Assessment and Feedback workshop - Radiography

Catherine O'Donnell and Dr Vilinda Ross facilitated a Viewpoints workshop on Friday 25th March with 9 diagnostic and 2 therapeutic Radiography colleagues preparing for revalidation in 2012.

The team were keen to explore how they could develop and use their assessment strategy to promote students' learning:-

· At module level
· At course level

Part of the session involved them looking at one module as a demonstration of how they could employ Viewpoints prompts at modular level. The rest of the session involved the radiographers using the Viewpoints tools and process to begin looking at their overall course perspectives.

Slides are available online at Slideshare (an online presentation viewing facility):

Viewpoints Assessment and Feedback workshop - Radiotherapy 25th March 2011

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Photos are available online via the photo-sharing site, Flickr:

Greenwich University Open Lecture - Learner-Centred Course Design

Viewpoints Project Director Alan Masson delivered a presentation today at Greenwich University, as part of their Open Lecture Series in Teaching and Learning. The topic of the presentation was 'Learner-Centred Course Design'.

Alan discussed how learner-centred models and frameworks could assist course teams to reflect on, plan, and articulate new course designs for a creative environment. He also talked about the Viewpoints project in the context of learner-centred models, and how the Viewpoints workshop and resources could benefit learner-centred design.

Slides from the presentation are available here.

Learner-Centred Course Design - Greenwich presentation, March 2011

View more presentations from Viewpoints, University of Ulster

Viewpoints printable cards now available for download

Viewpoints has now released printable PDF versions of its cards, for use in workshops on curriculum design.

Staff both in Ulster and in other HE or FE institutions may now download the cards for their own use.

These resources will eventually form part of a freely available Handbook which we are currently preparing, which will show users how to run their own curriculum design workshop, using our downloadable resources.

Printable Assessment and Feedback cards - view/download

Printable Information Skills cards - view/download

Printable Learner Engagement cards - view/download

All these cards are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial - ShareAlike license, which lets users remix, tweak, and build upon our work non-commercially, as long as they credit us and license their new creation under the identical terms.


INSTRUCTIONS FOR DOWNLOAD AND PRINTING

1. Go to the link for your chosen set of cards (see above) and click on the Download button above the presentation. Your PDF download will begin. Save this PDF to your computer.
2. Choose File > Print.
3. When your printing options come up on screen, print two to a page and (if this option is available to you) choose double-sided printing (front and back).
4. If your printer doesn't support double-sided printing, you can glue/staple pages together to get the front and back of each cards put together - match up the colours and titles of cards to get the front and back of each card.
5. Cut out the cards to size and glue/staple together if you haven't printed double-sided.

Once you've printed your cards, you can use them in workshops or to aid discussions when considering curriculum design.

Nursing revalidation workshop, Jordanstown campus

Alan Masson today facilitated a Viewpoints workshop on Jordanstown campus for nursing professionals who are considering course revalidation.

The workshop consisted of twelve nursing practitioners, and included staff from the University of Ulster, Queen's University and a variety of Northern Ireland health trusts.

The teams focused on two specific themes for the workshop: Assessment and Feedback and Learner Engagement.

The workshop was received enthusiastically by all staff, with one participant commenting that the Viewpoints process was "a good starting point for [the] curriculum design and development."

Photos of the workshop outputs are now available for view or download via our Viewpoints Flickr photostream.

Encouraging creative and innovative ‘Viewpoints’ in Curriculum Design

Viewpoints is hosting a seminar as part of the Higher Education Academy's Northern Ireland Seminar Series on 30 March 2011.

To book your place email: saj.copeland@ulster.ac.uk.
Further Information available on The Higher Education Academy website.

Information about the event:

This seminar will 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.

It will share research findings to date and experiences from past workshops (e.g., photos, videos, evaluative commentaries and case studies) and will demonstrate how these can stimulate constructive dialogue and foster collaboration, helping course teams build ideas towards a student-centred curriculum design model.

Attendees will be invited to participate in group activities using either the ‘assessment and feedback’ or ‘learner engagement’ strands of the Viewpoints tools.

These activities will help participants consider how course teams address an agreed challenge e.g., designing an assessment and feedback or learner engagement strategy which:

o Supports students’ transition to higher education;
o Provides a supportive learning environment for students from different backgrounds;
o Improves feedback methods/opportunities for students to respond to feedback;
o Enables flexible learning opportunities;
o Increases the employability of graduates during their final year.

Learner Engagement Workshop – Students' Union

Jill Harrison, Catherine O'Donnell, and Alan Masson facilitated a Learner Engagement workshop for the Students Union on Friday 21 January 2011.

The students' union is currently developing a 10-point credit module for student representation. The objective was to minimise additional workload for participants, support participants to become effective course representatives and create a community for representatives to share good practice.

The group used the Learner Engagement cards and the module worksheets during the 2-hour group work activity-based session.

In the evaluation exercise afterwards (implemented by Vilinda Ross), participants noted the usefulness of the visual approach and prompts implemented at the Viewpoints session. One participant remarked that the approach provided a "good visual display of our work and plan for a semester" while another stated that the Viewpoints outputs and resources had managed to "spark creativity as well as providing sound building blocks for the module". Participants felt that the workshop had helped them reflect on the learner perspective, helping the team "recognise the needs of the learner and how we can make the student experience better for them, and therefore make them better class reps".

Slides from the session are available online at slideshare:

Viewpoints: Student Representation

View more presentations from Viewpoints, University of Ulster.

All the resources used in the workshop (worksheet and Learner Engagement cards) are available for view or download from the Viewpoints Flickr photostream.

Photos from the day are also available on Flickr:

Revalidation event, Belfast Campus

Catherine O'Donnell, Jill Harrison and Karen Virapen today delivered a Viewpoints workshop session as part of a Revalidation event at Belfast Campus, arranged by Roisin Curran in Staff Development.

Staff from different Art and Design courses who are preparing for revalidation next year attended this workshop. There were about 50 staff attending, in ten groups arranged around the different courses.

Staff were encouraged to consider their courses with the help of Viewpoints prompts - using Assessment and Feedback, Information Skills, and Creativity and Innovation course level cards, and working around course-level laminates. (The Learner Engagement strand was also presented to staff as an option - Learner Engagement cards are currently under development.)

Staff discussed their courses in their teams, noted ideas and action points on the course laminates, and presented their ideas to the group at the end of the session.

Slides from the Viewpoints session are available online:

Viewpoints: School of Art & Design Revalidation Workshop

View more presentations from Viewpoints, University of Ulster.

A Viewpoints revalidation diagram explains the process in more detail and has some useful embedded links for staff. It can be downloaded from Slideshare.

Course revalidation

View more documents from Viewpoints, University of Ulster.

All the resources used in the workshop (worksheets, course level cards, Assessment and Feedback, Creativity and Information Skills module level cards) are available for view or download from the Viewpoints Flickr photostream.

Photos from the day are also available on Flickr.