Really Useful Stuff on Teaching, Learning Etc. Spring 2010

RUSTLE It helps that this is a popular course which is always well attended because with this way of working continuity be-tween sessions is important, but an extra ‘drop-in’ session with the robots allows people to catch up if they do have to miss a workshop. And although Andy believes that ‘as with all group work it does favour less able students more than the stronger ones’, responses to an evaluation question-naire show that most of the students believe that mixing up

the groups has been effective for them. One significant ad-vantage of this type of group task is that it allows students to engage with a range of peo-ple and approaches. Each week students have to spend some time getting to know new partners and deciding on a way of working, which is good for developing ‘people skills’ and Andy noticed that ‘people got to know each other a lot better – you could see them getting along’. Working with a range of peers was something the students valued too, with one commenting that it was

‘nice to … meet all the people on the course as I did not actually know them all before … good to get a totally differ-ent view on how to solve problems each week’. Working with different people and learning from the most successful team each week meant that ‘some really nice ideas perco-lated through to the final designs’. However, there is a price to pay for these benefits. It takes time to get up to speed with a new partner so, for more complex tasks, groups could be kept together longer.

This mode of group activity would not be effective in all situations, but if you have a course that requires students to experience and evaluate a range of approaches and can design a task that builds week on week it might be some-thing that would work for you and your students.

If you have an interesting way of using group work that you would like to share with colleagues why not talk to

RUSTLE about it?

Group work is used all over campus to encourage students to work together and learn from each other, developing impor-tant skills for life. The ways that groups are formed and the sorts of tasks they carry out, however, are very varied be-cause different forms of group work will produce different learning experiences and outcomes. The challenge is to find the sort of group activity that works best for your students and your course and this report outlines how colleagues in Informatics have done just that.

Andy Philippides and Adrian Thompson convene a second year course in which students apply ideas and approaches learnt on other courses. By de-signing the controllers for robots that can carry out a range of tasks, students find out for them-selves the advantages and disad-vantages of different techniques. But time and resources are lim-ited and there are many ap-proaches to cover because as Andy explains ‘certain techniques will work well and certain tech-niques won’t, and you don’t really know until you try’. So the challenge was to come up with a course that would expose students to the widest possible range of approaches whilst giving them the time to try out techniques for themselves.

It made sense to get small groups of students looking at dif-ferent approaches, but that meant that they would each only be exposed to a few ideas. To get around this problem Andy and Adrian plan weekly design challenges that each build on the previous one and swap students between groups every week so that people can take the best ideas and develop them through the course. Each workshop ends with a race where the robots are tested and the winning team presents their design solution at the next session, so successful meth-ods are shared. Students take the best ideas from the previ-ous week and incorporate them in their designs. Andy jokes that it is a sort of ‘creative plagiarism’, but of course it is a great example of peer learning and reflects one way that design problems can be co-operatively solved in the ‘real world’.

Also in this issue

Students Building a Learning Community

A New Perspective with Peer Observation

Podcasting and Lecture Capture

Question Banks

Peer Assisted Learning

The History Subject Centre

Spring Teaching & Learning Events

Change partners! Mixing it up in group projects.

For up-to-date information, reminders about forthcoming events, news of website updates and the latest from the HEA and Subject Centres follow

TLDU on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SussexTLDU

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Gain new perspectives by seeing other people teach. This need not be the formal peer observation process but could just be dropping in on a colleague for 10 minutes (check with them first of course).

Use technology to make your teaching more inclu-sive. That could be by cap-turing your lecture (see page 5), using an interactive white-board, giving audio feedback, uploading lecture notes to Study Direct or sometimes getting students to ‘discuss’ in a SyD forum instead of face-to-face.

Work with a colleague. Sit-ting with a colleague for 5-10 minutes to talk about how you might tackle a topic can produce interesting new

ideas. Joint lecturing can also reduce the stress and work-load of preparing and delivering lectures. If two people are teaching a course, having one present and the other ‘chip in’ creates a relaxed atmosphere in which students are more likely to ask their own questions.

The University of Sussex strongly encourages academics and support staff to gain Higher Education Academy (HEA) recognition which is for anyone involved in 'teaching', including support staff who give one to one training and run small workshops. Professional recognition from the HEA is available at three levels which relate to the UK Professional Standards Framework and can be gained on the basis of experience in

teaching and learning or by successfully completing Academy-accredited programmes.

In In the past, RUSTLE has reported on associate tutors who have achieved Associate of the Higher Education Academy status (AHEA) and now congratulations are due to the following colleagues on becoming Fellows of the Academy (FHEA):

Keep students’ attention during a lecture by engaging with them as much as possible. Teaching need not be just ‘chalk and talk’ but can be varied by including checking, questioning and discussion. If you would like more ideas for interactive lectures come along to the Effective Lectur-ing workshop run by TLDU (see back page).

Use template lecture notes (or gapped handouts). These do not contain all the mate-rial presented, but do give a good outline of the lecture and the most important points, with blank spaces where students can make additional notes during the lecture. This avoids students focusing on copying material from the board so they can concentrate on the concepts. And students creating their own notes are actively engaged with the material, so learning is enhanced.

Include short video clips to break up a lecture. Two of the best sources to search are Screenonline and Film and Sound Online both of which are available through the li-brary's electronic resources.

Top Teaching Tips from Sussex Colleagues

New Fellows of the Higher Education Academy

Web Links

PGCertHE http://www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/1-5-4.html

AHEA pathway http://www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/1-5-5

Individual recognition http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/supportingindividuals/professionalrecognition

Hester Barron (History) Philip Birch (Engineering and Design) Qiao Chen (Chemistry) Abigail Curtis (Creative Writing) Andrea D’Angelo (Sussex Language Institute) Iain Day (Chemistry) Peter Giesl (Mathematics)

These fourteen colleagues gained their Fellowship of the HEA by successfully completing the Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCertHE) run by the Teaching and Learning Development Unit (TLDU) and join many others who have gained this status in previous years.

Whatever your teaching role, if you would like to gain the appropriate HEA status as an associate, fellow or senior fellow,

you can get more information by following the links below or contacting tldu@sussex.ac.uk

Kerstin Hesse (Mathematics) Philip Jordan (Genome Centre) Matthias Keller (Physics and Astronomy) Istvan Kiss (Mathematics) David Ockwell (Geography) Simon Peeters (Physics and Astronomy) Kevin Staras (Biology and Environmental Science).

Thanks to Andy Philippides, Hester Barron, Philip Jordan, Simon Peeters, Bill Ashraf and Duncan Mackrill for these tips.

If you have a teaching tip you would like to share please e-mail tldu@sussex.ac.uk

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if someone has been doing it for years’ so everyone can benefit from observing others teach.

There are formal peer obser-vation processes in depart-ments and Gráinne has also been observed by a member of faculty, but, although the person who observed her was ‘wonderful to work with’ and gave her some good feedback and pointers for the future, she still found the process of being observed by a member of faculty ‘really difficult’. Often when observations are not done by peers the process can feel judgmental rather than collegial, which is why Gráinne believes that it is a good idea for ATs to observe one an-other teaching: ‘I would strongly encourage ATs to observe one another – it is a lot of fun in many ways and a great way to reflect on your teaching’.

If you are an AT or GTA and would like to contribute to RUSTLE please e-mail tldu@sussex.ac.uk

Gráinne O’Connell is an associate tutor (AT) in English and wanted to talk to RUSTLE about the benefits of peer teaching observations for ATs. Her first experience of peer observation was when she took the old Associate Tutors Training Course in 2008. At that time, ATs who wanted to submit a portfolio for accreditation were required to observe each other and Gráinne found it to be one of the best parts of the course.

Gráinne thinks that having a peer who is not intimately in-volved in a teaching session but who can offer a fresh per-spective is particularly valuable when you start teaching because ‘some new ATs can be overly confident and oth-ers overly critical’. The process of observing someone else is also incredibly useful and probably even more useful than being observed. Gráinne learnt a lot from observing someone who was teaching a different course because the course content was unfamiliar to her, so she was able to focus on ‘how he was teaching, how the students related to him and how he related to them’. Sometimes it is difficult to relate pedagogic theory to your own teaching, but the ‘practical experience of going into someone else’s class’ helped her to reflect on her own practice. Inevitably people have different approaches to teaching, but as Gráinne points out ‘there is no such thing as a perfect teacher even

Getting a New Perspective on Teaching

Most of us are familiar with D.Phil students running tutori-als, student mentoring schemes or informal groups of stu-dents studying together, but Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) brings together elements of those learning situations in a new way. Ollie Glass, the PAL Co-ordinator for Informatics and Physics & Astronomy has spoken to RUSTLE about how PAL is working at Sussex.

PAL involves experi-enced students running informal study sessions alongside courses. These are not tutors, but students who took the course themselves a year or two ago and work with students on course material in a productive and friendly atmosphere. Students decide what they want to learn, and there is plenty of social interac-tion. Ollie suggests that a typical PAL participant might be someone who, six or seven weeks into the course realises they have not quite ‘got it’ and doesn’t feel they can ask the lecturer about something they should have understood in week two. The PAL sessions give students an informal and confidential space where they can ask the questions they want to. Topics such as time-management and general study skills will usually be included, but in a way that is directly related to the course. Students get a lot from PAL in the first year, which can be a bit overwhelming, but second

and third years find the sessions useful too. For them it can be about making links between courses, exploring the rele-vance and significance of particular topics or taking the opportunity to go beyond the syllabus, picking up on a hint from the lecture and exploring it further.

PAL is also good for the students who run sessions. Ollie says that it ‘crystallises the expertise that they have, but which is quite intangible to them a lot of the time … they forget how much they learn in a year because they are in a situation where they always need to learn more’. The ses-sion leaders are supported by weekly supervision meetings and they learn to work with people and get a realistic sense of what they have to offer – which is vital when applying for jobs, writing a CV or thinking about where they want to go with their career.

There are benefits for faculty too. More students stay ‘on top’ of the material so lecturers do not have so many peo-ple asking basic questions and can spend office hours on engaging with students in more interesting ways. The re-duced drop out rate means PAL covers its own costs. Ollie also sees PAL as serving an important function for the de-partment as a whole: ‘It is really important that we have some spaces in university life that are both social and aca-demically oriented – where people can sit around a table and talk about their work in a friendly and informal way… it strengthens the fabric within and across years’.

If you would like to know more about PAL and discuss how it might help your students Ollie is leading a Teaching and Learning Development (TLD) event on Wednesday 10th

February.

Peer Assisted Learning

Web Links Ollie’s website http://www.ollieglass.com/peer-learning.html Details of the TLD session on PAL http://www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/1-5-17-9.html

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Teachers in higher education usually do not get enough praise for the things they do, but one of the ways that ex-cellence can be recognised is through teaching awards at a local or national level. In 2005, Duncan Mackrill (Education) was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship (NTF) and he has been telling RUSTLE about the impact that recognition has had on his teaching and career. The best thing about the award from Duncan’s point of view was ‘being recognised by students, other staff, and people you work with outside the university as well’ and he was ‘humbled’ by all the ‘terrific’ comments from those people.

It was his commitment to supporting his students on the PGCE in Music that made Duncan shine out as one of the ‘Rising Stars’. It is important to him to ‘create an atmos-phere where students feel supported’ in line with thinking around ‘high challenge, high support’ teaching; he believes that ‘when students feel secure and know they won’t be ridiculed or shot down you can really incorporate much more high challenge into your teaching’. Duncan finds that creating a supportive atmosphere with a good degree of humour, can be done relatively easily, and really helps stu-dents to achieve.

Since becoming a National Teaching Fellow Duncan has been promoted, taken on convening the PGCE and been invited to do things that he would not otherwise have done. For example, he worked with our partner institution the Brighton Institute of Modern Music on the development of a foundation degree and revalidation of a Masters pro-gramme – a very different type of music education from what he was used to, but one that Duncan found ‘very stimulating’. The NTF also allowed him to present papers at national and international conferences and funded work to explore how e-portfolios might help develop teachers in their teaching and reflection skills.

Because Duncan’s students spend a lot of their time off campus, working in schools, he has been using webcams to facilitate video tutorials and exploring tools to help stu-dents to become reflective teachers – thinking about what they are doing over a period of time on a school placement. The innovations which Duncan started on his programme have now been embedded across the PGCE and this year another new software tool ‘eLiViewer’ has been introduced that enables students to construct their own portfolio of evidence to meet QTS standards. The NTFS project fund-ing meant that Duncan could pay a student to develop eLiViewer from the pilot and it has now been rolled out to all the Initial Teacher Training students with interest in the work from as far afield as Tasmania.

Sussex has recently launched its own Teaching Fellow-ships as a way to develop staff profiles for future National Teaching Fellowship Scheme nominations. Winners of a Sussex Teaching Award will be eligible to apply for a Uni-versity Teaching Fellowship and up to three individual Uni-versity Teaching Fellowships will be awarded each with funding of £2000 to enable Fellows to conduct research into an aspect of teaching and learning.

Web Links

Sussex Teaching Awards: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/sta closing date for nominations 1st February

National Teaching Fellowship Scheme: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/supportingindividuals/ntfs

Duncan on e-learning: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/elearning/showcase.php

Tools for Today’s Teachers www.t4tt.org.uk

Sussex Stars: Duncan Mackrill

Thank you, A. A. Milne… Each year TLDU hosts two writers from the Royal Literary Fund Fellowship Scheme whose aim is to provide support for students who would like to improve their writing skills and ergo, their marks. This excellent service, conceived 10 years ago, allows Fellows to work in over 100 UK universities and higher education colleges and is entirely funded by the Royal Literary Fund thanks in part, to A. A. Milne whose royalties from the sale of rights to Disney feed into this fund.

The autumn term this year, has seen a huge increase in the number of students access-ing this facility, due to the new online tutorial booking system via Study Direct. Any stu-dent from any discipline is welcome to book a tutorial with Cath Senker or Stephen Wyatt. This is what two of last year’s students had to say:

Thanks a lot for your advice, which was invaluable! I'll certainly be back soon.

You will be surprised to hear, as was I, that I achieved an A minus for my essay. Thanks very much for your help, mark would be much lower if I hadn't listened to your advice.

Web Links: The Royal Literary Fund: http://www.rlf.org.uk/index.cfm Sussex ‘Better Writing’ scheme: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/1-4-11.html

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For the full review, with references see the RUSTLE web page at www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/RUSTLE

Where is Echo360 installed? Echo360 is currently avail-able in the following venues: Chichester Lecture Theatre; Arts A1; Arts A2; Arts C133; Shawcross (formerly Engineer-ing) AS2; Pevensey 1A6; Pevensey 1A7.

Recording shorter sessions. If you don’t want to record a standard 50-minute session, then you can always use Echo360 to record shorter videos to use in your teaching. These could be used to help frame certain aspects of the course or to free up lecture time to carry out different teach-ing activities. TLDU has an Echo360 kit set up in its training room and a version that staff can use on a laptop will be available shortly. In addition, the School of Informatics has a facility to record presentations in a studio, using multiple camera angles. Again, videos recorded in this system can be viewed at a later date – either on a desktop computer or mobile device. The facility may be especially useful if higher quality productions are required.

As lecture capture becomes more widely used (see below) colleagues are often concerned about changes in student learning as a result. TLDU have undertaken a review of the literature on podcasting to try to find answers to some of the most frequent concerns. The full review, with all the references is on the RUSTLE web page but the headline findings are outlined here.

What is it? The Echo360 Lecture capture system allows staff to record teaching sessions in a variety of different formats including synchronised visuals (e.g. PowerPoint slides) and audio (their voice) that students can download and view on a computer or a handheld device. After the session, staff can easily upload the recording to their Study Direct course site. Staff can also choose whether they wish to record a video of themselves during the session. UK Universities using the Echo360 system include Birming-ham, Glasgow, Imperial College, Lancaster, LSE and Shef-field.

Why use lecture capture? Echo360 is intended to supple-ment rather than substitute for regular class attendance. There are a number of reasons why staff may use Echo360. The most common reasons are: to provide an additional learning resource for all students; to support stu-dents who can't come to class (for valid reasons); to change teaching patterns and use lecture time for other learning activities.

Experiences at Sussex and other universities. Teaching staff at Sussex who have used Echo360 have been largely positive about the system. It is easy to use – staff simply need to click an icon on the computer and press start – and the quality of the recordings is generally good. Students very much welcome the ability to access recordings at a later date. Studies of lecture capture systems at other uni-versities showed evidence of students using lecture capture to revisit complex concepts, to revise for exams, and to take comprehensive notes, while listening. Students gener-ally perceived that using lecture capture made it easier to learn and helped them achieve better results. Anecdotal evidence from Sussex staff also suggests that student numbers are not lower at those sessions recorded using Echo360.

Capturing Your Lectures with Echo 360

Podcasting: Answering the Big Questions

Providing podcasts of lecture does not seem to have a nega-tive impact on lecture atten-dance. Some studies report a

small reduction in attendance at lectures when podcasts are available, however, this

does not translate into lower student performance because the podcasts seem to compensate. It seems that students see podcasts of lectures as useful additional resources that they can use to increase their understanding rather than as substitutes for face-to-face sessions. Good lectures con-tinue to attract students just as they always have.

Podcasting lectures does not in itself lead to improved student outcomes, though it has been sug-gested that podcasts allow students to learn more ef-fectively. Results can be improved, however, if podcasts are used to free up time for more active learning in class such as working on projects and problem-solving.

Recording lectures is the most common form of pod-casting in HE but there are

other ways to use podcasting to enhance student learning. Students like short podcasts of supplementary materials such as summaries, briefings or guides to further reading. There are also examples of stu-dents producing their own podcasts as seminar summaries or instead of presentations.

Does podcasting improve

exam results?

Does podcasting reduce lecture

attendance?

Are there better ways

to use podcasts?

Web Links and Contacts Bill Ashraf, Director of Technology Enhanced Learning: bill.ashraf@sussex.ac.uk John Davies, TLDU: j.m.davies@sussex.ac.uk Sussex Lecture Capture and Podcasting web page: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/elearning/podcasting.php

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Introducing the Subject Centres: History and that has been directly informed by some of the case studies from the subject centre. She also told RUSTLE about one way that the Subject Centre is helping her stu-dents: ‘Using the subject-specific stuff on how to use the internet for humanities I built a little tool box for Study Direct courses that can just drop in – and I can update it really

easily by looking at what is new on the Subject Centre website. That would have been really hard for me to do otherwise. It is useful to have somewhere that collates together really practical online tutorials’.

The ‘atmosphere’ of the Subject Centre also appeals to Lucy: ‘One of the things I really like about the space itself is there is lots of differ-ent stuff from lots of different peo-ple and how collaborative lots of the projects are. It is a virtual

space that encourages us to reflect and collaborate with each other’. And it is this opportunity to collaborate and share experiences of teaching a particular subject across institutions that is one of the strengths of the Subject Cen-tres. As Lucy points out: ‘people are busy and don’t have time to go to a conference on teaching history, but it is really nice to see what else is going on around history and working out how my ideas fit in with other people’s ideas’.

The History Subject Centre is hosted by the Department of History at the University of Warwick and provides opportu-nities to develop and share ideas, innovations and good practices via resources in the e-library on their website and through a programme of events run each year. They also offer subject-focused ways forward on wider issues such as employability, internationalization and support for early career histo-rians. The website provides disci-pline related news, information on events, funding and research op-portunities.

Lucy Robinson is an enthusiastic user of the Subject Centre re-sources who has found the case studies particularly useful. As well as being inspired by other peo-ple’s ideas, Lucy is keen to ‘learn the possible pitfalls and focus re-sources on building on other peo-ple’s experiences’, because although there are some very innovative approaches to teaching and learning it is impor-tant also to ‘reflect on the problems of delivering great ideas’.

Lucy has found the discipline-specific materials really use-ful – especially around e-learning in the humanities. She has done a lot of work trying to facilitate group work online

Question Banks When RUSTLE asked readers what they would like to read about, one of the suggestions was question banks. So here is a brief overview. If you would like to talk about using question banks in your teaching, or have any ideas for fu-ture issues of RUSTLE please contact

tldu@sussex.ac.uk What are question banks? Many teachers in Higher Education find quick quizzes, either in class or online, are an effective way to check students’ understanding of a topic, but writing the questions can be time-consuming. Question banks offer some short-cuts in the quiz-building process, pro-viding collections of questions that have usually been put together by teachers in a particular subject area, or provided by pub-lishers to accompany text books. The questions can be used to build quizzes in StudyDirect (SyD) or with a Per-sonal Response System such as the Turning Point ‘clickers’ used at Sussex. You can read more about these on the Sussex e-learning pages.

Where can I find question banks for my subject? The best places to start are likely to be the Higher Education Academy Subject Centres and the publishers of text books used on your courses. The Economics question bank be-

low includes a ‘taster’ so that you can see how these banks work, but there are many more out there, with most publishers now providing question banks for their text books. You can also build and share your own question banks within StudyDirect. Publishers will generally give access to question banks and a range of other online resources once a book has been adopted for a course, while Subject Centres or other HEIs will probably require you to register by providing your Sussex e-mail to confirm that you are a member of staff at a

UK HE institution. You will then be able to choose the questions you want and download them in a range of for-mats that can be used with Moodle for SyD and Power-Point for Turning Point as well as printing and other op-tions.

Web Links

Using quizzes in SyD case study: http://tinyurl.com/SyDquizzes

Sussex E-Learning Pages http://www.sussex.ac.uk/elearning

Economics Network Question Bank (with taster) http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/qnbank/

HEA Subject Centres: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/subjectcentres

Web Links History Subject Centre: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/heahistory/ HEA Subject Centres: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/subjectcentres

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The project aims to help make a contribution to a sense of school identity, particularly for those schools that include more than one department by increasing extra-curricular activities and opportunities for students to have more con-tact with academic and other staff.

Students have suggested lots of different activities and ideas for their school society - Popular activities include: social events (quiz, pub crawl); guest speakers; field trip/excursions and academics in each school presenting their research.

Coming to university can be an overwhelming experience, but if students are to get the most from their time at Sussex they need to feel part of a community. In Physics and As-tronomy students and staff have been working together to build relationships and a positive learning environment. Eleanor Tubman (Chair of the Departmental Joint Commit-tee) and Barry Garraway (Director of Student Support) spoke to RUSTLE about some of their initiatives.

Physics is a small department with about 160 students and staff know most of them by name. A lot of effort goes into welcoming students when they arrive and the work continues throughout the year with stu-dents, via their representatives on the Departmental Joint Committee (DJC), leading on a range of initiatives to build and maintain relationships and support students’ learning.

One of the more unusual events is a camping trip in Freshers week. A night away on the hills is a great opportu-nity for group bonding and team work, but it is also a lot of fun. Eleanor explained how the social links made at such events impact on learning: ‘If you have got a good relation-ship with other students in your year … you are going to do more group work, so you are going to explain things to other people as well as having things explained to you, and teaching things to other people is the best way of learning’. The university gains too, because as Barry pointed out ‘if students have those connections it helps with retention. If they are having difficulties it is important they have some-one to talk to and that might be another student … so it is important to have friendship networks.’

One important space for building study relationships is the Physics library – now converted into a working space with tables and comfortable seating. Eleanor sees this as some-where to ‘mix with people in other years …it is nice to talk to people in higher years who have been through every-thing you are going through - they know what problems you will be experiencing, and you can see that they have got through it all and you can too.’ It is a place for informal

mentoring as more advanced students offer advice on how to approach problems.

None of this would have happened without the ideas and hard work of the student reps and many people have con-tributed over the years, notably the previous DJC chair Seb Weidt. Eleanor thinks that the committee works so well because ‘people know that things get done. Students can see results from things brought up at meetings and prob-

lems are sorted out’ and that impacts on learning because ‘if you improve how people are feeling about their department they are much more likely to enjoy their studies’.

The Physics Ball is a major DJC-run event which brings together faculty and students, and there are plans to include alumni in future. Eleanor be-lieves the ball is evidence of the excellent relationships within the department because ‘everyone is happy to come together - there is no segrega-

tion and everyone mixes’. Even at the ball teaching is not forgotten as last year students took the opportunity to award prizes to members of faculty such as ‘most approachable lecturer’ and ‘best lecturer’.

The ball is just part of a range of social activities, with the Physics Society (QSOC) organising events for the whole department, some purely social, others more closely re-lated to academic interests such as stargazing nights. All these initiatives and activities come together to create what Eleanor describes as ‘a really good support network – a safety net of people you can turn to’ and that is really im-portant because ‘when you come to university it is a big step and there is lots to learn … but if you are finding prob-lem sheets really hard, someone is going to be there for you. You are not left on your own, you can go to other peo-ple and that makes you feel more comfortable’.

Physics and Astronomy, thanks to their DJC, seems to be a success story and as you will see below, there are moves to create more opportunities for staff and students to come together within the new schools to build these sort of learn-ing communities.

The students union (USSU) and the University are working together to support and fund new School Societies. This new project, combining resources from the university and the students union, has been set up in response to feed-back from students at Sussex. Feedback was sought via a postcard survey at Freshers' Fair and an online survey open to all students and two focus group sessions (also open to all students). 220 students provided feedback and there will be more opportunities for students to get involved and to shape the development of their own school society.

Students lead the way to build a learning community in Physics & Astronomy...

Giant chess bringing staff and students together

...and in the new schools.

School societies are for staff and students. To find out more contact: Clare Hardman (TLDU) c.l.m.hardman@sussex.ac.uk or Scott Sheridan (USSU) ss323@sussex.ac.uk

RUSTLE

RUSTLE is produced by the Teaching and Learning Development Unit (TLDU)

and is online at www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/RUSTLE

If you wish to comment or contribute please e-mail tldu@sussex.ac.uk

8

Personal Response System,

Internationalising the Curriculum,

Planning Sessions,

Introduction to Study Direct,

Being the Internal Examiner for a Doctoral Thesis,

Learning at Progressive Levels in HE,

Using an Interactive Whiteboard,

Student-Centred Learning,

UK Education for New International Staff,

Developing Skills in the Science Curriculum,

Technology hands-on drop-in,

Understanding Reflective Practice,

Assessing Oral Presentations,

Peer Assisted Learning,

Mental Health Awareness,

Marking and Feedback,

Supervising Undergraduate Students,

Prevention of Plagiarism,

Course Design and Approval,

Introduction to Asperger Syndrome,

Peer Observation of Teaching,

Effective Lecturing,

Creating Inclusive Learning Materials,

Learning in Labs,

Quality Assurance and Enhancement,

Preparing a Teaching Portfolio,

Assessing Group Work,

10 minutes of Fame – your lecture in the spotlight!

Doctoral Student Supervision day,

Just-In-Time Teaching and Peer Instruction,

Wednesday 20th January, 12-1pm

Thursday 21st January, 12.15-3.15pm

Friday 22nd January, 10am-12noon

Tuesday 26th January, 10am-12noon

Tuesday 26th January, 12-2pm

Wednesday 27th January, 10am-3pm

Thursday 28th January, 10am-12noon

Wednesday 3rd February, 12-2pm

Thursday 4th February, 10.30am-12noon

Thursday 4th February, 12.30-1.45pm

Tuesday 9th February, 10.30-11.30am

Tuesday 9th February, 12-2pm

Wednesday 10th February, 2.15-3.45pm

Wednesday 10th February, 12.30-1.45pm

Thursday 11th February, 11am-12.30pm

Wednesday 17th February, 2-4pm

Thursday 18th February, 10.30am-12noon

Tuesday 23rd February, 10am-12noon

Wednesday 24th February, 2-4pm

Thursday 25th February, 11am-12.30pm

Wednesday 3rd March, 12.15-1.45pm

Thursday 4th March, 10am-1pm

Tuesday 9th March, 12-2pm

Wednesday 10th March, 12-2pm

Thursday 11th March, 12.30-2pm

Wednesday 17th March, 10.30am-12noon

Wednesday 17th March, 12.30-2pm

Thursday 18th March, 10am-1pm

Tuesday 23rd March, 9.30am-4.30pm

Wednesday 24th March, 2-3.30pm

Teaching and Learning Development Events

TLDU offer an exciting programme of seminars and workshops on a wide range of topics related to teaching, learning, assessment, supervision and innovation. These

events have been designed to be of value to all staff with teaching or tutoring re-

sponsibilities and are varied in terms of format, timing and location, as well as con-tent, so that as many colleagues as possible can take part.

The Spring term sessions are listed here and the programme for the rest of the year, session outlines and details of how to book

through Sussex Direct are available on the TLDU website.

Web Links

TLD Events 2009-10: www.sussex.ac.uk/tldu/tldevents

Materials from sessions and other resources on the topic: http://tinyurl.com/TLDresources (this is a Study Direct site

so you will need to login with your ITS username and password as used for e-mail).