2nd Annual University of Glasgow Learning and Teaching Conference: Promoting Student Success through the Curriculum
The conference took place on Friday 24th April 2009 in the Charles Wilson Building and focused particularly on curriculum developments with regard to:
- First year students
- International students
- Taught postgraduate students
- Assessment and feedback practices
Once again the conference provided a platform for colleagues to communicate and share ideas, outcomes of development work, research or scholarship and their good practice in learning and teaching.
Conference Proceedings 2009 are now available. In addition to the conference proceedings, Powerpoint presentations and other information (where relevant) are now available.
Video footage of keynote given by Dr Mary Gilmartin.
The conference keynote address was given by Dr Mary Gilmartin from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Her keynote address was entitled: "How about we figure a time and get this thing rolling?: Re-negotiating the teaching-learning nexus with first year students."
Engaging first year students is a significant challenge for educators globally. Faced with this challenge, and drawing on our earlier experiences with second year students as well as an opportunity provided by the University to pilot innovative approaches to large group teaching, we radically transformed a pre-existing first year human geography module and delivered it to 400 students for the first time in 2006-07. Underlying our new approach was the desire to be more student-centred, to use inquiry-based approaches, and to blend face-to-face with online and more active learning techniques. In this paper, we discuss our efforts to engage first year students using this approach in the pilot and in subsequent years. We analyze in particular the shift from teaching to learning experienced by all participants, as well as the favourable and unexpected consequences of this change. We argue that this approach has the potential to transform first year engagement, but for this to happen a redefinition of roles and responsibilities within the learning process is required.
Mary Gilmartin is a lecturer in geography at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, having previously worked at University College Dublin and at Nottingham Trent University. She completed a PhD in Geography at the University of Kentucky in 2001. Mary teaches at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, from first year modules with 500 students to PhD modules with 5-10 students, and she is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education. Her research interests lie at the intersection of cultural, political and social geography, and currently focus on contemporary migration to Ireland.
Details of the 1st University of Glasgow Learning and Teaching Conference.