Monday 15 May 2017, 12.30pm to 2.00pm
Lecture room D/L/036, Derwent College

We will be hearing from the recent York Learning and Teaching Award cohort on the following:

Jet Sanders, Psychology
Applying behavioural insights to feedback engagement and other areas of education
How do individuals decide whether to drop out of their course? Or what their next career choice will be? These are considered personal decisions, but studies of behavioural economics, nudging and choice architecture identify systematic patterns in these decisions on a population level. This knowledge can be used to guide decisions in the context of education. The government’s Behavioural Insights Teams are doing exactly that. This talk introduces these concepts and how they are being used. In particular, it will focus on the potential to apply these techniques to increase engagement with feedback in our undergraduate population.

Video introduction

Joy Ogbemudia, Centre for Women’s Studies
Assessment in class or after class: moving from quality control to quality assurance
There is continuous awareness of the impact of assessment on students learning in every field of study, particularly in the Higher Education Academy (HEA). What is however yet to be fully embraced, is the move from assessment of learning to assessment for learning. This move, according to Leahy et al (2005), is a shift from quality control to quality assurance. While quality control is product oriented (traditional summative approach to assessment, which is assessing students at the end of a module), quality assurance is process oriented (formative approach to assessment, which is carried out while learning is still taking place). In compliance with the York Pedagogy (Robinson 2015), Constructive Alignment theory (Biggs 2003) and the UK Professional Standards Framework, I explore how I designed student-centred environment to teach first year Sociology undergraduates, using formative assessment to achieve quality assurance.

Video introduction

David Jennings, Archaeology
How to make case studies and abstract academic concepts relevant and interesting to newly-arrived undergraduate students
In this presentation I will discuss the challenge of truly engaging students when discussing academic theories and concepts that can seem – at first glance – dry, remote and abstract constructions. Using a recent example from my own teaching, I will suggest that applying a theoretical method to a relevant, understandable and instantly ‘interesting’ artefact that all students can identify with was a transformative and effective technique. Within archaeology, ‘typology’ is a key interpretive technique, and can be considered to be an example of a ‘Threshold Concept’ (Meyer and Land 2003). Reflecting the ‘Deep Approach’ to learning (Entwistle and Ramsden 1983), I will show that when I framed the discussion around an artefact that is “related to personal knowledge and previous experience” (Clegg 2016) students instantly engaged with the theory of typology, a lively and wide ranging debate ensued, and the class found the subsequent academic application easier to understand.

Video introduction

Sharon Winfield, Centre for Women’s Studies
Student engagement: how do we build the bridge to functional knowledge?
Now that students are fee-paying ‘customers’ it stands to reason that many will think in terms of ‘value for money’ in teaching, sometimes linking this to ideas about the transfer of knowledge and access to assessment success, a threat to a mature and deep learning experience. The challenge for HE teaching is to develop practices that enable the students’ own bridge building from declarative to functional knowledge. I will use an example from my own teaching of feminist perspectives in religion to discuss engagement of students in ways that might help develop self-directed learning and reducing over-dependence on teacher-led delivery of knowledge. My teaching plan experimented in co-developing a key to a broad and complex subject. Was I successful in creating a learning experience that stimulated the reach for functional knowledge? Or did I fail to give enough ready-made knowledge, leaving students feeling empty-handed?

Video introduction

To register, please use the booking form.