Our 2021 highlights
We’ve had another really busy year! Between taking on new Student Fellows, BILT Associates, growing the core team and partnering with a number of other departments and institutions with funded projects, we’ve been developing in our five key areas and supporting the development of staff across the University.
Some notable activities this year have included…
Working with students
We’re now in our fifth year of employing students as Student Fellows, with six students working across five themes. We’ve just finished our third hackathon, exploring what makes a transformational experience – if you’re interested in the findings of this event, come along to our event in January (details below).
Further to working with students within the core team, a number of our Education Development Projects also focus on working with students as co-creators and partners in research – we’ll be publishing findings from these later in the year.
Research hybrid learning
We are undertaking a study of hybrid teaching to support planning for any further/different refit of the estate for 22-23, inform decision making on resourcing of hybrid facilities, and improve our support for staff in TB2. In October and November we ran student focus groups, technical requirements gathering interviews with staff, a horizon scan of technical approaches and strategic use of hybrid. Conclusions and findings from these activities will be made available in the new year.
We’re still keen to hear about your hybrid & digital teaching experience. This 5-10 minute survey (is intended to capture individual experiences as part of the wider piece of work. Complete the survey: Digital and hybrid teaching in TB1.
Decolonising the Curriculum
There has been a lot of energy around decolonising the curriculum this year following on from the Futurelearn course on decolonisation released last January. BILT student fellows have worked up 11 disciplinary guides based on the Futurelearn course to support colleagues thinking about decolonisation in their own courses.We have a BILT Student Fellow working on the relationship between the use of the English language and colonialisation and BILT is funding three projects on evaluating progress in decolonising the curriculum.
Case Studies collection
This summer we launched a new page dedicated to case studies on our website, where you can browse hundreds of case studies theme, by Faculty and by Curriculum Framework area and cover topics including assessment and feedback, hybrid teaching and decolonisation (plus many more!).
Take a look at the page yourself, and if you’re doing something you think we could share on this page please get in touch!
Annual review of the Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PGCAP) and the CREATE HEA Fellowship scheme
The annual review of these programmes, both which began in Spring 2021, has highlighted vastly improved first sit pass rates (97% and 93% respectively compared to old CREATE first sit pass rate of 33%). The external examiner (annual report Sept 2021) commenting on the improved pass rate said ‘My view is that this is a result of the skill of the teaching team to design and deliver a streamlined, clear and focused programmes of study and support. In addition the much improved assessment strategies for both the scheme and the PGCAP are now clear and concise.’
Priorities for both programmes for the coming year include: enhancing the sense of belonging and community; further engaging participants with scholarship and research; making further tweaks to assessment and feedback practices.
What you can look forward to next year…
In January, we’ve got our hackathon debrief (a report will be available to read for those who could not attend the event) on the 26th as well as the first seminar in the Decolonising the Curriculum series (partnered with the Centre for Black Humanities, UNESCO Chair for Global Education and Bristol Conversations in Education).
We’ll be hosting workshops most months on a range of topics, largely focussing on assessment and feedback. There’s also a monthly seminar on Decolonising the Curriculum, as well as a regular reading group and newsletter on progress and activities in this area. On February 15th, a newly-created HEA Principal Fellowship (PFHEA) workshop will take place via Zoom for those working on applications to be a PFHEA or are potentially interested in applying in future.
In March, nominations for the 2022 Bristol Teaching Awards will open and, following the success of last year’s online event, we’ll be hosting the event online again on June 8th. The Student Undergraduate Conference will be taking place in April, and the third edition of the Student Research Journal will be published at the start of the summer. We’re currently looking for students to submit abstracts (deadline is January 31st!) so please ask your students to get in touch with Dan Anthony or Tasha Suresh if they’d like to contribute to our Student Research Journal this year. More details are available on the form.