Welcome back to all our readers! We hope everyone has had a restful and reinvigorating summer break. Our first issue of the year is packed full of good news, opportunities, blogs and resources we’ve published over the summer. We hope you find something to inspire you as you start this new academic year!
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News
Colleagues nominated for THE Awards
We would like to say a huge congratulations to our colleagues Francesco Fornetti and Andy Radford who have been shortlisted for THE Awards 2022! They have been nominated fro:
- Andrew Radford – Outstanding Research Supervisor of the Year
- Francesco Fornetti – Most Innovative Teacher of the Year
Both Andy and Francesco won 2022 Bristol Teaching Awards this year. You can read an interview we did with Andy in May here and an interview we did with Francesco last year here.
Opportunities
New opportunity to develop staff skills in supporting autistic students
The School of Education at the University of Bristol, in partnership with UWE and University of York, is looking for staff members who would be interested in participating in a trial of a new training course. To be eligible, you need to be a personal tutor or a member of wellbeing, disability support and professional services staff who has contact with autistic students. The course will cover supporting autistic students with their mental health. This will be a half-day session over Microsoft Teams on Thursday 22nd September.
We would ask you to give your feedback in some follow up interviews and to provide short diary entries detailing your interactions with autistic students in the next academic year. For this, you will be paid £25 per term. Full details can be seen in the participant information sheet attached to this email.
If you are interested in joining this course, or have any questions, please email emma.jenks@bristol.ac.uk. Once you have done so, Emma will be in touch with joining information and a pre-course questionnaire, which is a condition of the project funding from the Office for Students.
NTFs and CATE
National Teaching Fellowship (NTFS) and Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) Scheme 2023 – Expressions of Interest and workshops
The Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching (BILT) are accepting expressions of interest (EOIs) for the 2023 NTFS and CATE scheme.
Those interested in submitting an EOI, are strongly encouraged to attend a virtual workshop which will outline further details about the schemes, include contributions from award winners and provide guidance on completing an EOI. Workshop dates are as follows; registration is required:
- NTFS workshop – Wednesday 5th October, 4pm – 5pm. Register to attend.
- CATE workshop – Thursday 6th October, 4pm – 5pm. Register to attend.
Find out more on the NTFS and CATE BILT webpages. Closing date for EOIs – Monday 24th October, 9am.
Research Supervisor Symposium 2022 – call for contributions
We are delighted to welcome contributions from all PGR supervisors across the University of Bristol, including well-established supervisors and those who are new to supervising postgraduate research.
The Symposium offers a safe and inclusive space for University of Bristol PGR supervisors to share best practices and pedagogies, and to explore their experiences of supervising PGR students. Presentations will be grouped around two interlinked core themes: supervising international students and developing PGR research communities.
The closing date for EOIs – Friday 30th September, find out more & submit an EOI here.
Green Apple Scheme
The Green Apple Scheme is intended to support initiatives by staff and students to do this, and to expand the provision of Education for Sustainable Development experiences to students, both in the formal curriculum and in extra-curricular activities. It can provide funding up to £1k (or larger for projects with significant reach).
Further information is available on the ESDN Sharepoint site.
- Guidance notes are available here: Green Apple Guidance Notes 2022.docx
- The Application form is available here: Green Apple Fund 2022 Application.docx
Please email Chris Preist with any questions, and do pass on to others who might be interested.
Resources
Queer Friendly Classrooms: Your Queer Student is not your Queer Teacher
Issy Stephens’ latest post looks at why singling out students to share their personal experiences with the class is not helpful and can be tokenistic. View the series here.
Rethinking History Examinations for Post-Covid World
Dr John Reeks and Dr Sarah Jones share their thoughts on the benefits and disadvantages of in person, closed-book exams, and their new stance on assessments in the post-Covid world.
Dr Christophe Fricker introduces resonance pedagogy, provides examples and shares some excellent resources he had created as part of his BILT Associateship.
Dr Adam Rutherford delivered a excellent seminar on race, genes and scientific racism in July – colleagues from the BILT-funded Decolonising STEMM groups have written a short summary of the event.
Publishing a book in a year… August
The latest installment in this entertaining series by Dr James Norman shares his progress over the summer. Read this whole series here.
Infographic on assessment and feedback recommendations from Quinlan
BILT’s Joe Gould has created this infographic on recommendations from a recent paper by Pitt and Quinlan, ‘Impacts of Higher Education and Feedback Policy and Practice on Students’.
How to screencast: a good practice guide for dialogic feedback to students
Dr Lloyd Fletcher has created this excellent guide on how to screencast as a feedback method for students.
Three new ‘Meet the Associates’ blog posts
There are three new ‘Meet the Associates’ blogs available to view on our ‘Meet the BILT Community’ page.
Upcoming events
visit the BILT events calendar
Introduction to HE Teaching at Bristol (multiple dates)
This online course has been designed for those new to teaching/and or supporting learning including:
- Teaching support roles – for example demonstrators, graduate teachers and associate teachers
- Research staff (pathway 2) with some teaching responsibilities
- Teaching staff (pathway 1 or 3) new to teaching at Bristol waiting to join the PGCAP or the CREATE HEA Fellowship Scheme
Read more and sign up to the course here.
Personal Tutoring online workshop, Tuesday 13th September, 11am – 12.30pm.
This workshop is available to all academic and professional services staff new to personal tutoring and those wishing to refresh their skills.
Bristol Futures Festival, Thursday 22nd September, Royal Fort Gardens, 10 – 4pm.
In Welcome Week 2022 we will be hosting the University’s first Bristol Futures Festival. The festival is designed to introduce first year students to various aspects of Bristol Futures including the interdisciplinary optional units, the open online courses, study skills and the Bristol Plus Awards. Enjoy music, dance, poetry and interactive entertainment across the day.
Research Supervision at Bristol – online workshop, Wednesday 23rd November, 10am to 11:30am and Thursday 24th November, 2pm to 3:30pm.
This online workshop is open to all staff new to supervising postgraduate research at Bristol, and those who would like a refresher. It will be held on Blackboard and will run twice.