Loughborough university learning and teaching strategy
Accessibility Skip to content Getting in touch How to find us. The largest divergence can be found between BME Black Minority and Ethnic Students and White British students. Leaving an education institution with lower grades has lifetime effects; this limits BME students into pursuing a potential post-graduate education where the requirements generally tend to be a 2: Most graduate employers will require a 2: The problem arises as many BME students enter university with the same grade classification as their white counterparts. However, BME students leave university with significantly lower grades in comparison to their white peers. Homogenising all minority students is unhelpful as they are a diverse group with differing outcomes. For example, Black and Caribbean students are the worst affected group at a national level. Students from Pakistani, Chinese and Indian backgrounds are also affected. A reliance on a meritocratic model to understand academic achievement has meant that the BME attainment gap was, and sometimes and is, framed as a problem caused by a limitation in the students themselves. This is also known as a deficit model. However, the attainment gap would not be a national problem if it were a meritocratic issue only. This strategy the question of whether there are conditions within our educational institutions that negatively impact BME students both culturally and academically, and which contribute to the existence of the attainment gap. There is no sole contributor to the attainment gap. Multiple factors contribute to students being unable to reach their potential and attain a top degree. It can be due to geographical location, teaching insensitivity towards culture, a Euro-centric based curriculum, methods of assessment, and experiences of racism which go beyond the classroom and have a lasting impact on student life. Additionally, social interactions within clubs and societies can also impact on academic performance. These points are often dismissed as generalisations that potentially impact all students; however, to tackle the BME attainment gap one must consider how these factors work together in a negative way to disproportionately affect BME students. What can be done? A way of tackling this is institution specific research, which does not homogenise institutions and lived experiences. Such research can become a catalyst for tackling the BME attainment gap strategy a structural and an institutional level. Loughborough prides itself on being an inclusive university and is aiming to tackle this national problem on an institutional level! This research project will be carried out so that we as an institution can further our progress towards making education inclusive by raising standards and aspirations of all! I want to congratulate Loughborough University for putting diversity on the agenda and I am thrilled to have support from the University and the above academics who are committed to learning from the experiences of students in order to deliver the best education possible. Information taken from the ECU: In this post, Dr. In a laboratory-teaching environment, students are very much focused on getting to the end product of an experiment whether it is a compound and and form of analysissometimes without taking in or thinking about the steps to get to the end of the experiment. Students are normally provided with a laboratory manual, which gives detailed instructions for completing their experimental work. Although the laboratory is sometimes considered to play a supporting role to the lecture in higher education, it is vital with respect to STEM subjects. Through personal observation, when students are encouraged to discuss their knowledge loughborough their peers in the laboratory, there is much more engagement with the material. Information is retained as knowledge is generally disseminated in their own language without necessarily using a large amount of technical jargon. This will allow students to explore the higher levels of learning objectives. Students will be provided with a laboratory technique, which, in small groups of students, they will evaluate research and disseminate the information back to their peers through instructional videos. The initial part of the university was to identify key techniques, which are considered to be fundamental to a students training within chemistry. Once identified, students were selected to carry out pilot studies strategy order to test the concepts outlined in the TIA. These students were selected from a group teaching Chemistry Student Helpers, some of whom have also been involved in the Peer Assisted Learning Scheme. Students were then split into small groups and techniques were assigned to them. They got together to plan how to disseminate the information in the form of a video and then started to put together the videos. What did the students who were involved say about this project? The next steps for the project are to use student focus groups to gain feedback for the videos and this type of learning from a wider group of students. This will be carried out after the Easter break. A submission has been made and accepted to present at the RAISE conference, which is going to and held in Manchester in September during which the work will be presented. Continuing our series of updates on the Teaching Innovation AwardsProf. Jo Bullard explains how a regular sandbox can be transformed into a unique teaching and learning experience. What is so special about a box of sand? Well this one has been built using a Teaching Innovation Award aimed at using augmented reality to improve geomorphological understanding. When the box of sand is connected to a camera and projector learning becomes possible for users to create and visualize strategy. As the sand is sculpted, contours are projected on to the miniature landscape. How was it developed? The basic programming for the Sandbox learning open source software developed at UCDavis and Computer Science student Yuan Tian and technician Kip Sahnsi worked last summer to get the computer code university on a special computer. In the meantime Joanna Bullard and Richard Harland in Geography built the box which is on wheels so that it can be transferred between Geography and Computer Science and also to other events on campus. There are a few sandboxes now up and running in the UK. In December Prof. Jo Bullard from Loughborough University, Dr. And Ockelford University of BrightonDr. Lynda Yorke Bangor University and Dr. Chris Skinner University of Hull jointly convened a session at the American Geophysical Union Fall meeting on Technology-Enhanced Teaching in Geosciences which featured a number of papers exploring how to support undergraduate student learning using augmented reality and we are hoping to include some of these ideas in our teaching in the future. Our most recent CAP Forum focused on research-informed curriculum design. As a recent Research-informed Teaching Award winner, Dr Line Nyhagen took us through some of her wonderful successes and some of the challenges she has faced in four specific innovative teaching practices which loughborough designed to enhance student engagement. If you have any questions for Line about her experiences please feel free to contact her at l. Alternatively, if you have any ideas of topics you would like to deliver on or hear about for future CAP Forums, please let us know by emailing Dr Glynis Perkin at Loughborough. Yesterday and School of Business and Economics was privileged to host Prof. The workshop provided plenty of food for thought. Marco Bohr and Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, recipients of a Teaching Innovation Award TIAexplain what they hope to achieve with their project. What potential roles can blogging have in Higher Education? How can it enhance learning and the broader student experience? What legal and reputational issues need bearing in mind? How teaching blogging enhance research dissemination? The aim of this project is to consider such questions and thereby explore the strategy for blogging in and beyond the university. The project involves gathering information strategy current examples of the use of blogs to enhance student employability across HE. Later in the process, we will organise focus groups with Loughborough students to reflect on when best to introduce blogs in teaching. By the end of the project spring-summerwe aim to disseminate lessons learnt loughborough a one-day loughborough and a research paper. In loughborough post, Dr David Kerr and Dr Anthony Sutton, Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering, reflect on their project progress and plans for the future. Aims To create a suite of equipment and an integrated software framework that enables the quick and easy design and implementation of remotely accessed laboratories based on Internet of Things technology. The suite will be designed to provide a flexible and scalable development platform for laboratory-based course material. Progress so far Hardware concept — we are concentrating on a modular design concept, to allow a high degree of university and to increase ease of use. Modules will cater for a range of peripheral devices such as actuators, motors, switches, sensors and cameras for real-time vision. The diagram below shows the main hardware layout. The core of the system is the Raspberry Pi model 3, which acts as a webserver host and controller for the lab. The Raspberry Pi also hosts the camera module. Furthermore, the necessary software is either part of the Free Software Foundation FSF or has a Creative Commons license, and the hardware details are in the public domain. Software and GUI We are developing the web dashboard and server software in Python, using the Flask web development environment. All the software is FSF or public domain and there is an excellent developmental community, with an expected long future ahead of it. During the summer of we dedicated the initial design task to a bursary student for EESE, who constructed a successful prototype and interfaced this to our modular hardware. We decided this approach was preferable to tying in to an existing IoT provider such as ThingSpeak, where GUI development is limited and reliance on a third party could become complex and costly. We want eventually to build in access to existing local coursework setting and marking systems such a Learn and CASPA. Thus students using and on-line lab could submit their work on line and receive feedback and marks automatically within a realistic time loughborough. Pilot lab for demonstration We are continuing with the development of an exemplar on-line lab for Part B Mechanical Engineering students. This is in progress as a Part C undergraduate project in the Wolfson School. The lab is currently used in conventional form in our first year Fluid Mechanics module MMA The demonstrator should be available in a working form by the start of the summer term Given sufficient time, we plan to try out the remote version of this lab with student volunteers who have already experienced the conventional exercise, and obtain their feedback. This exercise has proved invaluable in helping to scope out concepts for commonly used interface modules. User engagement We intend actively to seek engagement with staff and other potential stakeholders such as Lab Technicians as well as students. A second Part C project is therefore underway to study and collate best practice from a review of existing remote laboratories used in the international FE and HE sectors. We plan to use a small scale survey of academic staff within the Wolfson School to ascertain possible take-up of this technology in the future. The results of the survey will form part of our final deliverables, and inform the final design concepts of our modular system. To make the system more flexible, we will be looking at ways of building in access to the hardware via more popular engineering software suits such as Matlab and LabVIEW. Matlab is particularly attractive in that it provides excellent data analysis tools with built-in access to the Raspberry Pi and Arduino hardware platforms we are using in the university. InDr Cheryl Travers set up a module to fill what she perceived as a gap in Learning and Teaching from her experience of being an academic occupational psychologist. She asks the students to write a diary which for the first time this year will take the form of an electronic portfolio thanks to her new innovative system loughborough students to log their thoughts. The and that followed focused mostly on her actual pedagogic research, and how other disciplines can apply her reflective goal setting model, from Arts students strategy STEM students, and even students wishing to learn a language while at University. Overall, it was an enjoyable afternoon with lively discussion, an abundance of food, and a wonderful talk by Dr Cheryl Travers. Self reflection, growth goals and academic outcomes: Unveiling a reflective diary methodology for exploring the lived experiences of stress and coping. Dr Thomas Steffen, a recipient of a Teaching Innovation Award TIAexplains how he has applied gamification to learning electrotechnology. This project set out with a rather simple idea: We all know that electricity cannot be seen and should not be felt, so how do you learn about it? The project quickly gained momentum and additional facets, and now it includes four novel aspects:. The browser based simulation Everycircuit is great to use in the lecture, and I have done that before. But this time I want to go further, and so I have embedded simulations strategy a number of summary pages on Learn. Students will also have the ability to modify existing simulations or to create new ones. The gamification aspect relies on a mobile game available in the Google Play Store, which includes a number of puzzles based on the same circuit simulator. So students get a familiar user interface, a portable way of learning, and the motivation of learning clear goals and tracked progress. If you have an Android device, you can try a demo at: Providing for students without a personal Android device is one of the challenges here, and there are a number of alternatives available. The open source textbook is an existing project at http: In many ways, it is rather conventional, teaching it does offer two key advantages: I do not expect to put much effort into the second part this time, but going learning that is teaching significant opportunity. Finally, I discovered a set of tutorial questions and exercises developed in Germany for a project in subject didactics in electrical engineering. The theoretical basis is a definition of two threshold concepts: Research on student understanding as a guide for the development of instructional materials in introductory engineering courses. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium for Engineering Education. The exercises are specifically designed and verified to reinforce these learning concepts and to avoid common misconceptions found in student responses. Has this affected your teaching? Close to the beginning of the semester, I find myself well equipped and prepared to deliver this module, teaching just from an academic perspective, but also from a pedagogical point of view. Using these resources allows me to free up lecturing time to make the lectures more interactive, it helps to provide ample of simulations, exercises, homework and tutorial questions for reinforcement, and it includes the novel element of gamification to keep students engaged. The interactive simulation has already been tried in a smaller postgraduate module, and was received very well by the students. The gamification part and the tutorials not been used so far, but a thorough evaluation is planned. An update will be provided once the results are in. Further information about the Teaching Innovation Award: Simon Martin, Department of Materials AACMErecently a conducted a survey that was aimed at establishing just how much student and staff attitudes to feedback differ, and how these gaps might be bridged. Materials staff were invited to take part in an identical survey. Concerns and issues experienced by staff and students surrounding assessment feedback indicated many similarities and a few differences giving potential clues to ways forward to improve the effectiveness of feedback. The results of the survey were shared with School staff at a recent lunchtime Learning and Teaching workshop aimed at finding ways to make university more relevant, effective and loughborough for students whilst also making it manageable and sustainable for academics to deliver. If you wish to know more about the survey results, methodology and indicated outcomes Simon Martin is happy to be contacted directly s. Legal information Freedom of Information Top of page. University home Prospective students Teaching News and events About us Schools and departments Research Working with business. Teaching and Learning Blog. Posted on June 15, by Tom Berry. Potential contributors There is no sole contributor to the attainment gap. What is Loughborough proposing to do? Posted on April 26, by Matt Hope. What is the problem, which you are trying address? What are the objectives of the project? To develop a blueprint to incorporate peer-based learning of core laboratory techniques within modules in Chemistry. Work with students to develop and evaluate the findings from the project. Student-led focus groups to test and discuss the blueprint to gain wider student perspective. How will the objectives of the project be met? Project so far The initial part of the project was to identify key techniques, which learning considered to be fundamental to a students training within chemistry. Next Steps The next steps for the project are to use student focus groups to gain feedback for the videos and this type of learning from a wider group of students. Posted on April 3, by Matt Hope. Posted on March 22, by Tom Berry. Previously, there had been no field visits in the Social Sciences Department, and so she sought advice from university Geography department on the basics and reflected on what went well and what she could improve after the first year of running the trip. The trip was very successful; the feedback from participating students was overwhelmingly positive, alongside a post on the department newsfeed talking of its success. However, the main challenge she faced was that the attendance on the trip was quite low. It involved students having to use a forum on Learn to get approval and feedback for their coursework title which could be about any topic they were interested in on the module. This fostered the sharing of ideas and allowed transparent formative feedback to be given to all students. Although this had many successes, it generated quite a lot of additional work for Line, and made a small proportion of students uncomfortable. Upon reflection, this year Line has chosen to produce both a list of essay titles and allow students to choose their own titles if they wish, nonetheless teaching must use the new general coursework forum for any questions related to coursework so that formative feedback continues to be shared among all students. A lot of learning discussion afterwards focused on this area and suggested ideas such as having the group as a whole come up with the list of questions and queried why it was online loughborough not in person in a session which was agreed would also work. This encouraged students to see themselves as both the researcher and the research subject, and allowing students to feel an ownership of the material being used to teach as it was university by themselves. This in turn increased student engagement. This topic also generated lots of questions and discussion about how the technique could be applied university teaching in other areas, for example as an university to reflecting on teaching assignments. She also asked her students to come up with campaign ideas and proposals for increasing awareness, which was an identified problem. As an unintended consequence of this session, Line was able to take these suggestions to the Athena SWAN Team in her the school, which she leads. She has also shared the class findings and policy proposals with teaching Director learning Student Services. Posted on March 16, by Gabi Witthaus. And is the best kind of assessment for learning — as opposed to the best assessment of learning? This had the dual effect of making the standards more consistent for all students and making the assessment tasks more interesting, flexible and varied. Thinking about assessment for learning also leads to authentic assessment tasks — i. Pauline gave examples of assessments for undergraduates involving them analysing real data sets e. Other examples involved accessing relevant data sets from employers on real problems they were and to solve. As an added bonus, they are more interesting for lecturers to mark! Authentic, inclusive tasks often require students to carry out group work. This is both a good reflection of the world of employment, and also an efficient way of managing assessment in large cohorts. The most common mistake made in designing group work tasks is to set a task that is not challenging enough — the task needs to be so big that it cannot possibly be done by one person, and complex enough that every group could potentially approach it from a different angle. Learning on March 14, by Matt Hope. What did you want to achieve? The project aims to consider five key areas: How will you gather this information? Posted on January 30, by Matt Hope. Objectives Develop a suit of hardware devices with sufficient flexibility to work with a range of typical sensors and actuators used in science and engineering labs Integrate these with a mobile and scalable software library that will operate on a range learning platforms currently used within the science and engineering field e. MatlabLabVIEW Provide a suitable web dashboard for students to interact with the system and carry out their experiments Involve stakeholders technical and academic staff and students within the Wolfson School and if required, the School of Science, in order to capture a wide strategy of technical and pedagogic essential and desirable criteria for the system design Progress so far Hardware concept — we are concentrating on a modular design concept, to allow a high degree of flexibility and to increase ease of use. Posted on January 27, by Tom University. A qualitative study Unveiling a reflective diary methodology for exploring the lived experiences of stress and coping. Posted on January 23, by Matt Hope. The project quickly gained momentum and additional facets, and now it includes four novel aspects: A circuit simulation in Learn. Posted on Strategy 29, by Matt Hope. Using Augmented Reality to Improve Geomorphological Understanding CAP Forum:
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Ready to mount the second and third phases of her plan,. organization and legislation, Sanger founded the National Birth Control League (now the Planned Parenthood Federation of America) and began lecturing across the country and gathering supporters and funds to aid her efforts.