TEL Staff Development Review (Aug – Dec 2013)
With the end of the year upon us, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the TEL staff development that has taken place at YSJ, between August – December 2013. The start of this academic year (2013/14) saw the team take a different approach to staff development. In previous years, we have ran scheduled sessions at regular intervals with muted success.
This year we pro-actively approached staff and faculties and provided the training/support they required. We still ran our regular training sessions, only this year these sessions were delivered as Breakfast Cafes (between 8-9). The idea behind the Breakfast Cafe’s is to deliver sessions for staff outside of core teaching hours. The Breakfast’s Cafes are short bite-sized sessions, aimed at introducing to staff to a new tool or technology.
These session have proved popular with staff and have had a steady growing interest since they were introduced. This might be something to do with the free coffee and croissants we provided at these session 🙂
This academic year we have also had the opportunity to attend a number of department/team meetings. This has given us the chance to showcase the tools and technologies staff could be using to enhance their Learning, Teaching and Assessment. These session have helped to raise profile of tools and technologies available for staff and students.
To date, the new approach seems to be working well, from August to December we provided training and software demonstrations to 216 members of staff. So far, main staff development focus has been electronic assignment submission and feedback. In particular, the new feedback management features in the Moodle Assignment tool that enables tutors to perform actions in bulk, rather than individually. A breakdown of the sessions delivered between August and December can be found below:
For those who are interested, Health & Life Sciences have been the most engaged faculty during this period. A full breakdown of staff engagement by faculty can be found below:
Staff Development Opportunities in 2014
There will be lots of exciting staff development opportunities for staff in 2014. In January, we will be delivering the SEDA Supporting Learning Technologies award for the fourth time. The SEDA SLT award is designed for academic and academic support staff. It explores a range of existing, new and emerging technologies which can be used to support Learning, Teaching and Assessment.
SLT will include 6 face-to-face teaching sessions over a 3 month period. If you are interested in participating in the SEDA award, please contact Mark Dransfield in the Technology Enhanced Learning Team.
In February, the team will also be delivering ‘10 Days of Twitter @ YSJ’ an online ‘non-course’ aimed at academics and support staff interested in using Twitter for Learning, Teaching and Assessment. Learn to use Twitter from scratch, build up your network and join in the conversation in 10 days! But don’t worry you won’t have to spend every minute of those 10 days working, just 15-20 minutes a day online is all you’ll need.
For more information, please visit the 10 Days Twitter page on our blog.
Finally, don’t forget to add these dates to your diary! Once a month, a member of the team will be in your faculty to provide support and guidance on TEL systems and technologies.
Business School
- 5th February 2014
- 5th March
Education and Theology
- 9th January 2014
- 6th February 2014
- 6th March 2014
Faculty of Arts
- 7th January 2014
- 4th February 2014
- 4th March 2014
Health and Life Sciences
- 21st January 2014
- 18th February 2014
- 18th March 2014
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Daniel
