Category / Centre for Excellence in Learning

NVivo workshop and surgery – 4 November

Centre for Excellence in Learning, PG research

As part of the Graduate School’s Research Development Programme 2016/17, Jacqueline Priego from CEL will be delivering an NVivo workshop. Details below:

Date: 4 November 2016

Time: 9.00-11.00

Venue: S103

Bookings via myBU *

Audience: This workshop is suitable for PGRs with some knowledge of qualitative analysis approaches.

Intended learning outcomes. By the end of this workshop you should be able to:

• Confidently identify the main elements of the NVivo interface

• Open and create new NVivo projects

• Prepare and modify documents

• Create codes and code documents

• Rearrange the coding system

• Perform simple retrieval of coded documents

• Use annotation and linking tools.

If you are already using NVivo for your research, you might like to drop in for the last half an hour of the session, when an open surgery will be held.

Jacqueline Priego has been delivering CAQDAS workshops and training postgraduate students and researchers on qualitative analysis since 2010. She is also available for queries relating to MAXQDA (not supported at BU).

*Spaces are limited due to room capacity – please book through myBU to avoid disappointment.

Try something different

Centre for Excellence in Learning, innovation, Student Engagement

With its vast agile space, glass-fronted seminar rooms and buzzing collaborative zones, BU’s new Fusion Building offers the perfect opportunity to reimagine learning scenarios – both inside the new walls and elsewhere on our campuses.

The Centre for Excellence in Learning (CEL) is supporting staff to ‘try something different’ and inspire our students through innovative learning.

  • There are resources on the Try something different pages of the CEL website, looking specifically at how academics can use the spaces for different learning scenarios.
  • The Try something different video includes advice from BU’s Professor Stephen Heppell, who is a world expert in contemporary learning.
  • A series of i:Innovate workshops will help staff explore different technologies to deliver the curriculum, take new approaches to assessment and feedback, reimagine teaching large groups and much more. View the full list of i:Innovate workshops on the Staff Intranet.

Try something different today – and see where it takes you.

Festival of Social Science: widening participation and photography

Centre for Excellence in Learning, Student Engagement, student research

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“I want to take a break… stop autopiloting … everything that you do makes you feel”

Student, 10/10/2016

In My Voice, My Story, we explore what it means to be a non-traditional student at university through the participatory photographic and story technique, photovoice. This technique sees students become the researchers of their own lives through taking photos and telling their stories.

The photovoice method is a participatory approach used to inform policymakers, so that meaningful policy changes can be shaped the lived experiences of the communities the policies are intended to serve.

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We focus on students from non-traditional backgrounds because we know how the lived experiences of these students are often marginalised by institutions and that this impacts upon their attainment and degree outcomes. Learning together in this way is a central tenet to our programme of Fair Access Research.

This research contributes to new, more participatory, ways of doing and thinking about widening participation which is a core tenet to BU’s Fair Access Research project.

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Students Who Bounce Back, led by Dr Jacqueline Priego

We invite you all to a workshop where we will listen to the students’ voices, learn from the students’ stories, gain insights into different research methods and work together to develop practical responses to what we see and hear.  

Monday 7th November 2016 10:00 -13:00 in the Fusion Building, F105

Book a place here!

You will gain insights into the power of arts-based social participatory research methods for eliciting deep stories and re-represented for social action. Having engaged with storytelling, participants will discuss ways in which the students’ lived experiences could shape policy changes and interventions to better enable students to belong.

 Feel free to share this invitation  with your colleagues or networks.

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For more information about this project or BU’s innovative Fair Access Research, email the Principal Investigators, Dr Vanessa Heaslip (vheaslip@bournemouth.ac.uk) and Dr Clive Hunt (chunt@bournemouth.ac.uk).

 

 

 

 

 

Best paper award for CEL

Centre for Excellence in Learning

Dr Debbie Holley and David Biggins presented a paper, co-authored with Dr Marketa Zezulkova and George Evangelinos, at the 3rd EAI International Conference on e-Learning e-Education and Online Training (eLEOT) in Dublin between 31st August and 2nd September 2016.  The paper was entitled Digital Competence and Capability Frameworks in the Context of Learning, Self-Development and HE Pedagogy.  The paper was possible through funding granted by the REF Committee as part of Unit of Assessment 25 (Education).

The paper was awarded the conference’s Best Paper Award.

https://microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk/cel/files/2016/09/eLEOT-presentation600.jpg

The paper explores and compares the EU digital competence framework with the digital capabilities framework introduced within the UK higher and further education context in 2009 and updated in 2015.  The similarities and differences between the frameworks were explored.  Similarities include the focus on data in the context of privacy and overall literacy, as well as the inclusion in the latest release of both models of wellbeing into the key areas. The main difference between the digital competence and capabilities frameworks is in the former’s neglect of life-long learning and self-development. The paper concludes by arguing for a human-centered approach to digital competence and capability frameworks, in which learning, self-development and wellbeing should play a vital role.

BU’s TEL Toolkit was used as a case study example of how the frameworks can be used to underpin and inform physical implementations of digital solutions that benefit staff and students.   The team’s presentation at the conference acknowledged the creation of the Toolkit was a collaborative project for BU involving LLS, IT and academic staff.  The TEL Toolkit contains help, support and information to allow academic staff to use technology to develop their teaching, promote learning and enhance the student experience.  Since its launch in February 2016 it has been accessed 2,409 times, with 40% of the traffic coming from outside BU.  To access the TEL toolkit please click here.

The team were very pleased to receive this prestigious award.  Their research into frameworks and how TEL can be used to support teaching and learning is continuing.

eLEOT Best Paper award - Sep 16 LR

For further information about the papers delivered at eLEOT 2016, the twitter feed is #eleot2016.

If you would like more information on using TEL in your teaching, please contact David Biggins, TEL Theme Leader.

New paper Dr. Catherine Angell on CPD in Nepal

Centre for Excellence in Learning, Fusion, international, Knowledge Transfer, open access, Publishing, Training, writing

nnaCongratulations to Dr. Catherine Angell (FHSS) who just had her paper ‘Continual Professional Development (CPD): an opportunity to improve the Quality of Nursing Care in Nepal’ accepted in Health Prospect.   The paper is co-authored with BU Visiting Faculty Dr. Bibha Simkhada and Prof. Padam Simkhada  both based at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), Dr. Rose Khatri  and Dr. Sean Mackacel-logo-weby (also at LJMU), Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery and Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), and our colleagues in Dr. Sujan Marahatta and Associate Professor Chandra Kala Sharma. Ms. Chandra Kala Sharma is also the president of the Nepal Nursing Association (left in photo).  Health Prospect is an Open Access journal, hence freely available to anybody in Nepal (and elsewhere in the world).

dsc_0124This paper is first of several based on a study aiming to improve CPD in Nepal and it is partly funded by LJMU and partly funded by BU’s Centre for Excellence in Learning (CEL).  The CEL-funded part of the project centres on focus group research with representatives of the Ministry of Health & Population, the Ministry of Education, the Nepal Nursing Association and the Nursing Council, and Higher Education providers of Nurse Education (both form Government-run universities and private colleges). The focus group schedule will include starter questions to initiate discussions around the kind of CPD nurses in Nepal need, its format, preferred models, the required quality and quantity, and ways of  checking up (quality control). In addition we will be asking a subgroup of nurses registered in Nepal about midwifery skills as midwifery is not recognised as a separate profession from nursing in Nepal. Hence there will be three focus groups specifically about midwifery CPD: one at MIDSON (the Midwifery Organisation of Nepal), one with nurses providing maternity care in private hospitals and one with nurses doing this in government hospitals.

The research is a natural FUSION project in the field of nursing & midwifery as it links Research in the field of Education to help improve Practice in Nepal.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Reference:

  1. (CPD): an opportunity to improve the Quality of Nursing Care in Nepal, Health Prospect (Accepted) 

 

 

Learning together: widening participation with you

Centre for Excellence in Learning

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We’ve been finding out how people working in higher education learn, think and feel about and put into practice widening participation.

Exploring the idea of widening participation as a process of organisational learning aligns with the core strategy of BU’s innovative Fair Access Research project — through working and learning together we can make a difference for students, where we work, how we work, yourselves and society.

At a time of uncertainty and inequality  in society and great changes in the sector, finding ways for us all to learn together in kinder and more effective ways matters.

Over the summer we have been doing some fieldwork and collecting sector-wide survey data to establish how different people in different organisations learn about widening participation.

We want to know how you, here at BU, understand, learn about and practice widening participation. We’ve designed a survey to capture your voices and experiences. 

In July we had the privilege of meeting with colleagues from across the university to explore some of these issues – we want to open that invitation to more of you through this survey.

For more information about the organisational learning project, email Dr Maggie Hutchings on mhutchings@bournemouth.ac.uk

For more information about BU’s innovative Fair Access Research, email the Principal Investigators, Dr Vanessa Heaslip (vheaslip@bournemouth.ac.uk) and Dr Clive Hunt (chunt@bournemouth.ac.uk)

To complete and share the survey follow this link.

Widening Participation Fieldnotes: Emotional Work

Centre for Excellence in Learning, Knowledge Exchange

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BU’s Fair Access Research project concentrates on the idea of learning and working together to transform higher education. We are interested in how widening participation works differently in different institutions.

With this in mind, Maggie Hutchings and Alex Wardrop have been doing some fieldwork with colleagues in the north of England.

Widening participation is emerging as emotional work.  It is an emotional labour which sees personal stories intersect with and sometimes rub up against complex economic and political landscapes.

You can join us in this collective reflection and learning exercise by contributing to our survey. For more information about the organisational learning project, email Maggie on mhutchings@bournemouth.ac.uk

For more information about BU’s innovative Fair Access Research, email the Principal Investigators, Dr Vanessa Heaslip (vheaslip@bournemouth.ac.uk) and Dr Clive Hunt (chunt@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Widening Participation: a practice of hope

Centre for Excellence in Learning

warhol kruger clouds

Silver Clouds, Billy Kruger and Andy Warhol 1966

Our Fair Access Researchers have written a blog-post exploring the necessity of hope and solidarity for widening participation – particularly when any glimpse of a silver cloud seems very out of reach.

Drawing on the work of José Esteban Muñoz, our researchers see hope as a troubling but very necessary thing for those working to transform higher education:

“Practicing educated hope, participating in a mode of revolutionary consciousness, is not simply conforming to one group’s doxa at the expense of another’s…It is not about announcing the way things ought to be, but, instead, imagining what things could be. It is thinking beyond the narrative of what stands for the world today by seeing it as not enough” (from Duggan and Muñoz, 2009: 278).

One of the cornerstones of the Fair Access Research project is that it is through working and learning together that just such a hope can be practiced.

Developing the thinking that underpinned an article that suggested how research can be used to better enable and embed an institutional culture that works for social justice, Maggie and Alex are now researching how the ideas, rhetoric and policies of widening participation are being learnt in different organisations. To contribute to this research and share your learning, please do complete our survey for the sector to help understand this more. They will be going up to Liverpool over the coming weeks to do some fieldwork with colleagues in different organisations.

For more information about the Fair Access Research project please email the Principal InvestigatorsDr Vanessa Heaslip and Dr Clive Hunt.

Working with Students’ Unions for Widening Participation

Centre for Excellence in Learning

SUBU1

The Fair Access Research project is having a busy summer! Hot on the heals of the powerful workshop Visible Students/Invisible Needs, we’ve been working with SUBU on the Partnerships for Widening Participation project.

This week we filmed some video clips with our new full-time officers and colleagues from across the university. Next week we’ve invited experts from the HE sector to come and participate in a workshop exploring why working with Students’ Unions matters for widening participation.

We are trying to nurture a culture of solidarity, trust and care to help transform what higher education looks like. 

invisible students

We want to explore how the sector is working and learning together for widening participation research, policy and practice. We’ve designed a survey to find out how the policies and ideas of widening participation are being learnt and lived in different organisations.

Feel free to share this survey with colleagues working in all areas of higher education. If you want to know more about the survey, get in touch with Maggie  or Alex.

Thank you to everyone who has supported the Fair Access Research project through the year.

For more information about the Fair Access Research project please email the Principle Investigators, Dr Vanessa Heaslip and Dr Clive Hunt.

 

 

Visible Students/Invisible Needs: a workshop

Centre for Excellence in Learning

festival of learning 2 (2)Members of the Fair Access Research project would like to invite you all to a workshop exploring issues of widening participation on Monday 11th July.

During the workshop we will engage in debates and participate in group activities as we work together to make visible the invisible needs of all of our students.

There will be a poster exhibition showcasing the variety of widening participation activities happening across the university.

The workshop is open to staff across all faculties and for professional service staff interested in this area. We want to collectively work to make the university and higher education a more equitable, more socially just place for our students, our selves and our society.

Monday 11th July 2016

10:00 -14:00

EBC 202 and 203

Lunch will be provided.

Here is our invitation. To book a place email awardrop@bournemouth.ac.uk

Fair Access Research publication: Troubling ideas

Centre for Excellence in Learning

festival of learning 2 (2)

Bournemouth University is undertaking a large collaborative research study exploring issues of access to higher education. We are pleased to announce that members of the Fair Access Research project from BU and the University of Liverpool have had an article published in the influential Journal of Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning.

We explored how universities and colleges use research as part of their plans to widen participation and open up higher education to people from disadvantaged backgrounds.  They found that while national policy is leading to more institutions mentioning research as part of their Access Agreements; it tends to be in the context of justifying spending rather than leading to significant behaviour change.

The most recent strategic guidance from the Office for Fair Access emphasised the importance of building a community of practice across institutions, with practitioners and academics working and learning together to understand effective practice and the impact of interventions.

It is hoped that when the 2017-18 access agreements are published over the coming months we see a sector engaging much more with research in order to transform thinking, practice and the sector as a whole.

For more information of this paper email Alex Wardrop (awardrop@bournemouth.ac.uk). For more information about the Fair Access Research project email Vanessa Heaslip (vheaslip@bournemouth.ac.uk) and Clive Hunt (chunt@bournemouth.ac.uk)

 

 

 

 

Visible Students/Invisible Needs: Fair Access Event

Centre for Excellence in Learning

I Extend My Arms 1931 or 1932 Claude Cahun 1894-1954 Purchased 2007 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P79319

I Extend My Arms 1931 or 1932 by Claude Cahun 

Monday 11th July

10:00-14:00 

EBC 202 and 203

We are living through a time of great change and discontent the sector and the country. Finding spaces for hope, solace and respect seem even more important then they usually do.

Members of the Fair Access Research project are trying to make just such a space on Monday 11th July.

We are extending our arms to you to invite you all to an event where we share with you our research and find ways work and learn together at a time when partnership is so vital.

During the workshop we will engage in debates and participate in group activities as we work together to make visible the invisible needs of all of our students.

There will be a poster exhibition showcasing the variety of widening participation activities happening across the university.

The workshop is open to staff across all faculties and for professional service staff interested in this area. We want to collectively work to make the university and higher education a more equitable, more socially just place for our students, our selves and our society.

Lunch will be provided.

Here is our invitation. To book a place email awardrop@bournemouth.ac.uk

 

 

 

 

Students Who Bounce Back Project

Centre for Excellence in Learning

Credit: Gareth Williams (CC BY 2.0)

Credit: Gareth Williams(CC BY 2.0)

Are you a student carer? Do you know a BU student who has caring responsibilities?

BU student carers – those students who provide unpaid support to someone who could not manage without your help – are invited to take part in a photo-diary research project entitled ‘Students who bounce back’, led by Dr Jacqueline Priego, from BU’s Centre for Excellence in Learning.

  • The project seeks to explore the life experience of student carers at BU and the impact of caring in their learning experiences.
  • By taking part, student carers will help us to enhance the academic and pastoral support for student carers at BU in the future.
  • The Student Carer bursary was funded through a pilot scheme in 2015/2016. This research will evaluate the effectiveness of the bursary and inform whether to continue with the bursary in future years. We would like to hear from students who were and were not successful in securing the bursary, and also from those student carers who were not aware of the bursary.

For details about the project, including its reimbursement scheme (up to £50 Amazon voucher + travel expenses), please email jpriego@bournemouth.ac.uk.

A carer is defined as anyone who cares, unpaid, for a family member who, due to illness, disability, a mental health problem or an addiction, cannot cope without their support.

Featured Image Credit: Gareth Williams (CC BY 2.0)

Seminar today: Dr Marcellus Mbah,R301, 13:00-14:00

Awarded & submitted bids, BRIAN, Centre for Excellence in Learning, Coffee Morning, conferences, Fusion, HEIF, Knowledge Exchange, PG research, Research Ethics, staff profile pages, student research

All welcome to the seminar happening today. Room R301 (Royal London House), 13:00-14:00. Feel free to bring your lunch with you.

 

An exploration into the dynamics of being an international student and the complexities surrounding their placement and employability prospects

Abstract

The experience of students gaining work placement has become an integral part of the United Kingdom (UK) Higher Education (HE) system in an attempt to help prepare students for the world of work. Whilst much has been written about this subject, the majority of the research centres on the UK domicile learner. Considering the importance of the HE internationalisation agenda, the drive to increase the recruitment numbers of international students (IS) and the fact that the need to gain work experience extends to include IS, there is little published literature which explores the work placement experiences from an international student perspective. This presentation reports on an instrumental case study which explored the experiences of IS with a view to understanding the challenges they face identifying, securing and successfully completing a work placement. Findings suggest substantial challenges exist and a framework is proposed to help the university improve the international students’ placement experience and employability prospects.

 

Marcellus is Research Fellow in the Centre for Excellence in Learning at Bournemouth University. His involvement in the Centre touches on some of the key areas in the discipline of Education such as University Community Engagement, Graduate Employability and Education for Sustainable Development.

If you have any queries about Social Science Seminar Series, please get in touch with Dr Mastoureh Fathi (mfathi@bournemouth.ac.uk).