Winners of Postgraduate teaching awards

July 19, 2013, by Teaching at Nottingham

Postgraduate teaching award winners

The Postgraduate Teaching Assistant Award recognises and celebrates examples of innovative teaching and support of learning and is recognised as a mark of distinction within the University.

Winners from 2013 come from the schools of Engineering in China and from Politics and Business in Nottingham.  Due to the high standard of applications, three applicants were ‘highly commended’, these came from the schools of Economics in China and from Biosciences and Community Health Sciences in Nottingham.

Five of the six recognised postgraduates are pictured (l-r): Anastasios Pagiaslis, Amal Ramadan, Jeane Gerard, Hussein Hijazi and Frances Ryan.

Winners

Anastasios Pagiaslis – Nottingham University Business School, Nottingham

Anastasios has taught in Nottingham for the last 3 years and his application shows several good examples of innovation and improvement.  These include producing a roadmap to help guide the students through the exercises, reduced sizes in his classes to facilitate learning and peer review of his teaching.  Anastasios regularly takes part in SET and his scores show that his teaching has improved over the last 3 years. 

Amal Ramadan – Department of Architecture and Built Environment, China

Amal has taught in Ningbo for 3 semesters.  Her teaching is innovative and she is obviously very enthusiastic.  She identified various problems in teaching a Design Studio module and came up with specific solutions; for example to encourage critical thinking and creativity she paired the students and encouraged them to critically evaluate each other’s projects.  She has analysed her teaching experiences and written these up in a journal and conference paper.

Frances Ryan – School of Politics and International Relations, Nottingham

Frances has been teaching for the last 3 years in Nottingham and in her application she clearly explained the issues and challenges she identified for students studying ancient thinkers and she outlined some innovative and interesting ways that she addressed these – including looking at the origins of quotes from George Orwell and Lady Gaga!  She uses student feedback to improve the format of her small group teaching and regularly takes part in SET. 

Highly commended

Jeane Gerard – Institute of Work, Health and Organisations, Nottingham

Jeane has completed the Associate Teachers’ Programme.  Her teaching is clearly informed by the theory and she is scholarly in her approach.  To make her sessions more interactive she utilised exercises, video clips, debate and group work to enhance the students’ learning.  She also used peer observation and mini evaluations to improve her teaching sessions.

Hussein Hijazi – School of Biosciences, Sutton Bonington

Hussein identified a lack of knowledge by students in Molecular Biology and Genetics and consequently developed a series of lectures to support this particular aspect of their learning.  He clearly put considerable effort into the design of the sessions and applied some of the methods he learnt at the Associate Teachers’ Programme.

Zhaohui Niu – School of Economics, China

Zhaohui identified some specific challenges that students in microeconomics face and introduced methods in her teaching to aid students’ learning.  She received good SET scores and the students requested that she contributed to the seminar that they organised, demonstrating that they value her approach to teaching.

This annual award is open to all postgraduate research students who teach either individually, or as part of a group, at the University of Nottingham.  Applicants may support teaching and learning through a wide range of activities, including: demonstrating in laboratory classes, distance learning, leading seminars or tutorials, supporting project work, lecturing or assessing and giving feedback on student work.

For further details about this award, please contact Helen Cowley in Professional Development.

Helen Cowley
Professional Development

Posted in Awards