"I'm thrilled to have this help – we wouldn't have connected without the network" The MVLS ECR teaching network
Published: 21 September 2020
Public Health's Claire Hastie and General Practice and Primary Care's Selina Wu tell us how membership of this vital network has offered them opportunities for collaborative working from which they have both gained
The aim of the ECR teaching network is to act as a bridge between staff in the School of Life Sciences and ECRs in the College of Medical, Veterinary, and Life Sciences (MVLS) research institutes.
Claire Hastie (Public Health) and Selina Wu (General Practice and Primary Care) would like to promote the network and have outlined here how it helped them.
Claire
I recently took over as Public Health lead on the BSc (Med Sci) Clinical Medicine course. As well as a fair bit of admin and organisation this involves teaching. I can manage weekly lectures and seminars, but when I found out I had to facilitate a weekly journal club (in person, on Fridays which I don’t work) my heart sank.
While wondering whether anyone might be able to assist, I remembered the ECR teaching network. Its creator, Claire Donald, presented it to the ECR Forum last year. Its purpose is to link teaching staff who are looking for support with ECRs who would like some formal teaching experience. I posted an advert on the Teams channel and very quickly received a response from IHW’s own Selina Wu. We had a chat about what was involved and she offered to facilitate all 11 Public Health journal clubs.
I am just thrilled to have her help; thank you Selina. We have met before, but without the network we wouldn’t have connected.
Selina
I’m doing a PhD and would like to gain some teaching experience.
I saw the vacancy of doing the facilitator for the Journal Club on ECR Teaching Network. I ever did it online once before and found it very interesting. Moreover, I think it is a good start for teaching. I really did learn something from the preparation and the presentation and discussion of the students. I appreciate the most is that I’ve got the confidence of standing in front of the students, leading the discussion, answering their questions, maintaining good orders, and dealing with any unexpected circumstances.
I think it’s definitely a valuable experience!
First published: 21 September 2020
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