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Residential workshop for newly-appointed and aspiring lecturers

22/23 May 2006 - Hornton Grange, Birmingham

Contents

Workshop description:

The aim of this workshop is to help recently-appointed teaching staff (and postgraduates/GTAs who are aspiring to be lecturers) in Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES) learn about, evaluate and discuss a range of approaches, methods and resources for learning, teaching and assessment in these disciplines. By being subject-specific, the event will complement any generic-based institutional courses that delegates are attending or have taken. It will also provide an informal opportunity for delegates to meet and share experiences with other new GEES staff from other institutions

When and where?

22/23 May 2006 - Hornton Grange, University of Birmingham

Who should attend?

Anyone in Geography, Earth or Environmental Sciences who has started teaching in HE in the last three years and who would like to develop and improve their teaching whilst extending their continuing professional development. Anyone who is a postgraduate / GTA in GEES subjects who would like to start teaching in higher education.

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Day one programme

we will ask for your workshop choices after receipt of booking form

Monday 22 May

10.00-10.30 Coffee and registration

10.30-10.45 Welcome and introduction - Brian Chalkley and Mick Healey

10.45-11.45 Plenary 1 - Fieldwork planning and practice - Jennifer Blumhof and Neil Thomas

11.45-12.15 Coffee

12.15-13.15

13.15-14.30 Lunch

14.30-15.45

15.45-16.15 Tea

16.15-17.30 Plenary 2 - A chair in ten years: planning your career path - Pauline Kneale

17.30-18.00 Getting together with your disciplines

18.00-19.00 Free time

19.00-20.30 Dinner

20.30-21.30 Quiz – light-hearted team-building

Day two programme

Tuesday 23 May

09.00-10.00 Plenary 3 - Linking your teaching and research - Mick Healey

10.00-11.15

11.15-11.45 Coffee

11.45-13.00

13.00-14.10 Lunch

14.10-15.10 Plenary 4 - Lecturing in our subjects - Gordon Clark

15.10-15.30 Tea

15.30-16.15 Plenary 5 - Action planning - where next? - Gordon Clark / Brian Chalkley

Please note: this programme may be subject to minor alteration.

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Everything else you need to know

Registration on the day

Official Registration will take place in the foyer of Hornton Grange on the morning of Monday the Monday 22nd of May

Directions to Hornton Grange

Directions and maps of how to get to Hornton Grange by Train or Car.

Accommodation details

All rooms have en-suite facilities, TV and phone. If you require an additional night's B&B at Hornton Grange on Sunday the 21st of May please contact the reservations desk as soon as possible on 0121 6253383 or 0121 4146231 (fax 0121 4146339 ,email:c.a.atten@bham.ac.uk).

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Parallel workshop descriptions

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Plenary session descriptions

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Profiles on workshop facilitators

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Parallel workshop descriptions

Workshop 1. Work-based learning (Brian Chalkley)

Increasingly, students are looking for courses which have good links to the world of work and provide the basis for rewarding and worthwhile careers. For this reason, more and more degree programmes are now offering placement opportunities of various durations. This workshop focuses on how to design and deliver a work-based learning module in the GEES disciplines. It deals with issues such as finding relevant hosts, managing the student's work, assessing their performance and ensuring a high quality learning experience.

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Workshop 2. Problem-based learning (Jennifer Blumhof / Neil Thomas )

The aim of this workshop is integration at two levels. The first is to offer you an introductory first hand experience of the use of problem-based learning as a means of integrating skills with academic content. The second is to familiarise you with a learning vehicle (an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary case study) particularly suitable for promoting an integrative, multi-perspective view of an environmental problem.

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Workshop 3. Supervising our research students (Gordon Clark)

In this session the participants will:

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Workshop 4. Outcomes and Assessment in our Subjects (Mick Healey)

This session offers ideas on how to write effective learning outcomes in the GEES disciplines. Delegates will be given the opportunity to draft appropriate outcomes for a GEES module and to consider the link between learning outcomes and assessment.

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Workshop 5. Small-group teaching in our subjects (Gordon Clark)

In this session the participants will:

Finally, participants will outline a plan for an improvement to their own small-group teaching.

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Workshop 6. Enhancing graduate employability ( Neil Thomas )

Employability is one of the key strategic themes in modern Higher Education but academics often have misconceptions of exactly what we mean by employability and how the many employability issues can be developed and assessed in degree programmes. However, GEES disciplines are well-placed to provide a great variety of opportunities for developing students' employability skills. Consequently, GEES academics have developed significant recent experience in this area.

This interactive workshop will comprise two parts: (1) a brief beginner's guide to employability, and (2) How to include employability in GEES degree programmes. Part (1) will answer key questions such as: What do we mean by employability? Why is it important for GEES students and graduates? How can I, as a lecturer, develop students' employability skills? Part (2), the main section of the workshop, will help delegates (and their departments) design 'employability-friendly' modules and programmes.

Delegates will also focus on their own teaching responsibilities and examine ways in which they can modify their practice to appropriately include employability and enhance the student learning experience.

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Workshop 7. The case for E-learning (Stephen Brown)

This workshop encourages participants to consider the opportunities present for employing e-learning within their own teaching. Discussion will consider the pros and cons of e-learning from both the learner and tutor perspective, and participants will be encouraged to identify where and how they could most appropriately employ e-learning within their own teaching.

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Workshop 8. Evaluating and researching your teaching: what I could/should do (Gordon Clark / Mick Healey )

Are you a good teacher? This session will examine how you may evaluate and research the quality of your teaching and your students’ learning. Evaluation and research merge into one another reflecting the range of purposes, levels and methods involved. They are key processes in engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

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Plenary session descriptions

Plenary 1. Fieldwork: planning and practice (Jennifer Blumhof)

Fieldwork is a key feature of all GEES disciplines. This session aims to discuss the value of fieldwork in ensuring effective learning in our disciplines. On completion of this session, delegates should be able to:

  1. Outline the central importance of fieldwork to all three GEES disciplines.
  2. Share common and different L&T experiences of fieldwork.
  3. Identify and discuss the main L&T issues for fieldwork in their own disciplines.
  4. Prepare and discuss a L&T strategy for a given field scenario.
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Plenary 2. A Chair in ten years - getting promotion (Pauline Kneale)

This activity takes some real but disguised promotion criteria from a combination of University Human Resource sites and asks participants to imagine they want to apply for a Chair in 10 years time. This is a very short period, but the outcome should be a clearer understanding of how these procedures operate and a sense of the shape an action plan could take. It should encourage participants to look at the current promotion criteria in their own institution and prompt a planned approach to promotion over the period of choice.

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Plenary 3. Linking your teaching and research (Mick Healey)

Do you see your teaching and research as two separate activities? Or would you want to better connect them and ensure that students develop an understanding of research as applied to your discipline? If you are interested in seeing how research and teaching may be linked to benefit student learning then come along to this session. Beforehand you might want to visit the GEES Subject Centre webpages on Linking Teaching and Research in the Disciplines.

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Plenary 4. Lecturing in our subjects (Gordon Clark)

The session on lecturing aims to:

Finally participants will outline a plan for an improvement to their own lecturing.

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Plenary 5. Action planning - where next? (Gordon Clark)

In this session we shall provide an opportunity for participants to reflect on the key issues they have dealt with in the workshop and record these and their reactions to the workshop in a reflective commentary. Participants will also have an opportunity to plan their next steps in taking forward the lessons they have learned. Finally they will be asked to evaluate the workshop.

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Profiles on Workshop Facilitators


Mick Healey Mick Healey - University of Gloucestershire

Mick Healey is Professor of Geography at the University of Gloucestershire. He is also Director of the Centre for Active Learning in Geography, Environment and Related Disciplines and an Accreditor for the Higher Education Academy. For the first 20 years of his career he taught at Coventry University before moving to Cheltenham in 1994 to be Head of the Department of Geography and Geology, a post he held for three years. He has published approx 50 articles and books in the field of economic geography. He has also written over 100 papers and books about learning and teaching in higher education, an area in which he now specialises. In 2000 he was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship. His main research interests are: Active learning; learning experiences of disabled students; scholarship of teaching and learning; and linkages between research and teaching. He is an experienced presenter. In the last 10 years he has given approx 200 educational workshops, seminars and conference presentations in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, United Kingdom and United States.

Favourite websites:

www.nationalrail.co.uk/planmyjourney

Few web sites are so optimistic!

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Gordon ClarkGordon Clark - Lancaster University

A rural geographer by research interests, I am a long-time member of staff at Lancaster University who has developed interests in teaching developments over several years. These have resulted in papers in the Journal of Geography in Higher Education, workshops and booklets for the Geography Discipline Network, and various projects in Lancaster University on teaching matters. I am co-author of Geography@University (Sage, 2003). I was part of an EU project on integrated tourism in rural areas, have set up the new International Centre for the Uplands - Cumbria and am leading five ERDF projects providing support for tourism businesses in the North West of England.

Favourite websites:

BBC news - http://www.bbc.co.uk/

Dundee Weather Station - http://www.sat.dundee.ac.uk

Google Earth - http://earth.google.com

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Brian Chalkley Brian Chalkley - GEES Subject Centre

Brian is Director of the Higher Education Academy National Subject Centre for Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences which is based at the University of Plymouth . He combines this post with a continuing commitment to teaching and research in the Plymouth Department of Geographical Sciences. His main pedagogic interests lie in the areas of key skills, work-based learning and student employability. His main areas of geographical specialisation are in urban policy and Australia . Brian is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Geography in Higher Education and of the Courses and Education Committee of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS/IBG). When not wearing his academic hat, Brian is known as a fan of Glen Miller, Fred Astaire and Ella Fitzgerald (musical tastes his family label as 'sad'). Worse still, he is a lifelong supporter of Brentford Football Club and a lifelong opponent of DIY and gardening.

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Pauline Kneale Pauline Kneale - University of Leeds

Pauline Kneale is 'Professor of Applied Hydrology with Learning and Teaching in Geography' at the University of Leeds. She is one of the Leeds ProDeans for L&T and a National Teaching Fellow. Aside from water quality floods and neural network modelling Pauline is interested in understanding skills and motivations of students and staff, intrapreneurship and making PDP a really effective process. Further details and resources can be found at the University of Leeds staff profile webpage for Pauline Kneale.

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Jennifer Blumhof Jennifer Blumhof - University of Hertfordshire

Jennifer is the Senior Advisor for Environmental Sciences at GEES and also the Assistant Director of Learning and Teaching at the University of Hertfordshire . At Hertfordshire she is leading the Personal Development Planning Project She has over 15 years lecturing experience in environmental sciences but increasingly has become interested in the pedagogy of our disciplines especially in skills development and problem-based learning in HE. Recently her interests have focused on the concept of ' disciplines in dialogue',attempting to have an insight into the way disciplines communicate with each other and how this might support interdisciplinary learning and teaching .

Favourite web-site http://www.google.co.uk How did we manage without it!

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Stephen Brown Stephen Brown - De Montfort University

Stephen Brown is Professor of Learning Technologies and Director of Knowledge Media Design at De Montfort University and Director of Hyperworks Ltd. He specialises in learning strategy and infrastructure reviews; technology forecasting and assessment; distance and online learning and tutoring strategies and techniques; learning materials design and production; and staff development.

Experience includes ten years of working in distance education for the Open University, six years in BT Training, 3 years as Senior Technology Adviser for the JISC,  eight years at De Montfort University, where he led the development of the Electronic Campus, resulting in the creation of a university-wide Managed Learning Environment, and President of the Association for Learning Technology.

http://kmd.dmu.ac.uk

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Neil Thomas Neil Thomas - Kingston University

Neil is a Solid Earth geophysicist, specialising in the application of palaeomagnetism to global geodynamics. He is a Principal Lecturer in Geosciences at Kingston University and is Course Director for 3 undergraduate programmes, including the interdiciplinary Environmental Hazards & Disaster Management course. His major L&T interests include: the integration and assessment of key skills and careers management in GEES degree programmes; use of problem-based learning in Earth Sciences and developing research-teaching links. As a Welshman, Neil's main interests include rugby, singing and consuming good beer and Australian wine! Neil has a 7 year old son and 5 year-old twin daughters so is (hopefully!!) adept in multi-tasking!!

Favourite website:

http://www.usgs.gov/ - the US Geological Survey website - you can find pretty much anything on this if you've got the time and energy!!

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Profiles on workshop delegates

Lee Brown

In September 2005 I started as a lecturer in Hydrology. I am responsible for teaching ¼ of a 20 credit Level 1 module, a 10 credit Level 2 module, a 20 credit Level 3 module and a 15 credit msc module. I also act as tutor to 45 first years and help organise a second year field class. My previous teaching experience (during my phd) consisted of small group teaching, demonstrating for undergraduate practical classes and helping with the running of field courses.

I hope to develop new ideas for lecturing and small group teaching for inclusion on my modules. I have not yet begun my teaching certificate due to the level of my teaching commitments this year so I anticipate this course acting as a step-up before I begin the certificate next year.

Anne Clausen

I have started a post as a Lecturer in Development Geography at Kingston University two weeks ago.  I am German and this is my first time lecturing in the UK – therefore I am unfamiliar with many aspects of the UK higher education system. I hope the course will fill in some of my gaps of knowledge and experience.

Therese Ferguson

I joined the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield in 2005 as a Teaching Fellow in Qualitative Research Methods. I work in joint collaboration with various departments in the Faculty of Social Sciences supporting postgraduate research students through the design and delivery of qualitative data interpretation, qualitative software, and thesis writing workshops. Additionally, I am co-lecturing on a Geography undergraduate module entitled Environment, Society and Policy. My research background is in the area of environmental management, with my interests centring on issues of children's interactions with and understandings of their environments. I feel that this workshop will contribute to the enhancement of my teaching skills at both undergraduate and graduate levels, allow me to learn from the experience of others (both experienced and new teaching staff), and share any of my own experiences that might be relevant and useful to others.

Gary Fones

I am a senior lecturer in Marine Biogeochemistry in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Before that I was a teaching fellow at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. I have a bsc., msc., and a phd in Oceanography. I have taught for nearly three years, with my main teaching being oceanography and chemistry based. The courses I taught at Southampton included Marine Biogeochemistry, Chemical Oceanography, Geochemistry, Applied Marine Biogeochemistry and Pollution, Marine Environmental Analytical Chemistry and Contemporary Topics in Ocean and Earth Science. Course now teaching at Portsmouth include Introductory Chemistry, Scientific Techniques for Environmental Science, Oceanography and Marine Pollution

Ralph Gertisser

Educational background:

University of Freiburg, Germany: Diplom (M.Sc.) In Geology (1996)
University of Freiburg, Germany: Dr. Rer. Nat. (phd) in Earth Sciences (Mineralogy) (2001)

Appointments held:

Aug. 2001 - Jan. 2002   Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Mineralogy, Petrology and Geochemistry, University of Freiburg, Germany
Feb. 2002 – Jan. 2005   Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Earth Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes, England
Feb. 2005 - Present      Lecturer in Mineralogy and Igneous Petrology, Earth Sciences and Geography, Keele University, Keele, England
Since Feb. 2006            Associate Lecturer, The Open University, England

Beth Greenhough

I’ve recently been appointed as a lecturer in Human Geography (Environmental Policy) at Keele University and I am currently teaching at undergraduate and post-graduate levels. Previously (while completing my post doc) I have taught tutorials and second and third year courses as a Sessional Lecturer in Geography at the University of Reading. I’m also an Associate Lecturer for the Open University, teaching on the Social Science Masters course.

I hope to gain some useful advice and information on teaching strategies from the workshop, especially on using Virtual Learning Environments and on how to plan and run field courses.

John Harrison

I am currently a final year phd student, and in the process of applying for a lectureship/research fellowship in political-economic geography.

I have undergraduate teaching experience which ranges from small group learning (tutorials) to lecturing on a second year module.

Nick Koor

I have been working in the Civil Engineering industry for the past twenty years as an engineering geologist, the past 12 years being in Hong Kong. I now lecture on the two applied earth science pathways at the university, teaching mainly the numerical and design aspects of geotechnical engineering (soil mechanics, foundation design, slope stability analysis etc..). I have a degree in Engineering Geology and Masters in Theoretical Soil Mechanics. I commenced lecturing in Sept 2005.

My main hopes for the workshop will be to try and formulate some innovative ways of teaching some of the drier  units and to develop and understanding of how to encourage students to participate more in the learning experience.

Tim Le Bas

I have taken on some undergraduate lectures, fieldwork and practicals and feel I need some input for best practice and methodologies available.  Have now been asked to take on another course and thus it is an appropriate time to have some training.  I already help in post graduate research but as yet do not any supervision responsibilities.

I have been in research (NERC research centres) for 20 years and am more used to giving seminars and conference papers.  My phd was done part-time and thus demonstrating time was severely restricted.  I have been on many research cruises all over the world using a great variety of geophysical surveying techniques.

I hope to discover new ways of subject delivery and to make the learning process more accessible to the students.

Hannah Macpherson

I am a final year phd student studying Landscape and Blindness. I have conducted tutorials and seminar series for undergraduates on topics such as study skills, geographical thought,cities and social change and tourism and post-colonialism. I have no experience of lecturing to big groups- so I am an aspiring geography lecturer.

Servel Miller

Currently I am a third year phd. Student in the Department of Geography and Development Studies at the University of Chester.   I also teach the final year undergraduate Geomatics module and assist with the Introduction to Physical Geography and Cartography modules.  At the end of the workshop I am hoping to get a better understanding of:  the responsibilities of lecturers in higher education, how to better engage the learner and the general university regulations in higher education.

Jonathon Millett

Have been a Post Doctoral Teaching Fellow at Liverpool Hope University since February 2005.  Currently working towards the Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education.  My previous teaching experience was as a demonstrator at the University of Aberdeen (Plant and soil sciences) during my phd.

Jamie Pringle

I have been appointed as a Temporary Lecturer at Keele University this month, with a mixture of teaching and research duties for the next 3 years.

Whilst undertaking research for the last 10 years in various fields at various institutions, I have limited teaching experience, namely a few msc Reservoir Engineering and Geophysics Modules. I am teaching a 12 week Planetary Geology course for non-scientist undergraduate students this year, but will be expected to take over a variety of Earth Science courses during the next academic year.

Whilst I have plentiful experience of research, I will be interested to see how to both integrate this within a teaching environment, and to best optimise my time to both register a permanent position and to climb the academic ladder.

Jane Ricketts-Hein

I have recently completed a phd entitled ‘Culture, identity and the relocalisation of food supply systems in England and Wales’.  I am currently a research assistant, but I am also a seminar leader for 2 level one human geography modules.  I have also been asked to help out with a couple of lectures for level 2 geography students.  I hope that I will be able to gain some confidence and maybe some techniques for putting information across in a way that will engage the students.

Pattarathep Sillaparcharn

I am a third year phd student in Transport Studies. I did some demonstration works on transport surveys and computing software for Master degree students. I also tutored Bachelor degree’s engineering statistics.

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The Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences,
Buckland House, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA
Email: info@gees.ac.uk Tel: ++44 1752 584529 Fax: ++44 1752 584880