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We’d like to thank all of our delegates and contributors for making the 2016 UCLU Education Conference a success.

-  You can find the programme for the day here.

- You can find a report on priorities our attendees identified here

For more information, please e-mail Tom Flynn, Representation & Campaigns Co-ordinator (Education) at [email protected]

Programme and PowerPoint Presentations.

 

Morning Sessions

Session 1

A1 - Engaging Students with Research-based Education
Dr Alex Standen and Dr Vincent Tong, UCL Centre for Advancing Learning and Teaching (CALT)

This session will introduce participants to one of UCL’s major strategic initiatives, Connected Curriculum. This institution-wide programme is aimed at educating students through enquiry and dialogue, bringing UCL’s learning and research communities into closer contact, and making connections across and beyond programmes. We’ll also look at activities in which students are engaged as partners, such as the newly-launched R=T series of events, which sees UCL academics, external speakers and UCL students working together on projects aimed at embedding research into programmes of study.

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B1 - Liberating the Curriculum
Tom Robinson, UCLU

The aim of the Liberating the Curriculum project is to challenge the current Euro-centric, white-hegemonic, male-dominated curriculum, and to find ways to put black, queer, disabled, and feminist contributions and critiques on an equal footing. This session will outline the project, explore some areas of best practice at UCL and open up discussion about how you can raise these issues within your own departments.

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C1 - Gingerbread Dreams: What Happened on the Way to UCL?
Moira Wright, Eileen Kennedy & Steve Rowett, UCL Digital Education

What do you want to do at UCL? How could UCL digital education help you do it? Tricky questions that need a novel approach to get a meaningful answer. Thankfully, new teaching ideas like participatory learning and gamification have gradually gained momentum in higher education. Techniques like storytelling and making offer opportunities for students and teachers to learn from each other in creative and inspirational environments. Come to this workshop to get a taste of learning through narratives, games and rewards.

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Session 2

 

A2 - Skills in Seconds
Debs Furness, UCL Library Services

Join us as we present a series of short films on how to make the most of UCL’s libraries & resources.

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B2 - Improving the experiences of Postgraduate Research Students
Diana Hawk & Suguna Nair, UCLU

This session is aimed at Postgraduate Research students and StARs, and will feature the results from the 2015 Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES). Find out what the priorities are from the UCLU Postgraduate Students’ Officer. Spoiler alert: teaching assistants and space will feature.

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C2 - Student Surveys…the Results are in - What Next?
Judith Hillmore & Jess Shepherd, UCL Office of the Vice-Provost Education & Student Affairs

As a student, it’s likely that you’ve seen publicity on campus for student experience surveys, such as the NSS and Student Barometer, which focuses on asking students to participate. This is just one part of the story: Once the survey closes and the results are in, what happens next? The presentation will look at what we do with the results, how we communicate this to students and will consider new opportunities and ideas for the future.

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Session 3

 

A3 - Have you heard about HER? – The Student Submission
Stephen Garry, UCLU

This year, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) is carrying out a review of higher education standards and quality at UCL. As part of this review, UCLU compiled a Student Submission, to be considered alongside UCL’s Self-Evaluation Document. The Student Submission gathered data from a wide variety of sources to create an accurate account of what it’s like to be a student at UCL. This session will explore some of the key themes and recommendations in the Student Submission and provide an opportunity to discuss important issues facing education at UCL today.

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B3 - Transforming UCL: The Future of the UCL Estate
Andrew Grainger, Director of UCL Estates

This session will give an insight into the future of the UCL estate and the changes that are planned. If you want to know how the physical environment of UCL will look in 2025, and how that will support other UCL objectives, this is the session for you.

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C3 - Personal Tutoring: who, what and how?
Tom Robinson & Simon To, UCLU

Personal Tutoring is a key support mechanism for students at university. UCL has been working with UCLU to look at the role and responsibilities of a personal tutor, and how to make personal tutoring work better for students. In particular, we’re examining the balance of pastoral and academic support, and the interactions between the student and their personal tutor. This session will report on what students and staff are telling us about the provision of personal tutoring at UCL.

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Session 4

A4 - An Introduction to Wikidata
Raya Sharbain & Mira Vogel

As a new Wikimedia project, Wikidata is growing quite fast and gaining a lot of traction. As educators and researchers, Wikidata can be very useful. This session will help explore Wikidata’s usefulness and potential impact in Education.

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B4 - Student-Staff Partnership - what does it mean?
Tom Flynn, UCLU

This session is an introduction to concepts of staff-student partnership, a particular way of thinking about the extent to which students should be jointly involved in university planning, decision-making, and review. What does it mean, why do we think it’s important, and what could it look like in practice?

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C4 - The Ambivalent Tryst with Peer Assessment
Dr Preeti Vivek Mishra

This session explores the experiences of peer-assessment, as lived by a group of postgraduate taught students. In it, you’ll find out about the boldness and openness of an educational vision which dares to adopt peer assessment. The session will draw attention to staple pitfalls that peer assessment may fall into, and areas of improvement which can help harness the potential of peer assessment as a tool for learning.

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Session 5

A5 - Improving the Student Experience of Assessment
Lizzie Vinton, UCL Assessment Regulations & Governance Manager

UCL is currently undertaking a major project to re-write its assessment regulations for taught programmes, looking at issues including how we can help to reduce the volume of assessment and examinations, how we can increase the numbers of students progressing from one academic year to the next, and how we can make assessment processes simple and easy to use. This session will give students the opportunity to get involved in the UCL-wide debate, and influence the proposals being put forward.

 

B5 - StARs Successes & Trends
Diana Hawk, UCLU

Find out what the biggest issues have been across UCL departments and faculties in Term 1. You’ll also get a chance to hear from some of your colleagues about a selection of issues as we share ‘wins’ and best practice tips from StARs.

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C5 - What is ASER telling us?
Derfel Owen, UCL Academic Services, & Simon To, UCLU

The Annual Student Experience Review (ASER) process was launched this academic year. This process asks departments to monitor student feedback and to create action plans that state how they will make student’s experiences better. This session will explore why this process has been introduced, how students are involved, and what themes are emerging across UCL.

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Afternoon sessions

 

From here to there – how do we make our vision a reality? – Part I
This year UCL are publishing their Education Strategy 2016-21, which sets out the major themes on which UCL is committing itself to work over the next five years. Like any strategy, the objectives are theoretical and broad. They cover areas like assessment and feedback, student support, the UCL Estate, and employability.


In this interactive, discursive session, you’ll have a chance to think about some of these objectives and to work with other students, StARs, and staff to generate ideas about what achieving those aims would look like in practice.

From here to there – how do we make our vision a reality? – Part II

In this session, you’ll continue the work of the previous session. Working in groups with other students, StARs, and staff, you’ll shape your ideas into a plan for how to make one of the objectives in the Education Strategy happen. You’ll then have chance to hear from other groups and feed back on their plans. (Please note the report linked at the top of this page summarises the presentations students gave in this session)