Writing an academic essay: argument and criticality

Video >> Students’ understanding of critical thinking and building an argument in an essay. Visit the University’s Studying Effectively website for more on learning at University.

Supervising an International Masters project – a UK perspective

Prof Vicky Story: “Both Duncan [Dr Shaw on the UK perspective] and Mohan [Prof Mohan Avvari on the Malasia perspective] highlight the difficulties in getting firms to host MBA projects. However, as they also highlight, and based on my own experience supervising a number of these company-based projects, when they are done well, they are …

Supervising an international Masters project – a Malaysia perspective

Anita Chakrabarty: “The success of an international project hinges on many things, amongst them of course is excellent support from the teams that set up the entire collaborative effort in both campuses. Apart from students, I believe that such projects are equally sought after by faculty, for two reasons. First it expands our own knowledge …

Setting up an international Masters project – a Malaysia perspective

Prof. Mohan Avvari: “As Dr Duncan Shaw rightly put it in his post on the UK perspective, many MBAs love doing projects with external organisations because it gives them access to the full commercial context of their work, they can see how it helps the firm and they have a much more compelling addition their …

Setting up an international Masters project – UK perspective

Dr Duncan Shaw: “About seven years ago they gave me the admin job of finding projects for MBA dissertations. I used to work for Motorola and I did consultancy projects for lots of firms, so when I became an academic the Business School in the UK asked me to work with firms to get company-based …

Using stories to encourage student empathy

Charley Baker: “The theoretical and pedagogic background to using literature, narratives, stories, autobiographies and fiction (and other humanities) in the education of clinical professionals is the subject of a growing body of research, with accompanying fierce debate about its educational utility. Tischler (2010, p. 2) suggests that current clinical curriculums “don’t nurture the student’s whole …

Optimising small group teaching in Psychology

Antonia Hamilton: Background & Significance “Small group teaching (tutorials) forms an essential part of the psychology course and is valued by students, with many students asking for more contact with tutors. However, the quality of small group teaching can be very variable, as noted in the recent National Students Survey results for University of Nottingham. …

Guiding students in reading for seminars

Video >> Kate: “What can you do to help and support students who are maybe struggling with those skills?” Nick Thomas: “We tailor the reading list very closely, or at least I do, for the seminars so that the recommended titles are made very clear for that particular seminar. It’s very clear which books are …

Helping students to identify what they’ve learned on placement

Video >> Annie: “We’ve had students out on placement before. They usually stay with us for about six weeks, and towards the end of the six weeks they’re starting to be involved with patient education. They do the sessions, the patient education sessions at phase three. They become more confident talking about coronary heart disease …

Learning Sets as a strategy to enable learning from a work placement

Video >> Alison: “I think the role of the learning set, for me, in bringing students and mentors to share their practice is to develop critical thinking, to actually enable students and mentors to critically discuss, have time to reflect, have time to think about and challenge practice and then usually take some action, personal …