The activities we’re involved with in BILT are hugely wide-ranging, from teaching academics via our CREATE courses to supporting educational research taking place across the University. We thought it would be a great idea to start sharing what each of us gets up to and highlight the brilliant opportunities and activities going on around campus.
This first edition is written by our Senior Education Developer, Amy Palmer.
Tuesdays are usually one of my ‘working from home’ days but today I had planned to come onto campus for some exciting activities. After battling the rush hour traffic and driving around in circles looking for somewhere to park, I headed up to the Priory Road Complex for my first meeting of the day.
One of our Student Fellows, Ethel Ng, working on the ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’ project, is collaborating with the Race Inclusion Advocates to create a video podcast series looking at the ‘University Reimagined’. We headed down to the video recording suite and set up for the first of the five shoots. This video series is going to be a brilliant resource with some very interesting questions posed by Ethel and Ife from the Race Inclusion Team.
(A huge thank you to Amy Wilson and the Distance Learning Hub team for letting us use their amazing recording space and providing brilliant expertise!)
After this I headed over to the Staff Lounge (I love this space but always find it slightly depressing by how much nicer it is than my own lounge…) for a couple of meetings and to catch up on my emails. We’re currently putting together an ‘A – Z of BILT’ blog series which we’re excited to share and I’m currently planning our ‘Teaching and Learning Gallery’ as part of the BILT conference (save the date: 10th July!) so I have lots of lovely things to keep me busy at the moment.
Next up I had a meeting hosted by the Engaged Learning Team and the Civic Engagement Team. There is currently a funding call for academics, PhD students and professional services* to apply for one of 5 x £3,000 pots to embed a new community engagement project in their curriculum. The University currently has a focus on increasing their work with the community and, as part of this, has allocated a number of funds to increase activity in this area and promote the work that is being done already.
The funds can be used for staff time, student travel, community organisation costs, hire of rooms and equipment, purchase of small-scale resources or equipment and event-related costs. The funding call has broad objectives and the team is encouraging blue-sky thinking and creativity in applications! Applicants will be supported by the Community Engaged Learning team – please get in touch with them if you are interested and take a look at the Sharepoint site for more information.
After stopping by the Senate House cafe to eat my packed lunch (a salad made up from leftovers in the fridge, in case you were wondering), I headed back to the office on Great George Street to go through the latest Bristol Teaching Awards nominations. Since opening the nomination period last week, we’ve already had 628 nominations.
What most people don’t know is after the nominations are entered, a small team of us go through each one to make sure there are no spelling mistakes or inappropriate comments being left (or removing any that have nominated themselves, particularly those who have described themselves as ‘a super hot sexy man’… you know who you are!). This ‘data-cleaning’ exercise is a really uplifting activity and gives brilliant insight into the amazing teaching taking place across the University. We’re so excited for everyone to see their nominations and to announce the shortlist on 13th May.
When 5pm came around, I headed home to start the most difficult part of the day – picking up my two little girls from nursery and entertaining them until bed-time!
*There will be a separate funding call (also 5 x £3,000) for professional and technical services staff later in the year.
