Ben Walker – elected Vice-Chair of the UK Advising & Tutoring association (UKAT)

I was was recently elected as Vice-Chair for the UK Advising and Tutoring association (UKAT) with responsibility for professional development. UKAT is the sectoral voice and leading association for personal tutors and academic advisors.  It seeks to support the advancement of effective personal tutoring and academic advising, a field which has historically been under-researched and under-developed across the sector.

Established four years ago, this is an exciting time for UKAT with a new governance structure in place (of which my role is a part) and several new initiatives underway. I believe that the organisation could be really useful for the UTA and, by extension, MMU’s personal tutors and coordinators of tutoring and advising.  So, I am taking this opportunity to tell you some more about it and how it could benefit us all…

 Who are UKAT?

UKAT is an association of multidisciplinary academic and support professionals dedicated to transforming tutorial and advisory practices with the aim that every higher education student is able to experience inclusiveness, well-being and personal growth, leading them to flourish and succeed. We support the development of staff and students throughout the learning journey by sharing resources, practicing scholarly inquiry, promoting partnership, fostering community, and espousing excellence in personal tutoring and academic advising practice.

What do we do?

Professional Development

UKAT’s professional development committee exists to create an accessible culture of shared professional experience and improve the training, development and everyday practice of tutors and advisors. Members engage in the identification and sharing of good practice aiming to ensure that tutoring and advising makes a valuable contribution to the student experience.

Webinars

UKAT’s free monthly webinar series, Tutoring Matters, commenced in January 2019 and has been very well received and attended.  It is designed to support all those engaged with personal tutoring and advising, whether that be as a practitioner, leader or in a related support role and also acts as key professional development for those undertaking tutoring and advising roles.  Facilitated by various key professionals associated with UKAT and collaborative in nature, the webinars cover important issues for academic advising.

Professional Framework for Advising and Tutoring

UKAT has recently developed a Professional Competency Framework for Advising and Tutoring which defines competencies tutors and advisors should possess and is mapped against UKPSF and National Occupational Standards for Personal Tutoring.  The principles aim to provide a clearer set of guidance on the things that make a difference to making tutoring work, and a set of guidance that is easier for institutions and tutors to see whether or not they are following and achieving them. The framework also serves the purpose of being the basis for the professional recognition of tutors and advisors to raise importance and recognition of the role across the sector with an evidence-based, retrospective application with dialogic assessment.  It is being trialled at one or more HEIs over the next 6 to 12 months.  The planned awards are Recognised Practitioner of Advising (RPA), Recognised Senior Advisor (RSA) and Recognised Leader in Advising (RLA).

Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Advising and Tutoring

UKAT has created the UK’s first PGCert in Academic Advising and Tutoring as a collaboration between UKAT and a UK university. This will be offered across the sector as a blended online programme with modules on specific aspects of tutoring and advising including the Foundations of advising and tutoring; Advising theory; Interpersonal relationships; Legal & ethical issues in advising; technology & data in advising; Inclusive advising; Supporting employability; Quality enhancement of advising.  Delegates have early access to a GDPR module which forms part of the legal & ethical issues module.

Research

UKAT’s research development committee exists to champion research and evidence-based scholarly enquiry into tutoring and advising in the UK. It promotes an accessible culture of intellectual curiosity where members engage in purposeful scholarship and research to recognise and explore the value of Personal Tutoring and Academic Advising for the student experience.

Research Mentoring Programme

UKAT offers an intensive 14-month peer mentoring programme designed to promote research into personal tutoring and student success in the context of UK Higher Education. Participants are fully supported in taking research projects all the way from the initial idea, through detailed planning, implementation and dissemination. The programme consists of residential retreats, writing workshops, peer mentoring, support for early-career researchers, webinars, face-to-face meetings to progress the work, and support with dissemination and writing for publication.

How does this relate to MMU?

Hopefully, through the aforementioned activities, you can see how UKAT may benefit the UTA and personal tutoring practice and management in the university in the areas of:

• continuous professional development;
• professional competencies;
• professional recognition and accreditation;
• continuous research and scholarship opportunities.

In addition, UKAT has established a successful annual conference and is developing further professional learning opportunities including podcasts, international travel grants/study trips and Special Interest Groups (SIGs) being formed in such areas as ‘Advisors But Not Academics’, ‘HE in FE’ and ‘Strategy and Policy’.

Individual membership of UKAT is offered for a small fee and we are currently developing an institutional membership scheme, more information to follow soon.

If you would like to discuss anything regarding UKAT.

Contact Ben on b.walker@mmu.ac.uk or by phone: 0161-247-1141

More information on UKAT’s work can be found on the UKAT website.

 

 

 

 

 

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Congratulations Katrina on both your PGCHE and full AHRC Scholarship.

Congratulations to Katrina our Academic CPD Administrator for completing the Postgraduate Certificate in HE incorporating HEA associate fellow status. The PGCHE provides a nationally recognised qualification for teaching and academic practice in HE. Upon completion, participants gain 60 masters’ level credits and have the option to proceed to the masters in Higher Education. Katrina registered for the complete Master of Arts in Higher Education (MA) but decided to exit with an award, as she will be starting a PhD in September. Katrina said she found the experience an exciting challenge and different from her original discipline in history.  She chose to participate in the ‘Global Citizens’ workshop and admits she found it more interesting than she initially thought.  She particularly enjoyed the conversational aspect and discussions based around ‘What is a Global Citizen? Moreover ‘‘what can we do? This looked at the difficulties faced by international students in the UK and ways in which we could improve on their experience. The next chapter on her journey was ‘HE today, the core unit for non-teaching staff.  This looked at the HE landscape and modern universities incorporating different perspectives/priorities on what a university looks like within professional services, stakeholders etc. TALENT was an opportunity for Katrina to deliver her first short teaching session entitled ‘Challenges historians face when using primary sources’. This experience highlighted how different teaching is when compared to delivering a conference paper.  Katrina thoroughly enjoyed microteaching and the feedback she received was a wonderful confidence boost. This teaching session is now available as a UTA resource for ILTA and TALENT students.

Katrina has also succeeded in winning a full scholarship from the AHRC to do a PhD on Veteran soldiers in medieval literature. This will be full time starting in October and will be part of the returning soldier network.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish Katrina the very best on this new and exciting chapter in her life. Very well deserved!

Click on this link if you would like to read more:-

You can contact Katrina on: k.ingram@mmu.ac.uk

Twitter @katrinaingram5

Tel: 4673

Congratulations to Orlagh on her Principal Fellowship of the HEA

I decided to apply for Principal fellowship of the HEA as I felt it would be a good opportunity to consolidate my personal development in my career and highlight my commitment to learning, teaching and the student experience. Having chosen the presentation route, I was aware of the need to ensure that I was mapping practice against the D4 criteria throughout. I was systematic in my approach to this and referenced against the standards all the way through the presentation, ensuring that I was able to also demonstrate Impact and provide evidence of this.

The whole experience has given me the opportunity to evaluate and critically reflect on practice. Having undertaken some analysis during the evidence gathering stage, I have been able to review areas of activity that require change and development. Overall, I found the experience to be very rewarding. Having always considered myself a reflective practitioner, applying for Principal fellowship has prompted my development of a more formal and systematic process of reflection, which I feel will undoubtedly have a positive impact on my future practice!

CELT welcome new staff member Ben Walker to the team.

Hello, my name is Ben Walker and, as of 1 March, I am a Senior Lecturer in Academic Continuing Development here at CELT.

Before my arrival at MMU, I was a senior lecturer working in higher education research at the University of Lincoln where I undertook funded research and produced resources and an accompanying academic development programme for personal tutoring. Prior to working at Lincoln, I was a course leader within college-based higher education, specifically for the Postgraduate Certificate in Education course in partnership with Sheffield Hallam University. Going further back, I was Head of English and a full-time teacher of English for several years.

My doctoral research is focussed on academic and pastoral support of students informed by critical pedagogy. I have designed and delivered various staff development activities for teachers and personal tutors and am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). I am chair of the UKAT (UK Advising and Tutoring) Professional Development Committee, for whom I am the coordinator of their national webinar series for HE staff and the originator of the current Tutoring Matters series. I also happen to be a drummer in a Sheffield indie band…

I am passionate about the impact the support side of a lecturer’s role, including personal tutoring and coaching, can have on students individually, as well as institutions more broadly, and I am committed to developing this field further.

Suffice to say I am very excited about working with you all!

Ben’s contact details below:-

Telephone extension number: 1141

Ben’s email address click here:

 

Towards a manifesto to advance imagination & creativity in HE & educational practice @academiccreator #creativeHE @circle_sfu > Join us!

A recent article in the Journal of Creative Behaviour, proposed a Socio-Cultural Manifesto for the purpose of advancing theory and research in the field of creativity studies (Glaveanu et al 2019). It set out a number of propositions or beliefs about creativity held by the signatories and briefly explored the implications of these for researchers in this field of study. We found the document useful to test our own views on creativity and it was gratifying to discover that our own explorations of the meaning and practice of creativity are closely aligned to the socio-cultural perspectives offered in the manifesto.

Manifestos are common in the field of education. Such documents identify and justify concerns, new needs and interests and propose changes to current practice. They provide a platform around which interested practitioners and institutions can cohere. A nice example is the Learning Outside the Classroom manifesto prepared by the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom (https://www.lotc.org.uk/), which sets out the case for why learning outside the classroom is important, how such learning might be achieved and what practitioners, schools and other organisations can do to promote and realise the ideals contained in the manifesto.

Another example, initiated by a group of educational practitioners, is Manifesto 15 (https://manifesto15.org/en/).

The need for higher education to pay more attention to the growth of imagination and the creative development of learners has been recognized for many years. As we get deeper into the 21^st century the future has turned out to be even more uncertain, turbulent, challenging and disruptive than we ever imagined at the start of the millennium. An education system that does not commit to the development and recognition of learners as whole, imaginative and creative beings is not enabling them to prepare themselves for a future that none of us can imagine.

As a starting point for collective, bottom-up action the Creative Academic, #creativeHE and CIRCE networks will, through an open discursive process, develop a manifesto

to Advance Imagination and Creativity in HE Learning and Educational Practice. The Manifesto, and some of the related discussions, will be published in the April issue of Creative Academic Magazine (CAM#13) during World Creativity and Innovation Week (April 15-21, 2019). This will be our collective contribution to this important annual global event.

Important questions

Q1 What are the most important reasons for why higher education needs to take seriously the development of learners’ imaginations and creativity and invest in educational practices that encourage and facilitate such development?

Q2 What are the important values, propositions and principles that need to underpin such a manifesto to encourage higher education to invest in educational practices that facilitate the development and recognition of learners’ imaginations and creativity.

Q3 What actions might be undertaken at the level of individual practitioner, department/ subject group, institution and whole system, to realise aspirations contained in the manifesto for a more creative future?

Join us at https://www.facebook.com/groups/creativeHE/

Norman Jackson & Chrissi Nerantzi

Co-Founders Creative Academic, co-facilitators #creativeHE

Gillian Judson

Director Centre for Imagination in Research, Culture and Education (CIRCE)

 Background reading
Glaveanu,V.P., Hanson, M.H., Baer, J., Barbot, B., Clapp,E.P., Hennessey, B.,  Kaufman, J.C., Lebuda, I., Lubart, T., Montuori, A., Ness, I.J. Plucker, J., Reiter‐Palmon, R.,  Sierra, Z., Simonton, D.K., Neves‐Pereira, M.S. and Sternberg, R.J. (2019) Advancing Creativity Theory and Research: A Socio‐cultural Manifesto Journal of Creative Beahviour  1-5 23 January 2019  Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jocb.395?fbclid=IwAR1OpJ2bmqneyQJECMchh7OpBHGRhg6e0ueTDZIz7mdXJHZ470xStsxpJUU

Jackson, N., Oliver, M., Shaw, M., & Wisdom, J. (Eds) (2006) Developing Creativity in Higher Education: An Imaginative Curriculum. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Jackson N J (2008) Tackling the Wicked Problem of Creativity in Higher Education Surrey Centre for Excellence in Professional Training and Education Available at: http://imaginativecurriculumnetwork.pbworks.com/f/WICKED+PROBLEM+OF+CREATIVITY+IN+HIGHER+EDUCATION.pdf

Example Educational Manifestos

Learning Outside the Classroom MANIFESTO  Council for Learning Outside the Classroom Available at: http://www.lotc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/G1.-LOtC-Manifesto.pdf

CONNECTED LEARNING MANIFESTO

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UNWboiHEfzuDiEzABZhpLR9FGe26-XJNzwEc9qSEdsY/edit

Manifesto 15 Evolving Learning https://manifesto15.org/en/

 

 

Educational Escapes Seminar – Monday 18th February – 12.00-13.00 hrs in JD E249

Araida Hidalgo-Bastida has organised an additional Educational Escapes seminar for Monday 18^th February at 12pm until 1pm in John Dalton E249. 

We are calling this special event “Canadian Escapes” as we are privileged to host Dr Tranum Kaur from the University of Windsor in Canada who will be speaking on “  Best practices for integrating international students in a Canadian higher education institution”.

 A short summary of the session is provided below together with Dr Kaur’s biography.

 Best practices for integrating international students in a Canadian higher education institution

 As per the Canadian Bureau for International Education (http://cbie.ca), 494,525 international students were enrolled across educational institutions at various levels in Canada in 2017, representing 34% increase since 2014. The Master of Medical Biotechnology (MMB) Program offered at the Chemistry/Biochemistry Department, University of Windsor, Canada is an accredited graduate level professional program. International students registered in the MMB program have diverse educational backgrounds (physicians, dentist, biochemist, pharmacist, biotechnologies etc.), and disparate levels of “soft skills” such as communication and leadership skills. Variations in freshman academic preparedness entails unprecedented challenges ranging from unfamiliarity with Western pedagogical/assessment methods to issues related to plagiarism. Particularly, in international programs, teaching practices require modifications to accommodate multicultural class environments. Attendees in this interactive session will benefit from discussions around pedagogical practices for integrating international students in higher education.

 Please come along, listen and ask questions:-.

Dr. Tranum Kaur

As a University teaching faculty, Dr. Tranum Kaur have over 12 years of teaching experience to undergraduate and graduate students. Has designed, developed and delivered several new courses and promoted active pedagogical learning practices such as facilitated discussion forums, case-based team presentations, field trips, and clicker-based evaluation quizzes. Dr. Kaur have participated in numerous educational workshops and conferences as part of her continuous professional development.

As the Master of Medical Biotechnology (MMB) Program Academic Director, Dr. Kaur has extensive experience in MMB program’s academic and administrative management including substantial curriculum revisions, providing academic advising, and oversight of overall program direction. She is passionate about aligning curricula with employability skills, and student’s success.

Dr. Kaur is a recipient of several prestigious awards including Excellence in Mentoring (2018), Roger Thibert Teaching Excellence (2017), and Dean of Science Recognition (2015) Award.

 

 

Making a difference symposium organised by the Association of National Teaching Fellows @ntf_tweet

Two-day event at Birmingham City University on 28^th-29^th March on the topic of ‘Making a Difference’

You are warmly invited to book on to this symposium, organised by the Association of National Teaching Fellows but open to everyone at Edgbaston, with the daytime events at BCU Edgbaston, the dinner at Edgbaston Cricket Club and accommodation (if required) bookable at a discount at Birmingham University’s new Edgbaston Conference Centre.  Supported by AdvanceHE, the event is very competitively-priced due to the generosity of BCU’s Vice-Chancellor, NTF Philip Plowden who is not charging NTF for the use of rooms on their campus. There is a full programme of workshops, plenaries and panels, including keynotes by Theo Gilbert, the Times Higher Innovative Teacher of 2018 on ‘Making a Difference though Compassionate Teaching’ and NTFs Haleh Morajev and Viv Rolfe in tandem on ‘Making a difference to students’ and staff wellbeing’.  A full day strand on day one led By Pauline Kneale, Jenny Winter and Ruth Pilkington is based on their HEA-funded project on Evaluating Teaching Impact, and the Friday morning offers an option for those aiming to achieve personal chairs led by the Professors in Preparation network.  The whole two-day event is £250, with reductions for day delegates and NTF/CATE winners.

The event is bookable via the AdvanceHE website   https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/node/813​​