Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching Blog
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An application writing workshop which provides an intensive “nuts and bolts” introduction to application writing. There will also be an opportunity to receive assistance with action planning, next steps, application queries and hear about previously funded projects from former grant holders. Attendance to one of the scheduled application writing workshops is strongly advised.
An application writing workshop which provides an intensive “nuts and bolts” introduction to application writing. There will also be an opportunity to receive assistance with action planning, next steps, application queries and hear about previously funded projects from former grant holders. Attendance to one of the scheduled application writing workshops is strongly advised.
A Teaching Innovation Grant was awarded to Dr Louisa Slingsby, Dr Rose Grogono-Thomas, Dr Julie Townsend, Ms Lucy SW Bates for the academic year 2017/18 – you can find a summary of the project they undertook with their grant below. If you would like to read the full report, please contact bilt-info@bristol.ac.uk.
Project summary
Mental wellbeing encompasses the ability to feel good and function well within one’s life. This is a priority area to address within the university and beyond; wellbeing is a high importance topic within the veterinary profession.
Building on previous work we have devised a novel, evidence based “Mental Wellbeing Toolbox” (MWT) which we have introduced as a wellbeing vertical theme within the undergraduate veterinary programme (BVSc). The aim is to assist students in building their mental wellbeing, personal resources, skills and confidence, and in doing so prepare them for graduation and the workplace. It also aims to highlight how anyone can benefit from improving their mental wellbeing, resulting in better job (and life) satisfaction.
Each year group of the BVSc now has a three-hour seminar introducing one aspect of the Toolbox. A MWT Handbook has been developed for students to access at any time; if desired, it is possible to look ahead to aspects of the Toolbox taught in later years.
Following ethical approval, quantitative and qualitative data has been collected from students to evaluate the introduction of the MWT into the curriculum. Generally, feedback has been positive, with some key areas highlighted for improvement.
Conclusions
A Teaching Innovation Grant was awarded to Dr Chris Adams for the academic year 2017/18 – you can find a summary of the project he undertook with his grant below. If you would like to read the full report, please contact the BILT Team.
Project summary
MAP-Bristol (Monitoring atmospheric pollution in Bristol) was a project which allowed first-year students to participate in a real scientific investigation by carrying out a survey of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution across the city of Bristol. They used the investigation to provide the raw material for workshops in scientific report writing and data handling which form part of their first year-unit ‘Communication and Information Skills in Chemistry’.
At the same time, the ‘Eco Team’ from Bristol Grammar Primary School undertook a similar monitoring project. They were then invited into our labs to do some chemistry and analyse their results, with some of our first year undergraduates acting as laboratory demonstrators.
Conclusions
Overall, I would give this a 7/10. The students engaged with it, liked the societal relevance, and generally enjoyed it. The practical aspects worked and went well.
Just reiterating how enjoyable and valuable the NO2 project has been. Very glad to see public health issues and science being linked in this way, especially on the first year of our course!
As described above, I was disappointed by the quality of the written work produced by many of the students, and this will be the focus going forward.
The project has a number of ‘hidden’ benefits. This may well be the only time during their time here that students do any practical which is (a) not entirely laboratory based and (b) relevant to their everyday lives, and it will certainly be the only time that most of them get on a bus and venture into Fishponds and beyond. It teaches a broad range of ‘transferable’ skills in an authentic context and makes the second year of the degree program ‘fairer’ – currently students write a number of reports which are all summatively assessed with absolutely no training whatsoever. Many of the activities were carried out in groups, and students therefore also gained a great deal of experience in group working.
It addresses several points of the University’s Education Strategy:
This kind of model could be replicated across the University – indeed, Geography are already doing something similar (above), and I have been contacted by a microbiologist colleague who is thinking about distributing sample tubes about Bristol in a similar fashion. It is my belief that many of the schools in the science faculties are trying to teach similar skills and could implement similar programs – indeed, that is one of the reasons for the forthcoming Educational Excellence seminar. I do firmly believe that many colleagues across the University are trying to teach many of the same things, and that sharing ideas and practice is a necessary prerequisite for improving the University’s educational offering.
Dr Sheena Warman was the lead academic on her project, ‘LeapForward’, for which she was awarded a Catalyst Fund from BILT for 2017/18. The project summary and conclusions can be found below – if you would like to view the full report please contact the BILT team.
Project Summary
The LeapForward project aimed to evaluate and improve feedback and feedforward practices within undergraduate Health Sciences programmes (BVSc Veterinary Science, MBChB Medicine, BDS Dentistry), MSc Social Work, and BA Theatre and Performance Studies – a truly interdisciplinary approach. We have focused on student transitions, particularly that from classroom to workplace-based learning environments.
The overall aims and objectives of our research were to:
In Phase 1 of the project we explored the impact of current feedback and feedforward processes and practices, by collating existing resources and running ten focus groups, talking to groups of students and staff from each discipline (in separate groups) about their experiences. Analysis of the staff and student focus groups enabled us to identify twelve overall themes, clustered into three overarching categories, which illuminate the student and staff experience of feedback and feedforward across the different disciplines, in the Bristol context.
In Phase 2, we built on the earlier findings to design and develop a modular training package for both students and staff which is intended to support students in their development of self-regulatory workplace skills and provide new feedforward interventions which have the potential to be applicable more widely across the university.
Conclusions
A Teaching Innovation Grant was awarded to Dr Emily Bell, Dr Rose Murray and Dr Andy Wakefield for the academic year 2017/18 – you can find a summary of the project they undertook with their grant below. If you would like to read the full report, please contact bilt-info@bristol.ac.uk.
Project summary
Project members (PMs) (Bell, Murray and Wakefield) are developing an open-access framework to enable the easy implementation of innovative and creative assessment. This includes an interactive guide for teachers and learners which supports the creation of video as a means of assessment. This guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to use audio-visual production/editing software as well as helpful advice on suitable equipment. PMs are also creating an appropriate, transdisciplinary framework for evaluation of the students’ video projects. By focusing the assessment of the video at group level and embedding this within a portfolio of supporting tasks the PMs hope that their guidance will be applicable to a greater number of disciplines within higher education.
This novel assessment method was embedded into a field course module (June 2018), with 20 students working in groups of three or four. Students were instilled with a wide range of transferrable skills as well as having the opportunity to stretch their creative legs. In tandem, and via the same processes, students’ confidence was evaluated in four key skills areas (academic self-efficacy, groupwork, communication and digital capabilities) via data collection from pre-post questionnaires and student reflective critiques. Preliminary data analyses suggest that student confidence increased over
the course of the week in these areas.
You can find the video guide here.
Despite only preliminary analysis of the data gathered thus far, it is apparent that participants who took the filmmaking course perceived an increased level of confidence in several different skill areas; academic skills, social efficacy, communication sk ills and digital capabilities. The qualitative responses corroborate findings from the quantitative responses, and the authors look forward to evaluating the reflective critique data later in the year. On reflection, one of the main themes identified from the data was the increased confidence particularly in social efficacy. This was highlighted as a particular cause for anxiety or apprehension prior to the course by the participants, yet by the end, it was clearly an area in which participants had grown in confidence. This will be explored further as the project progresses. As this was a single field course from a collection of ~15 courses which run each year, it would be interesting to evaluate other courses to explore whether this increased confidence of participants is replicated, or whether it is a unique quality of the film making course. The authors hope to repeat this study in the next academic year with the following cohort of students to test the robustness of these findings.