The Centre for Educational Development (CED) provides expert support and facilitation to enhance education provision within the University. CED offers consultancy and a range of professional development activities supporting key educational initiatives, curriculum development, learning, teaching and assessment, student engagement and progression.

Meet the team!

The Handbook of Assessment Guidance and Support 2020-21 is now available on Queen’s Online and on the CED website. The guidance outlined within the Handbook is the University’s preferred practice on assessment. Queries can be directed to Dr Claire Dewhirst, Head of CED.

Reflections is the University’s newsletter, published twice per year by the Centre for Educational Development, and it provides a platform for colleagues to discuss their approaches to teaching and learning support.  The most recent issue focussed on Student Partnership and student-led initiatives taking place across the University.

The next issue, which is due to be published at the end of Semester 1, will focus on the ways academic and professional support staff have been providing students with a valuable learning and/or support experience since March, and any plans they might have to develop these further.  If you would be interested in writing an article for this issue, please contact e.mcdowell@qub.ac.uk for further details.   The closing date for submission of articles is Friday 4 December 2020.

CED have designed an acronym THRIVES for staff to easily remember key basic accessibility requirements to be compliant to the UK digital accessibility legislation when creating course content and resources.

The THRIVES image has seven basics to get you started on your accessibility journey and is an easy way to recall the fundamentals of accessibility, that can be easily printed, and includes an audio file.

Findings from the Digital Experience Insights 2019/20 Survey for Teaching Staff are now available to view. This survey, launched for the first time in late June 2020, complements the student version which ran last year in November 2019.

Due to the impact of Covid the survey was open only for a short period of time and was administered out of teaching semester. However, it still managed to attract a total of 189 responses and captured some interesting insights about the digital experiences of Queen’s teaching staff. Any queries about these findings please contact CED.

The Student Digital Experience Insights Survey for the period 2020/21 is now live at Queen’s for the second year running. The survey will be open until the end of the semester and hopes to attract a good response from the student body at Queen’s.

Virtual promotional activity is underway including social media, Canvas and a mail-out to students from the Students’ Union. If you are a member of teaching staff please encourage your students to participate as their voice about their digital experience is more important than ever. For further details please contact CED.

In the last newsletter, we let you know that to further assist staff, CED and the VLE team were collaborating on an Accessibility Toolkit through a Canvas course that will focus on the VLE, accessible content design, mobile use, Blackboard Ally, 3^rd party tool tips, assistive technologies and useful templates.

The good news is that this is now available!

CED has developed 7 Connected Learning and Teaching Principles to highlight effective methods to support the planning and delivery of an inclusive, diverse, equitable and accessible teaching, learning and assessment at Queen's, that is grounded in critical reflective practice.

Canvas training schedule and recordings of previous sessions are available for the teaching staff on Connected Learning at Queen's course page:

http://go.qub.ac.uk/Training2020