October 2021
Keeping you up to date with the latest news in Educational Development
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 2021-22 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.
If you would be interested in writing an article for an issue, please contact e.mcdowell@qub.ac.uk for further details.
We are delighted to announce that 10 colleagues across the University received Teaching Awards in 2021. Congratulations to all the recipients as follows:
Sustained Excellence Category
Dr Danielle McConville, Management School
Student-nominated Category
Dr Neil Reid, School of Biological Sciences
Dr Gary Mitchell, School of Nursing and Midwifery
Dr Declan McLaughlin, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences
Rising Stars Category
Dr Sharon Eddie Parkinson, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences
Dr Eva Sweeney, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences
Don Duncan, School of Arts, English and Languages
Dr Dermot Green, School of Maths and Physics
Dr Gemma Catney, School of Natural and Built Environment
Excellence in Teaching by a Team
Tracy Galvin/Jen McParland, Centre for Educational Development
Recordings of all sessions in the Connected Learning Series 2021: Reflections are now available online for any staff who missed or would like to rewatch any of the events.
Find out more on the CLS 2021 event page.
Want to know what Queen’s teaching staff thought of the digital landscape last year?
This report highlights a question-by-question analysis of the Digital Experience Insights survey for teaching staff including scrutiny of what they said in a series of qualitative or open-ended questions. This local data provides us with a snapshot of the Queen’s digital environment during a very challenging year in the education sector as a whole.
Find out more in the Digital Experience Insights Survey report of findings.
The Digital Experience Insights Survey for students will go live in November 2022.
This national survey asks students across higher education about their attitudes to digital, as well as their experiences of digital in their institution and on their course.
Digital issues are more important than ever so please encourage your students to complete the short survey, and to let us know about their digital experiences and thoughts.
The survey will run alongside the Teaching Staff Digital Experience Insights Survey to be conducted in 2022, helping to build a rich picture of the digital experience for staff and students at Queen’s.
Any queries about the Digital Experience Insights Teaching Survey please email ced@qub.ac.uk
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, 3rd party tool tips, assistive technologies and useful templates.
The good news is that this is now available!
The Accessibility Toolkit is an Online Course to guide you in the creation of accessible content with helpful examples and a range of useful tools.
For more information contact CED.
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.
The 7 Principles are underpinned by Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and mapped to the UKPSF (Professional Standards Framework) and provides a variety of ideas, reflections and content on each principle that can be drawn from to enhance the learner experience and inform your own practice. Watch this space as the principles will be available through a Canvas self-paced course in November.
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