Tag: curriculum

Embedding Entrepreneurial Skills in the Curriculum (webinar)

Interested in embedding entrepreneurial and enterprise skills into your curriculum but aren’t sure where to start? Look no further! This webinar will be presented by three highly knowledgeable and experienced academics in this field, and will welcome questions from participants looking to increase their students’awareness and skills in this area. The webinar will be presented by: Prof Andy Penaluna, Chair of the QAA’s Graduate Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Group and Research Director of the Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship; Dave Jarman, Senior Teaching Fellow in Senior Teaching Fellow in Entrepreneurship and Dr James Norman, Senior Teaching Fellow in Civil Engineering. 

No booking is required for this event, just join via this link. 

 

 

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Event Summary of ‘Making IT* Happen: from strategy to action’ at the University of Leicester

BILT

*Inclusive teaching

The following post was written by Emilie Poletto-Lawson, who has been a BILT Fellow since January 2018. 

I am a BILT fellow (based in Academic Staff Development), working on the BILT theme of inclusive assessment. On the 14th of November 2018 I attended a two-part workshop lead by Pete Quinn (Pete Quinn Consulting) and Dr Mike Wray (inclusininhe.com) that explored inclusion from theory to practice at University of Leicester.

The first part of the day focused on inclusivity from a disability perspective and the session looked at the current situation in universities regarding inclusivity and reflected on where we are at 8 years after the Equality Act was introduced.  Even though all stakeholders agree on inclusivity in principle, “making it happen” can prove somewhat difficult as new initiatives can meet resistance. Lecture Capture (new in some institutions) would be a very good example, it is a very important step for a great number of students and, in particular, students with a disability and yet this practice is still being greatly challenged by lecturers within universities and in the news. The main criticism is that students no longer attend lectures but the USS pensions-strike in 2018 also highlighted issues regarding who owns the rights to the recordings.

While universities must assure legal compliance, it is important to define what it is “reasonable” when it comes to reasonable adjustments we make to support our students learning. Pete Quinn highlighted the risk, stated by the Inclusive Teaching and Learning in Higher Education as a Route to Resilience publication, of “insufficient institutional oversight” which could lead to “unduly influenced [decisions] which are made by what individual members of staff perceive as reasonable” without a proper understanding of what the Equality Act requires or with appropriate emphasis being placed on relevant considerations”. It is therefore essential to break silos of practice within an institution and ensure all the relevant stakeholders work together to assure consistent and appropriate adjustments are in place.

Pete Quinn also presented the overview by Abi James (Assistive Learning Ltd) of public sector website and application regulations that all websites will need to comply with to ensure accessibility for all. Websites and content shared on intranets and extranets (this includes Blackboard) created after 23.09.18 will need to be compliant by September 2019, with anything created before 23.09.18 has September 2020 as a deadline. Finally, the deadline for mobile apps will be September 2021. You can find more information on this on the government’s website.

After looking at the work of the Office for Students, the Office of the Independent Adjudicator and the equality and human rights commission we reflected on our institutions’ situation regarding the following themes:

  • Non-medical help provision
  • Assistive technology
  • Lecture capture
  • Inclusive teaching, learning and assessment policy
  • Inclusive teaching, learning and assessment in practice
  • Placement and internships

 

In the afternoon, Mike Wray presented Inclusive Learning and Teaching and Assessment Framework (ILTAF), an audit framework to help universities improve their level of inclusivity. The framework contains four sections:

  • Quality assurance
  • Before teaching
  • During teaching
  • Assessment

We were also given time to discuss inclusive learning and teaching in our institutions with a view to share good practice, agree goals and take stock in the future.  I am very grateful to colleagues from the Universities of Leeds, Durham, Bath and Edinburgh for very interesting exchanges.

What next?

A number of questions arose from the day and left me wondering how best to initiate change and champion inclusivity within Bristol and what can we do in our practice to support this?  I will be working on developing a self-assessment document that would support unit/programme leads in reviewing inclusive assessment (and teaching) practices across their units and programmes.

If you are interested in finding out more on inclusive practice, you might want to look into the following MOOC, from the University of Southampton, recommended by the speakers: Inclusive Learning Teaching.

Here are a few reading suggestions from the event:

On key actors and texts regarding inclusivity mentioned by the speakers:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/pdfs/ukpga_20100015_en.pdf

https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/

http://www.oiahe.org.uk/

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/587221/Inclusive_Teaching_and_Learning_in_Higher_Education_as_a_route_to-excellence.pdf

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en

 

 

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Reflections on Dorothea Smartt and Travis Alabanza events

BILT

The following post was written by Nic Aaron, PhD candidate and Assistant Teacher in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies. 

Amongst the many opportunities on offer to me as a University of Bristol PhD student, the performance of Burgerz by Travis Alabanza, and the poetry reading and discussion with Dorothea Smartt, have stood out for me this term. These events, co-hosted by the Bristol Institute for Learning, alongside the Critically Queer Working Group, the Centre for Black Humanities and the Theatre Department, have shaped my PhD research, informed my seminar teaching, and reaffirmed my trans identity, while enabling me to critique my whiteness.

Burgerz is a show written and performed by Travis Alabanza after a man threw a burger at them while shouting transphobic abuse – and no one on the busy London street said or did anything. Having sold out in London, it was an incredible opportunity to see Burgerz in Bristol. The hour-long show was enthralling: Travis’ deconstructed the daily transphobic and racist abuse they encounter while simultaneously cooking a burger with a white cis man from the audience, conveying a raw sadness and vulnerability, whilst also, somehow, being hilarious. It was reaffirming and comforting to hear their articulation of many of the problems and fears I have encountered  as a trans person in 2018. More so, in the midst of increasing levels of abuse and hostility towards us on so many fronts.  It was also deeply challenging, provoking questions about intervening in situations of street harassment, and critique of the marginalisation of trans people racialized as black or brown by the trans community itself. On readdressing my own academic work after the show, I have sought to centre decolonisation when addressing transphobia and gender essentialism in the context of British Law on Sexual Violence.

If Travis’ performance provoked questions, Dorothea Smartt’s poetry reading and discussion provided a place to start to think about some of the answers. Listening to poetry about slavery and racism inside the Wills Memorial Building – named for a family who accumulated their wealth through the Tobacco industry and, therefore, the trans-Atlantic slave trade – highlighted the embedded and ongoing character of racism within British society, and the University of Bristol itself. The poetry was enlightening, not least in the ways it revealed the extent of my unfamiliarity with British History, despite having been in full time education for going on twenty years. Dorothea centred her queerness in her account; a reminder that black queer voices are so often erased. Her talk provoked a lively discussion as to how the curriculum can be decolonised and the importance of doing so. As a teaching assistant on the ‘Social Identities and Divisions’ Unit for first year Sociology undergraduates, the session provided many key insights into seminar topics relating to migration and belonging. Many of those in my seminar expressed interest in attending the session, demonstrating the relevance of this event for scholars at every stage.

As the term draws to a close and I knuckle down to complete a draft chapter ahead of the New Year, I am struck by the ways in which both Travis and Dorothea have been instructive in how to approach academia. I am excited to see more of these types of events, to further push and challenge the academic work that we are doing, and to amplify voices and ideas of those marginalised by the academy and in Bristol more broadly.

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What exactly is Bristol Futures and what does BILT have to do with it?

BILT

The following post was written by BILT’s Academic Director, Alvin Birdi.  

adaptable, confident, knowledgeable, cognitively and practically resilient and innovative, and aware of their social responsibilities as citizens of contemporary, globalized societies”.

That was how the ambition of Bristol Futures was articulated in 2016 when it was adopted as a central initiative by the University, a way of reimagining its education. Bristol Futures meant building skills and a reflective approach through our programmes, providing opportunities for multidisciplinary and challenge-led learning, engagement with the community and employers and study abroad. These ambitions remain unabated in Bristol Futures which has recently moved to a new phase of activity.

To date, study skills provision and personal development planning (PDP) have been established to support the Bristol Skills Framework; there are freely available online courses on the three broad Bristol Futures themes of sustainable futures, innovation and enterprise and global citizenship; provision for professional and community engagement has been enhanced and some optional credit-bearing units have been created. But Bristol Futures does not end there.

The next phase of Bristol Futures is tasked with embedding the vision above into the core of our assessment, teaching and curriculum in all our programmes. This ambitious work comprises aligning all aspects of a degree programme so that they realise the student outcomes described above in an integrated and developmental way over the programme. That means programme level assessment and an active and challenge-led pedagogy as well as opportunities for working and studying with organisations outside the University.

What has BILT to do with any of this? We have supported and will continue to work with the University in furthering its ambitions with Bristol Futures, particularly around programme level assessment, new and innovative pedagogies that emphasise active and challenge-led learning and the reform of curricula to become more inclusive and receptive to the Bristol Futures themes.

To this end, we now have three BILT Bristol Futures Academic Fellows who will take a lead on the intellectual development of the three Bristol Futures themes. They are Chris Priest, who will lead the theme of sustainable futures; Madhu Krishnan who leads the global citizenship theme; and Dave Jarman who is leading on innovation and enterprise. These leads will be working with BILT student fellows to develop and provide resources to help colleagues conceptualise the themes and to embed them into our programmes of study. Websites on each them are currently under development.

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“Why is my curriculum white?” Towards imagining what our curriculum might look like were it researched, taught, and learned from Black Queer-Trans perspectives

BILT

The following post was written by Omari G. Hutchinson, a PhD student at Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Education, Birmingham, UK, who attended an event hosted by BILT and the Centre for Black Humanities as part of the ‘Why is my curriculum white?’ series. 

“Why is my curriculum white?” Towards imagining what our curriculum might look like were it researched, taught, and learned from Black Queer-Trans perspectives”. Here are my thoughts after attending the above. On boarding the train from Birmingham’s New Street station, I was already increasingly excited about Dorothea Smartt’s talk. The pre-talk literature really engaged and intrigued me. Dorothea’s metaphorical bridge invited participants to enter a crossing, somewhere between the personal self and the local context when considering the national diasporic picture. Dorothea’s poetic writings filled me with anticipation and joy. She took me on an imaginative journey to Barbados and straight into the living room of two Black women, passionately in love, but who also caused me to consider (imagine) the many mothers’ who have practiced, queer erotic love, self-love and love of the Divine. This left me musing over the untold woman-to-woman love stories of Black Caribbean women. Like others at the talk, I too want to know how we go about unmasking the rich heritage of same-gender love, which might have been colonised.

Like me, those in attendance were able to stretch their thinking by attempting to decolonise, for ourselves, the ‘whitewashing’ of a generation of diasporic lesbians and queers. I was personally touched by thoughts of the queer diasporic web.

Then we were encouraged to cross another bridge – connecting the rich history of Black, feminist, gay poets and activists here in Britain. For me, this is when it really got personal! I was suddenly transported back-in-time, to the feelings I had in that packed room, when Essex Hemphill read his own poetry on a visit to Britain. To say that the room was free from tension would be a miss representation. There was resistance expressed towards terms that might be deemed derogatory in one context, taken as a slur on efforts to queer the curriculum; but in this decolonizing learning space, it was liberating to suggest that we can reclaim terms that add meaning to the context in which we enter a given space.  This was an interactive conversation offering opportunities for self-conscious articulations of the hybrid identities of Black Queer-Trans perspectives.  Decolonising, queer love suggests Coleman, necessitates practice and commitment.

This was a really inspiring event. Thank you to Dorothea Smartt,
Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, and those staff and students involved in promoting such a stimulating exploration of the Black-Queer-Trans perspectives. I came away with a vision for how the curriculum might be reconfigured like were it researched, taught, and learned from Black Queer-Trans perspectives. The session marked an important milestone in my own development within this new and exciting field of inquiry.