// Latest Posts

Podcasts and student learning in the humanities

William Bowden: “The use of podcasts (downloadable audio files) is becoming increasingly common in higher education. At Nottingham members of staff are increasingly using them to make elements of their teaching available to students via WebCT. “Thus far, with a single exception, the use of podcasts has not been adopted by staff members in the …

Publishing student research

At the e-learning community of November 2009, Dr Martin Luck gave a presentation on BURN (Biosciences Undergraduate Research at Nottingham), which is part of an intiative to get student research more widely published. You can see the powerpoint presentation and the video of the presentation. Biosciences Undergraduate Research @ Nottingham – BURN

Student projects in an international context.

Video >> Iain Coyne: “Some of the time, some of the topic areas, I do bring cultural issues, as a limitation for the research so far. Very much dominated in, let’s say a westernised concept, more often than north American concept, so I say that’s a problem, would this issue with this idea work in …

Strategies to address a reluctance to ask questions in lectures

Video >> Martin Binks: “People are often too shy to raise issues, but one of the things that I tend to do periodically through the lectures is just say ‘Right, you’ve got two minutes. Talk to the person next to you, behind you, in front of you, whatever, and work out what you think the …

Inclusivity as a basis for group discussions

Video >> Kingsley Udeh: “Interaction in the class or the seminar is very important. No. 1 is that it ventilate your doubt about certain areas, you say your ideas, in fact sometimes you think an idea is correct, but when you say it during discussion you discover that it’s not right or that it’s not …

International perspectives broaden a class debate

Video >> Interviewer: “What do you get out of a discussion?” Eric Masika: “I get different views of how to look at same thing. We’re looking at something same, but you have a different opinion about it, I have my opinion and we all pool together our experiences, it makes a new thing.” Chris Ennew: “The kind of …

Preparing groups to manage themselves

Video >> Martin Binks: “I have to spend a bit of time at the beginning of the first four lectures talking to the whole group, or rather in two large groups, and explaining to them why we’re doing what we’re doing, the way that we’re doing it, and what I’m hoping they will actually get …

Mixing international students and home students for small group study

Video >> David Clarke: “Talking to international students, the ones I’ve discussed this with, they are quite strongly of the view that they come to meet and mix with home students, students from other cultures, and that for a lot of them, I think, the idea that they, they seem to mix with their own …

Learning academic writing and skills of argument

Video >> Iain Coyne: “Our good students really get the element of discussion and critical debate and argument into their essays and coursework, you can clearly see that they’ve thought about it. And I think that most of our criteria that we mark and assess, that one distinguishes the excellent from the less good students, …

Clarifying assessment criteria and setting expectations

Video >> Azi Etire: “I think in Nigeria the years of your performance are equally weighted, every year so, for example, if you are doing a 4 year course each year weighs 25% “but here it progresses, the weighting and so the weight of my first year is less that that of my second year …