School of Creative Arts workshop

Today Dr Alan Masson from Viewpoints and Dr Vicky Davies from Staff Development delivered an Assessment and Feedback workshop to academics from the School of Creative Arts who are preparing for revalidation. The workshop took place in Magee Campus.

Photographs of the outputs of this session can be viewed on Flickr.

Sixth International Blended Learning Conference (BLU)

Viewpoints were involved in a joint workshop entitled ‘Sustaining and embedding innovations to achieve institutional enhancement in learning and teaching’ at the University of Hertfordshire on the 15th and 16th June 2011. Catherine O’Donnell represented the Viewpoints project at this event.

The workshop began with a short overview of the key success factors for sustaining and embedding projects. The teams then split into two sub-groups for the discussion element.

Each sub-group presented information about their project. This provided participants with an opportunity to learn more about the projects and their relevance to their own institutions.

Sub-groups then took part in discussions about the barriers and enablers aligned with the chapter headings in the Good Practice Guide to Sustaining and Embedding Innovations.

A copy of the presentation delivered at this joint workshop can be found on Slideshare.

Blended Learning Conference: Sustaining and embedding innovations to achieve institutional enhancement in learning and teaching

View more presentations from Viewpoints, University of Ulster

Train the Trainer Workshop

Yesterday Alan Masson and Catherine O'Donnell delivered a ‘train the trainer’ workshop to key educational support staff from City and Greenwich Universities in London to facilitate the embedding of project outputs into relevant teaching and learning processes within the respective institutions.

The presentation can be viewed on slideshare and photographs of the outputs can be viewed on flickr.

HEA Seminar: Encouraging creative and innovative “Viewpoints” in Curriculum Design

Yesterday the Viewpoints team delivered a seminar as part of the Higher Education Academy’s Northern Ireland Seminar Series. The programme from the day can be found on slideshare. The aim of the seminar was to introduce the Viewpoints Project and demonstrate how course teams can be assisted to incorporate pedagogic best practice research into their teaching and learning plans and be encouraged to be more creative and innovative in their designs.

The morning session began by Eddie Gulc from the Higher Education Academy welcoming everyone to the event, followed by Alan Masson introducing the Viewpoints Project. The participants then had an opportunity to try a taster workshop lead by Catherine O'Donnell. Research findings and experiences to date were shared with the participants.

Alan introduced the afternoon session and set the Viewpoints workshop in context. Catherine O'Donnell introduced the Viewpoints handbook and and offered guidelines, tips and lessons learnt. There was an opportunity for the participants to discuss how they could embed the Viewpoints approach into their own institutions. The day finished with a question and answer session.

Host institutions are required to produce a briefing paper within two months of delivering their seminar to stimulate discussion, share practice and support the sector’s access to relevant research/evaluation evidence. The briefing paper will summarise the key issues presented at the seminar, including the implications of research/evaluation evidence for practice.

The presentations from the day to can be found on slideshare. The scenarios used can also be found on slideshare.

Some photographs from the day can be found on flickr:

Outputs from the day can be found on flickr:

Viewpoints resources available for download

Viewpoints now have a Resources section available on the website.

Here, you can browse and download our curriculum design resources, which can help academics plan and enhance their curriculum design.

Our resources include a series of reflective tools (timelines and printable prompt cards) to inspire ideas on creating effective curriculum designs.

The resources section also includes the Viewpoints Handbook (a guide to delivering a curriculum design workshop), supporting resources for each of the four themes, facilitator guides and presentation templates.

You can browse and download resources individually or download the entire resource pack as one compressed ZIP file (26 MB in total).

Speech and Language Therapy

Catherine and Vilinda delivered a Viewpoints course level workshop with the Speech and Language Therapy team at Jordanstown who are preparing for revalidation. The team chose to focus on planning their Assessment and Feedback strategies across three years of the course. Photographs and outputs are available via Flickr.

Seda Conference

Today Alan Masson, Catherine O'Donnell and Jill Harrison presented a workshop entitled an ‘Encouraging creativity and reflection in the curriculum’ during Parallel Session 1 at the SEDA Spring Teaching Learning and Assessment Conference 2011 at the Holyrood Hotel in Edinburgh.

Delegates were given the opportunity to consider a given scenario and:

o Explore innovation in curriculum design within institutional processes.
o Engage in one aspect of the Viewpoints toolkit.
o Understand how sharing curriculum plans across a student learning timeline at course, module and activity level can help academics prepare for effective practice.
o Discuss, share and evaluate how the Viewpoints approach may be applicable to their own Institution and/or teaching practice.

Further information about the session is available at: http://www.seda.ac.uk/resources/files/2_OdonnellMassonharrison.pdf.

Slides from the session are available via the Viewpoints Slideshare website.
Scenarios from the session are also available via the Viewpoints Slideshare website.