Centre Update October 2010
Contents
Centre News
Teaching Development Fund - Round 13
The Centre is pleased to announce the availability of grants of up to £4,000 for members of the HE bioscience community to encourage the development, establishment or validation of innovative learning, teaching and assessment materials or methods, and to encourage pedagogic research in the Biosciences. The total funding available for this round is £12,000 and we anticipate funding three or four projects (with a maximum award for individual projects of £4,000). For further details please visit www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/funding/tdf/
Deadline for applications: Wednesday 15th December 2010
The OeRBITAL project
The Centre has recently commenced a second Open Educational Resources (OERs) project, OeRBITAL (Open educational Resources for Bioscientists Involved in Teaching, Assessment and Learning). OER resources need to achieve a sustainable “orbit” i.e. be shared, used, developed and re-released to enable learning resources to be shared for maximum benefit. In partnership with the bioscience learning and teaching community and the relevant Learned Societies and National Subject Associations we will seek to identify and signpost OERs for a range of bioscience disciplines.
We will be commissioning a number of bioscience academics as ‘Discipline Consultants’ to discover and promote the best available OERs and work with selected examples as exemplar resources. We will also be working directly with a number of learning technologists. Watch out for our call forthcoming call for Discipline Consultants in the next few weeks. For further information about OeRBITAL please see www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/oer/
Student Award 2011
 Our Student Award for 2011 is now open and we want to hear from students about "The pluses and minuses of maths on my bioscience course". Entries can be a poster, leaflet, PowerPoint presentation, video/film, podcast, social media entry (e.g. blog, wiki or web page) or written entry. Full details about the award, including criteria, competition rules and the entry from are available from www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/funding/essay/award11.aspx
Deadline for entries - 8th April 2011. Please pass the message on to your students!
Updated New Lecturers Folder - reminder
Our popular New Lecturers Folder has been updated for 2010/2011 and copies are available to order from the Centre. The folder brings together advice and resources aimed at new bioscience lecturers and can be added to over time to build a personalised collection of resources and references.
Find out more about the folder and how to order copies from www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/resourcepack.aspx
Publications
We are having a "stock clearance" and have a number of publications available to request from the Centre. If you would like copies of any of the following, free of charge, please contact us on heabioscience@leeds.ac.uk
Centre Events
Mathematical Challenges for Biologists
Tuesday 16th November 2010, University of Reading
This event, organised by the UK Centre for Bioscience, in collaboration with the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, will explore a wide range of issues associated with maths provision as students progress from school to university undergraduate programmes to postgraduate studies and employment.
Last three places remaining! Event programme and registration available at www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/events/mathsreading161110.aspx
Using Technology to Enhance Feedback
Tuesday 14th December 2010, Roehampton University, London
As most of you will be aware feedback to students is very much in the spotlight, with most institutions keen to raise their score in the National Student Survey. This event will explore the use of different digital media for enhancing feedback and feed-forward provision to students. During the course of the day you will have opportunities to see how different technologies can help to enhance your feedback provision.
Although the workshop will have a strong bioscience element the material presented will be applicable to other disciplines. The day is co-organised with the ASSET project.
Event programme and registration available at www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/events/roehampton141210.aspx
Effective Learning in the Biosciences 2011 - Equipping Students for the 21st Century
Thursday 30th June and Friday 1st July 2011, Edinburgh
This international conference organised by the UK Centre for Bioscience will provide a platform to consider how we nurture and inspire all bioscience students to realise their full potential, and will:
- showcase and disseminate evidence informed practice in the biosciences from the UK and overseas;
- explore how we can most effectively engage bioscience students to maximise their learning and achievement; and
- provide networking and professional development opportunities for participants.
The programme will include keynote lectures, short oral presentations, workshops, a poster session and lots of opportunity for informal discussion. Further details about the conference will be available soon from our website at www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/bioconf/
A call for contributions will be issued soon and registration opens December 2010. We look forward to seeing you in Edinburgh!
News from the HE Learning and Teaching Community
A framework for evaluating educational activities
This resource comprises a series of documents and guides which constitute an evaluation framework for planning and evaluating educational activities and resources for use primarily in higher education, though with potential for use beyond. This resource is modified from an evaluation framework produced for the six Higher Education Academy Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) Subject Centres. Further information: http://open.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/11220
Do you find yourself struggling to help your students understand how to formulate a good hypothesis?
Then you are not alone! Recently, a large Australian research project team led by Charlotte Taylor (University of Sydney, Australia) has found that many students find it particularly difficult to develop an understanding of what information a hypothesis should contain, and how it should be constructed. The concept of an hypothesis has been put forward as a Threshold Concept in Biology and the capacity to formulate one represents, in particular, the discursive aspect (part of the ontological shift) of 'how Biologists think'.
Many students find it particularly troublesome to understand what an hypothesis is really about, but once they do come understand this concept, their thinking is transformed into something more closely resembling the scientific thinking of experts in bioscience. Jan ‘Erik’ Meyer (Durham University) is one of the key experts in the field of threshold concepts, and is currently developing a psychometric instrument to capture variation in bioscience students' understanding of hypotheses. The domain of this instrument is grounded in a qualitative analysis of students' written explanations of what a hypothesis entails.
If you are interested in finding out more about this project, and in helping us to develop this instrument, then please contact Kirsten Zimbardi (University of Queensland, Australia) at k.zimbardi@uq.edu.au — we look forward to hearing from you!
Improve your 3 Rs — Recruitment, Retention, Results
Under the requirements of the Disability Equality Duty public bodies such as universities and colleges are required to produce either a dedicated Disability Equality Scheme or a broader Single Equality Scheme covering all strands of equality. The Disability Equality Duty provides an opportunity to take a fresh and sustainable
approach to current practice and can be a driver for other positive developments
that can improve recruitment, retention and results. Jisc TechDis have produced a short guide to the Single Equality Act and how it can improve your 3 Rs. Download the guide in full from www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/sed
Events from the HE Learning and Teaching Community
British Conference for Undergraduate Research: Call for Contributions
Tuesday 19th - Wednesday 20th April 2011, UCLan
The British Conference of Undergraduate Research will bring together undergraduate students from across the UK (and beyond) to share their research through poster presentations, spoken papers and workshops. This is an opportunity for students to present dissertations, intern projects and any other original research they have developed through the course of their studies. There will also be a separate strand for academic staff to share their
experiences of implementing undergraduate research in their institutions. Submissions from all disciplines are welcome. Please visit www.bcur.org/ for further details.
Deadline for submissions: Friday 3rd December 2010
Surveys for Enhancement Conference 2011: Call for Contributions
Thursday 19th May 2011, National College for School Leadership, Nottingham
The conference will bring together research and practice in using student experience surveys to enhance learning and teaching. Sessions will include invited speakers, parallel presentations and a Question Time-style discussion. The event will involve a broad range of people interested in using student experience data to enhance policy and practice, such as senior management with strategic learning and teaching roles, educational developers, lecturers and students.
Contributions are sought for presentations and mini-workshop sessions relating to the theme of the event. For further information and details on submitting a contribution please see www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2011/academyevents/19_May_Surveys_For_Enhancement
Deadline for submissions: Friday 10th December 2010
Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development Online Courses
Various dates in 2010 and 2011
A range of online courses (four to six weeks long) and webinars on a variety of learning and teaching topics including; Reflective Learning; Teaching International Students; Teaching Online Courses; and Online Identity. The courses are activity-based, supported by course texts and specially developed online resources. Webinars last for one day and provide a quick briefing from an expert in the field.
For further details please see www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/online/
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