News

Learning and Teaching-related news from around the Faculty of Social Science.

We are delighted to announce that the following colleagues have won awards. Congratulations go to:

Senate Awards 2012-13

Dr Terry Lamb, School of Education, who won the Senate Award for Sustained Excellence

Dr Lorna Warren, Sociological Studies, who won the Senate Award for Sustained Excellence

Dr Andrew McGonigle, Geography, who won the Early Career Senate Award

Dr Tim Vorley, Management School, who won the Early Career Senate Award

Naomi Kent and Professor Matt Flinders, Politics, who won the Senate Award for Collaborative Activities.

Students Union Academic Awards 2012-13

Philip Wells, a Law student, who won the Employability Award

Francesca Rowson, TRP, who won the Enterprise Award

Rachel Birds, Education, who won the Think Global Award for Internationalisation in L&T.

L&T Activities

Jackie Marsh, new FDLT for FSS, has set up 3 working groups that will report to a L&T Awayday on November 14 2013.

The working groups address current hot topics in FSS:

Interdisciplinary degrees (Chair Jackie Marsh)
Interdisciplinary student experience (Chair Malcolm Tait)
E-Learning / MOOCs/ ITunesU (Chair Andrew Cox)

HEA Feedback grant

Ian Hicklin, Director of Learning and Teaching in the School of Architecture, with a team of colleagues has been awarded a research grant by the Higher Education Academy to develop the University's work on feedback for students. The project budget is £164k, £58k of which is HEA funded.
The Flexible Formative Feedback (F3) project is a large-scale collaboration between teachers and students to address low levels of student satisfaction with the effectiveness of feedback in deepening learning, a strategic priority area for this and other comparable institutions. F3 will use a spectrum of exploratory tools and pilot flexible delivery methods to generate evidence-based best practice exemplars, forming the foundation for an institutional framework and series of resources for effective formative feedback in a range of contexts. Chief among the outputs will be a Free-source Toolkit that will act as a practical guide to implementing this framework.
The grant was won in collaboration with Dr Chris Stokes of the School of Clinical Dentistry (bid leader), Dr Penny Simons of the Department of French, Professor Alistair Warren of the Department of Biomedical Science, Claire Allam of LeTS and Graham McElearney of CiCS. The project will start in June 2013.

In 2012 the School of Architecture published the Sheffield School of Architecture Feedback Handbook, developed by Ian Hicklin and Leo Care http://www.shef.ac.uk/architecture/study/your_learning. The handbook has been adopted and adapted by many departments, including the International Faculty. The HEA grant will build on this strand of Ian and Leo's work.

SALT project 2012-13

See the Features section for full information on what the SALTs have been working on this year.

Support and guidance for L&T

If you haven't already, have a look at the Toolkit for L&T

Professor Paul White, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Learning and Teaching, said: " The Learning and Teaching Toolkit is an excellent resource that has fantastic benefits for both the student experience and the continued professional development of our staff.
“I would encourage all staff to spend time looking at this dedicated resource and see how it can meet their individual needs. With so much good practice all in one place, it’s a resource not to be missed!”

More information......

A new googlesite has been set up that will contain Faculty L&T information such as information about events, presentations following events and items to share amongst the Faculty.

This will replace the uSpace site, which contains ‘legacy information’

A separate site for members of the FLTC only will house papers.

Community Engagement

The Community Engagement website was launched in December 2011. The projects span Sheffield and include everything from the Working with Communities foundation degree to giving schoolchildren the opportunity to take part in a simulated trial at the moot Court in the University of Sheffield to helping disadvantaged community groups to have a say in urban planning.

Four new projects have been added since the launch including site specific projects from the Department of Landscape that improve the local environment, an archiving project with Sheffield Cathedral and improving the outdoor space attached to a local woman’s refuge.