Fwd: STEM Annual Conference - 2nd call for papers

Sent on behalf of Dr Simon Steiner, Discipline lead - Engineering, The Higher Education Academy

Aiming for excellence in STEM learning and teaching

2nd Call for Papers

The Higher Education Academy's first annual learning and teaching STEM conference will take place on 12 and 13 April 2012 at Imperial College London, one of the world's leading centres of excellence for teaching and research in the fields of science, technology and medicine.

STEM subjects are recognised as having strategic importance in higher education for the economy and employers. The student learning experience in STEM subjects is vital in ensuring sustained growth in the uptake of these key disciplines. Furthermore an excellent learning experience ensures that students developed the right skills at the time of graduation and beyond through continued professional development. The Higher Education Academy (HEA) provides national leadership in developing and disseminating evidence-informed practice in learning and teaching in higher education; this conference will provide a platform for this for the HEA's STEM disciplines.

The HEA's STEM group includes the following disciplines;

Biological Sciences; Built Environment; Computing; Engineering; Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences; Mathematics, Statistics and Operational Research; Physical Sciences; Psychology.

The key conference themes applied to STEM disciplines are:

innovative practice in STEM learning and teaching; gender issues in STEM subjects; Mathematics and Statistics in an interdisciplinary context; work-based learning in STEM subjects; teaching and assessing large classes; assessment and feedback; employability; flexible learning; internationalisation; retention and success.

We are interested in papers that apply to specific STEM disciplines as well as generically, across all STEM subjects.

Abstracts of up to 300 words should be submitted by Friday 16 December 2011 and are subjected to double-blinded peer review; a response will be sent by 16 January 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 17 February 2012.  Full paper submissions and authors will have reviewers' comments by 2 March 2012.  Camera-ready papers should be returned to the conference committee by 16 March 2012 for inclusion in the proceedings.

Please see
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2012/academyevents/STEM_annual_conf
for further details.

Note: it is expected that at least one author of a paper, workshop or poster which is accepted for presentation attends the conference; to assist with this, the Higher Education Academy offers a Travel Grant. This offers up to £500 for a team and £300 for an individual towards travel and subsistence - see http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/travel-fund for further details.

David Andrew,
Head of Academic Practice
 

The Learning Institute
Queen Mary, University of London

Mile End, London E1 4NS

02078822803

02081446753

 Book an appointment with me at http://doodle.com/DavidAndrew

The Flipped Classroom: Using class time for learning, not presentation

 

 

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The Flipped Classroom: Using class time for learning, not presentation

via sciencegeekgirl.com by Stephanie Chasteen on 12/4/11

I write a lot about teachniques (just coined that phrase, how do you like it?) to get students more interactive and engaged in your courses.  But a lot of teachers aren't sure how to take the time to do those activities given how much content there is to cover.  As you might be aware, one method that's been developed to address the time issue is to take a lot of the content "coverage" out of class, leaving classtime for working on a deeper understanding of that content.  This is called the "Flipped classroom," since the lecture is moved to homework, and homework and other ways to practice the content is moved to classtime. Not that radical — English teachers have been doing this forever.  You read the book at home, and then discuss it in class.

I got to attend a workshop led by one of the people who have led adoption of this technique — Aaron Sams, here in Colorado — a few weeks ago.  I've written about it in depth on one of my other blogs that I help author, The Active Class.  Here is a little excerpt from that post:

First, Aaron emphasizes, there is no such thing as "the" flipped classroom.  Every educator can take a different approach that matches his or her goals and classroom setting.  The way that he does his classroom is that he spends 5 minutes on a warmup activity, 10 minutes of Q&A time on the video, and then the rest of the class is spend in guided independent practice and/or labs.
Here's a short YouTube video to give you a taste:

So, what do you want your students to learn?  Consider:  What do my students need me physically present for that I currently assign out of class, and what I can I remove from class time that my students do not need me present for?  Consider a single lesson to start.  If you want to have students work on problem-solving skills, perhaps model problem-solving in your screencasts.    If you want to guide them through the book reading, perhaps create an online version of the lecture to help cue their attention to the important ideas.

Here are some example types of videos:

• A lecture (can use pre-recorded ones, like MIT Open Courseware)
• Video of you demonstrating how something works in real life
• Video of a lab procedure
• Guided problem-solving
• Homework solutions
• Prelab activity
• Exam review

You can see a wide variety of example videos on the Learning4Mastery YouTube channel. I highly recommend checking it out — just a few minutes will give you a better sense of what can be done.

Take a look at the full post on the Active Class:  Taking the Content Out of Class for a nice list of some of the tech tools you can use to accomplish this.

 

 

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Fwd: News release: New guidance for using medical recordings in teaching

News release
5.12.2011

New guidance for using medical recordings in teaching

New advice and guidance on making and using clinical healthcare recordings funded by the Strategic Content Alliance for learning and teaching launches today.

Clinical images, videos and other recordings are vital to good teaching and learning within the health care professions.  Increasingly these are originated outside the institution that wishes to use them.  This raises a number of legal, ethical and other issues relating to their re-use.

Debra Hiom, the project's manager at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT) at the University of Bristol, added: "Students and teachers increasingly use pre-existing patient images from the web without adequately considering copyright or how they have been consented.  The new materials will help individuals be clear how resources can or can not be reused."

Listen to Debra explaining the issues that professionals face when using recordings and how the new guidance can help:
<http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2011/12/podcast129debrahiom.aspx>

The materials aim to help users of clinical healthcare recordings to:
•       Understand how to deal with consent issues in using recordings of patients in learning and teaching resources;
•       Understand the difference between copyright ownership and licensing and how to use resources shared under licence;
•       Demonstrate best practice in 'digital professionalism' and manage risks when creating sustainable teaching resources;
•       Be better placed to share resources with colleagues.

Stuart Dempster, Director of the Strategic Content Alliance at JISC, said: "I am delighted to see that the significant advances being made in medical recordings, networks and other technological innovation within the education, research and health are being matched with clarity in the advance and guidance being offered to clinical and non-clinical staff alike through this project.  This work builds on from earlier JISC investments in improving the skills required in the digital age."

The guidance is aimed primarily at students, teachers or doctors who wish to use a patient recording for learning and teaching.  It will also be of interest and use to other clinical and healthcare workers as well as to university staff where patient recordings are being made available for learning and teaching.

Dr Jane Williams, Director of e-Learning in the Centre for Medical Education at the University of Bristol, said: "There is already a wealth of advice and guidance but it is currently overwhelming.  The new advice and guidance attempts to provide an easy navigable route through a very sensitive area of professional practice."

The materials have been created by a collaboration of cross-sector organisations and individuals, including the General Medical Council (GMC), Wellcome Trust, Institute for Medical Illustrators, University of Bristol and  Newcastle University.

The project has been funded through JISC's Strategic and Content Alliance and will be hosted by JISC Digital Media.

Read the advice and guidance
<http://jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/clinical-recordings/>

David Andrew,
Head of Academic Practice
 

The Learning Institute
Queen Mary, University of London

Mile End, London E1 4NS

02078822803

02081446753

 Book an appointment with me at http://doodle.com/DavidAndrew