Enhancing Student Learning through Innovative Scholarship
I’ve just come back from the Enhancing Student Learning through Innovative Scholarship conference at Edinburgh Napier, where I was talking about my Student Observation of Teaching project. It’s a great conference, which came to Sheffield a couple of years ago, and includes the brilliant Asha Akram on the organising committee; and the main body of conference participants are folk in teaching-specialist roles, academic developers, and learning technologists. My paper on SOOT went very well: I learnt about another institution doing something similar, and a colleague from another university saying that they wanted to get something similar off the ground. That’s precisely what I wanted from travelling to this and other conferences, so I’m really pleased that this has been realised, and that delegates in general responded very positively to my description of the scheme. My thanks go to the Research and Scholarship Committee for enabling this to happen.
Two of the reasons SOOT works are that it’s extremely simple, and that it extends trust to students to be a more active part of the learning process. Another paper I really enjoyed echoed these themes, by talking about the value of having some seminars and small group discussions being held standing rather than sitting. It helps students engage more with the material and with each other, it creates a more energised classroom, and it puts them in a more active role in their learning, working in small groups on whiteboards dotted around the room. So next year, is anyone else interested in experimenting with a standing classroom?
Dr Tim Herrick is involved with a range of programmes within the School, primarily the BA in Education, Culture, and Childhood, and is Course Director of the MEd in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
