

Reflection on series and brainstorming how to evidence for champions badges

Applying for Student-Staff Partnership Scheme (SSPS)  

The Learning and Teaching Development Fund (LTDF) supports developments in the practice of learning and teaching that will make significant contributions to the enhancement of learning and teaching across the University and to the delivery of the objectives of the Learning and Teaching Strategy. This call for bids is specifically targeted at partnership work between students and members of academic staff. 

In this session we will look at what makes a good SSPS application by looking at the current call for bids in detail. Staff involved in previous SSPS projects will join the session to answer questions and contribute to a ‘warts and all’ discussion of the processes involved in applying for, and successfully running, a project. By the end of this session attendees should be in a position to write their own application for the next round of funding.  

This session is aimed at colleagues who would like to know more about the SoTL Funding Scheme and are interested in applying. We will look through the call for bids for 2024-25 and consider which types of project might be eligible. Members of the network who have been successful in their bids will be available to talk about their projects and offer advice.

Student-centred active learning constitutes the first pillar of UofG’s learning and teaching strategy and seeks to enable students to:

1. engage more deeply with course material in the discipline,
2. learn more effectively,
3. perform better in assessment, and
4. develop more fully as critical thinkers.

The university has made a commitment to supporting active learning face-to-face and online, through enhanced physical and virtual spaces that promote independent reflection, and cooperative and collaborative learning. This session builds on the foundations for a manifesto for active learning originally introduced at this year's L&T conference, and invites a range of stakeholders to contribute to the underlying principles and associated practices for active learning that all staff and students can commit to. Link to join

Have you ever wanted to start blogging but are not sure if it’s worthwhile, or where to start? We think that blogs can be a good vehicle to let people about work you’re doing or have done; to showcase your findings; to get feedback on the what you’ve been doing; to ‘talk out loud’ about ideas that you might turn into articles or even books; and generally to keep yourself in the public eye. Unlike with journals, you can turn an idea into published content quickly.

Join us this month to talk to colleagues who blog regularly or irregularly, and to find out how you can get started with your blogging journey by publishing on one of our blogs. Link to join

It is quite common to begin SoTL projects at the beginning of the academic year or semester. This month we are looking into the questions we need to ask in order to launch a successful SoTL project and how to ensure that it is linked to your career journey.

 Do you struggle to find the time and motivation for SoTL? Would having a bit of structure and some peer pressure help? Join us today to find out about our ideas for SoTLWriMo (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Writing Month) and help us to finalise them. Inspired by other monthly writing activities such as NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and AcWriMo (Academic Writing Month) we will set ourselves a target for the month of November and look at strategies to support it.

An opportunity to reflect on the semester so far and to celebrate any successes, however small.

This session is aimed at colleagues who would like to know more about the SoTL Funding Scheme and are interested in applying. We will look through the call for bids for 2024-25 and consider which types of project might be eligible. Members of the network who have been successful in their bids will be available to talk about their projects and offer advice.

As this meeting is on the same day as the Learning and Teaching Conference there will be no online meeting today. Members of the network are encouraged to sign up for the conference and to look at the programme for SoTL sessions as well as networking during the conference lunch break.

Join us this month to talk about how to decide where to publish the results of your SoTL projects.