Category / Fusion

WREN at BU

Fusion

Academics, researchers and professionals from the Women’s Radio in Europe Network (WREN) came together at Bournemouth University for a two day workshop, on November 14-15. There were thirteen of us, representing the Netherlands, Denmark, Britain, Turkey, Australia and Portugal.

WREN is an international academic research network investigating the history and role of women’s radio in Europe (and beyond). We were joined by Maria Williams, an award-winning radio producer, podcast-maker and media trainer – and the founder of Sound Women  (http://www.soundwomen.co.uk/). Sound Women aims to encourage, promote and support women in today’s UK radio industry, and it was generally acknowledged by all participants how important history is for the current debates around women in the media.

The first day started with short presentations where participants presented current research and interests, and ideas and thoughts for future collaborative research. In the afternoon students and staff were invited to join ‘In Conversation with WREN’, a discussion about WREN research and women’s contribution to radio. Our panel of speakers included Maria Williams (Sound Women), Caroline Mitchell (University of Sunderland), Nazan Haydari (Istanbul Bilgi University) and Carolyn Birdsall (University of Amsterdam). The second day focused on the network’s plans to secure future research funding and how to develop the work of WREN further.

This workshop was made possible through the Fusion Investment Fund (the Staff Mobility and Networking Strand) which supported this first stand-alone meeting of the network. We are delighted to report that the workshop was overall a success, and WREN has now made some concrete plans for the future, so watch this space!

Dr Kristin Skoog (PI) – Lecturer in Media (Broadcasting History) – The Media School

Dr Kate Murphy (CI) – Senior Lecturer in Radio Production – The Media School

Showcasing Undergraduate Research Excellence – SUREBU 2015: call for submissions

Fusion, student research

SUREBU is a Fusion funded project aimed at showcasing the best of BU’s undergraduate research.  Research is broadly defined and could include work towards an undergraduate essay or dissertation, work carried out as part of a volunteer or work placement, or activities for an academic society.  Not only are research skills a central part of undergraduate study and academic life, but they are also vital skills for any future career.  By encouraging undergraduate students to think critically and develop their skills, research will help to enhance their student experience and increase their employability upon graduation.

The call for submissions is now open, and all BU undergraduate students – from all schools and courses – are eligible to apply.  Examples of research could be anything from preparing for a dissertation or an essay to work carried out during a placement year to volunteering or work with academic societies.   The main criteria is that evidence of the student’s own critical thinking can be demonstrated.  As well as developing new skills, this is a good opportunity to enhance their CVs through a conference presentation, publication of abstract or even being the winner of awards and prizes.

To get involved, register on SUREBU’s website and submit an abstract.  Abstracts should be a maximum of 300 words, with a title no longer than 150 characters.  The deadline for submission is 5th January 2015.  If you know of a student or recent graduate who would be eligible to submit, do encourage them to apply!

Examination of the Newborn (EXON) Pilot Project for under-graduate student midwives: an update.

Fusion, Knowledge Transfer, student research, Training

In November last year I published a blog on the first pilot project I undertook with five under-graduate pre-registration midwifery students which was designed to enable them to qualify with the skills and competencies around examination of the newborn (EXON). The students were required to access and study the module with post-graduate midwives. Four of the students successfully completed the course in September 2014 with one student leaving early on in the project due to unforeseen family circumstances. The journey to completion was not smooth. The first hurdle was a clash of assessments. The EXON assessment (a presentation) fell in the same week as Complex Care (CC), a third year unit assessment where students are required to undergo a VIVA and manage two obstetric emergencies. It is a stressful experience and therefore three of the students requested an extension to their EXON presentation with only one choosing to present with her post-registration colleagues. As the EXON assessment took place on the Monday of that particular week and Complex Care assessments were running over three days, the student managed to negotiate to undertake her CC assessment on the Friday. The three students were re-scheduled to present later in the year with a number of other midwives who were on extensions or resits.  One of the advantages of choosing to present in January 2014 was that the student was able to choose a topic that she could use both for her learning around EXON and for her extended essay which was due to be completed somewhat later in the academic year. The student was successful in both endeavours as were all the others but at a later date.

Another hurdle students found themselves confronted with, was a lack of opportunity to undertake newborn examinations including a shortage of midwifery mentors who could support the training requirements of the project. Two of the students could not get any of the examinations done in their own trusts. Fortunately for them, the maternity unit and midwifery staff at Poole NHS Trust Hospital were extremely obliging and supported the students to work there which enabled them to complete the practical newborn checks. All four of the students have successfully qualified as midwives and have obtained midwifery posts in the local area. They remain committed EXON and have volunteered to be EXON ‘champions’ within their respective trusts. I am grateful to Jeanette Elliot, Luzie Schroter, Jenna Penhale and Bex Coleman-Moss for their hard work and dedication during the pilot and for their feedback and advice for the next intake.

Demand for places for the second pilot project remained high when the call was put out a short while ago. Unfortunately due to some of the barriers described above it was only feasible to recruit five students again and all of them based in the west. The students have commenced their studies and are enjoying the learning so far. The pilot projects are helping to inform what impact these barriers will have on the training needs for midwifery students within our local maternity units as this year we are introducing EXON theory to all midwifery students on our newly validated curriculum with the caveat that students will obtain the necessary theoretical knowledge but not all with qualify with the required skills. However by ‘fast-tracking’ students onto one of our twice yearly CPD EXON modules which has around 20+ midwives enrolled, by the time the students reach their third year there should be many more midwives qualified in EXON and in place to support our under-graduate students to gain the competencies around newborn examination.  If you require any further information please contact Luisa Cescutti-Butler on lcbutler@bournemouth.ac.uk    

 

Tomorrow is deadline day for Fusion Investment Fund applications

Funding opportunities, Fusion

If you would like to apply to either strand of the Fusion Investment Fund, please make sure you submit your application by the deadline which is 12pm tomorrow!

No exception will be made to this deadline.

For all the strand policy documents, Fund FAQs and information about applying, please visit the FIF intranet pages.

 

Please direct all initial enquiries to the Fusion Investment Fund Co-ordinator, Sue Townrow, at Fusion Fund.

The Fusion Investment Fund is managed by Samantha Leahy-Harland.

An Example of Research Informed Education

Fusion, Publishing, student research

I have been leading final year Design & Engineering “Advanced Technology & Innovation” unit. This is a 40 credit unit and 50% of the course work is assessed through a research publication.

During this unit the students had the opportunity to choose a topic for research within the area of coatings including nano coatings, structural integrity (corrosion simulation and modelling), thermodynamics, renewable energy and materials. These areas of research are supported through state-of-the-art experimental and analytical resources in Sustainable Design Research Centre and supported by significant industrial collaborations.

Final year design engineering students have been actively engaged with the research activity and were successful in publishing the following journal (open access) and conference papers.

Nugent, M., & Khan, Z. (2014). The effects of corrosion rate and manufacturing in the prevention of stress corrosion cracking on structural members of steel bridges. The Journal of Corrosion Science and Engineering JCSE, 17(16). Retrieved from http://www.jcse.org/

Grover, M., & Khan, Z. (2014). The Comparison on Tool Wear, Surface Finish and Geometric Accuracy when turning EN8 Steel in Wet and Dry Conditions. In M. Grover (Ed.), World Congress on Engineering 2014: The 2014 International Conference of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management (pp. 1093-1097). Imperial College London: Newswood Limited International Association of Engineers. Retrieved from http://www.iaeng.org/WCE2014/index.html

Wilton-Smith, K., Khan, Z., Saeed, A., & Hadfield, M. (2014). Accelerated Corrosion tests of Waste-gated Turbocharger’s Adjustable and Fixed End Links. In High Performance and Optimum Design of Structures and Materials Vol. 137 (pp. 501-508). Southampton: Wessex Institute of Technology, UK. doi: 10.2495/HPSM140461

Dobson, P., & Khan, Z. (2013). Design considerations for carbon steel pipes materials’ selection applied in fossil powered plants subjected to wet-steam flow accelerated- corrosion review paper. Journal of Corrosion Science and Engineering, 16, 1-13. Retrieved from http://www.scopus.com/source/sourceInfo.url?sourceId=12326&origin=recordpage

Denham, L., & Khan, Z. (2013). The prevention of corrosion and corrosion
stress cracking on structural members of
fixed deep sea oil rigs. The Journal of Corrosion Science and Engineering, 16, 1-13. Retrieved from http://www.jcse.org/

The paper “The Comparison on Tool Wear, Surface Finish and Geometric Accuracy when turning EN8 Steel in Wet and Dry Conditions” was accepted in the World Congress on Engineering 2014 organised by International Association of Engineers (IAENG) at the Imperial College London 2-4 July 2014. This paper was presented at the conference. This paper has now been selected to be contributed as a book chapter which will be published by Springer.

“We are happy to inform you that Springer has invited us to publish the edited book [ Transactions on Engineering Technologies – World Congress on Engineering 2014] for our WCE 2014 and we are now inviting our WCE 2014 conference participants of selected papers for the edited book.” [extract from invitation].

Dr Zulfiqar Khan (Associate Professor)

Director Sustainable Design Research Centre

SciTech

 

Free money! Free money! Fusion Investment Fund closes soon.

Funding opportunities, Fusion, R & KE Operations

Okay so it’s not exactly free….you will have to do something for it but what if I told you that you will be hailed within BU, and who knows, maybe the world, as a researcher/support staff member extraordinaire! Your peers will bow down in the corridors in your honour, you will be met with applause when you enter the atrium.*

I know what you’re thinking….’This sounds brilliant! Where can I find out more?’ Just point your mouse here, my friend, and all will be revealed.

Applications close at 12pm this Friday 17th October, so don’t delay!

 

*This may not actually happen.

 

Please direct all initial enquiries to the Fusion Investment Fund Co-ordinator, Sue Townrow, at Fusion Fund.

The Fusion Investment Fund is managed by Samantha Leahy-Harland.

Cyber Security seminars for 2014-2015 start with a bang

Fusion

Yesterday, we held the first of this academic year’s cyber security seminars.  We hosted Dr John Lyle from Facebook, who spoke to a packed audience in the Barnes Lecture Theatre about some of the challenges fighting spam at Facebook.  After his talk, John described how impressed he was with some of the thought provoking questions raised by audience.

Our next seminar will be on Tuesday, 25th November and will be delivered by Dr Andrea Atzeni from the Computer and Network Security group at Politecnico di Torino.  Andrea will be visiting us that week as part of our Fusion funded Bournemouth European Network in Interdisciplinary Cyber Security (BENICS) project.  Watch this space for more details about  Andrea’s talk.

Our interdisciplinary seminar series on Cyber Security is a wonderful opportunity to hear interesting, thought-provoking talks on a variety of topics related to security and privacy.  Although some of these speakers will be academic, their talks will be approachable and require nothing more than a general interest in security, and an enquiring mind.  We’re also interested in ideas about possible speakers or seminar topics, so please get in touch if you have any suggestions.

Understanding the constructions of the ‘other’: co-produced knowledge and understanding of ‘terrorists’ and ‘terrorism’

Fusion, student research

Last year, I put together a small HEA individual grant to build upon our earlier research concerning terrorism and social work education, and civil unrest and welfare in Muslim countries. Unfortunately, the bid was unsuccessful but one should never let a good bid go to waste. Given that it was education focused, based around co-production and student enhancement – a ‘fusion’-based project! -I thought rather than try somewhere else for funding I would embed it into the third year undergraduate Sociology unit Terrorism, Protection & Society, where it would have sat if successful.

The project encourages active student engagement in learning, employing a methodology of co-production of knowledge in which skills to collaborate in producing critically informed and societally beneficial knowledge will be developed. Students are reading, critically, major UK newspapers, identifying and analysing those articles that mention ‘terrorists, terrorism or terror’ and associated concepts. From this they are engaged in identifying the processes by which our dominant cultural frames are constructed and can be challenged. The project findings, once 30-days worth of newspapers have been scoured for relevant articles, will be widely disseminated through the production of academic papers, a submission to eBU and through conference presentations.

Students following the Terrorism, Protection & Society module, engage in learning how the ‘other’, in this case ‘terrorist’, is constructed within popular debate and within the public media in the UK. As part of the project rooted within the unit, students will also analyse the media’s use of target terms (terrorist, terrorism, terror and so on) through a content and discourse analysis, and debate the potential consequences of this for contemporary society and for developing a deeper and more nuanced understanding that can assist in restraining social conflict, violence and the ‘othering’ of those who may be associated with core characteristics of ‘terrorists’ according to the socio-cultural master-narratives created by media representations.

Students will produce a paper with academic staff for the eBU on-line journal; most co-production of academic papers with students occurs at postgraduate level and this project has a degree of originality in promoting co-production of academic knowledge with undergraduate students, something we have done already in respect of edited books. Other academic outputs will be developed and students demonstrating interest and capacity will be invited to participate in their production.

Alongside the academic publications envisaged, this proposal meets BU’s fusion objectives in seeking also to add to the corpus of evidence of pedagogical benefits for students of knowledge co-creation and includes a focus on the student experience of the processes of learning.

Thus, as part of the teaching and learning students engage with, the project has wide reach and significance for student learning and pedagogical development by enhancing social and cultural understanding amongst students who will soon graduate, alongside producing autonomous and critically thinking individuals who can translate their learning and core skills into the employment market.

This week students energetically engaged with the preliminary data extraction and coding of those newspaper articles dealing with concepts and issues that were termed or could be termed as terror, terrorist, terrorism, extremism and so forth. The work undertaken helped to put in perspective some of the first two weeks’ lecture material and allowed the students to bring their own critical understandings to this complex and emotive area.

So far, the project has illuminated to me what an incredibly versatile and intellectually agile student body we have; people who will be an asset to the workforce of the future and a credit to our university! I am looking forward to the following weeks as the project unfurls.

 

Professor Jonathan Parker

 

Sociology students engaged in research

 

Want some money?

Funding opportunities, Fusion

I thought that might get your attention! The latest call of FIF (or the ‘Fusion Investment Fund’ for those of you who haven’t yet added this acronym to your vocabulary) closes in less than 2 weeks so if you haven’t applied yet or haven’t seen my previous blog post, let me give you the highlights:

So basically you could be given a pile of cash to enable you to do what you love! Pursue that dream of undertaking world-leading research or travel across the pond to work collaboratively with experts in your field. Become a hero and take your rightful place on that pedestal that your peers and students will put you on.*

Sound good? Find out more.

 

*BU cannot guarantee this.

 

Please direct all initial enquiries to the Fusion Investment Fund Co-ordinator, Sue Townrow, at Fusion Fund.

The Fusion Investment Fund is managed by Samantha Leahy-Harland.

Successful application for Fusion Investment Funding for study leave

Fusion

After a nervous wait, I was so excited when the anticipated email from the Fusion Investment Fund Committee popped into my in-box on the 7th August. With shaky fingers I clicked on the email, was this good news or not? Had I been successful in my bid for Fusion Investment funding? I was surprised and overjoyed to find the answer was yes!
I co-lead and coordinate the undergraduate student midwife caseloading initiative, a dynamic experiential practice-based learning strategy developed and pioneered by Bournemouth University (BU) in 1996. Caseloading practice requires students (supervised by a qualified midwife) to provide continuity of care for a small group of women throughout pregnancy, birth and the early days of parenting.
Given that it is now national policy that midwifery undergraduate students engage in caseloading it’s important to have an evidence-base on which to base best practice. Whilst there is robust evidence of women’s experiences of continuity from qualified midwives, there is a paucity of information regarding students. No formal research into women’s experiences of this approach to student involvement in care appears to have been undertaken in the UK.
My doctoral study aims to hear women’s personal stories to develop an understanding of how being part of a student midwife’s caseload may have impacted on their childbearing experience. Utilising qualitative methods, the study follows women’s experiences of continuity of care provision from a student midwife to identify themes of significance to the individual women in the study, and the women as a group. I am interested to hear women’s stories of how they develop and maintain relationships with the student, how they report the care provided in relation to their holistic needs and aspects of significance as identified by the women.
Six women have been recruited to the study. Participant stories are sought on three occasions; twice during pregnancy and once in the postnatal period. Data gathered is analysed using interpretive approaches within a narrative inquiry framework to identify themes of significance to the individual women within the study, and the women as a group.
It is imperative that midwifery education prepares students for employment within the ‘real world’ of midwifery practice. My study is embedded within the industry of midwifery; practice. Service user experience is central to quality practice provision and at the heart of student education. Through the fusion of research co-constructed with service users, practice and education, timely completion of my doctoral work has the potential to benefit students, women as service users, and professional practice.
My success in securing funding for study leave to write-up my doctoral thesis, will enable early dissemination of study findings to inform a currently limited evidence-base for best practice in student midwife caseloading. Dissemination of this knowledge will build on BUs footprint of scholarly work in this field. It will also enable me to be part of REF 2020 and help build critical mass in our next REF and reputation for midwifery/health at BU. Given the currently limited body of knowledge and growing interest surrounding student midwife caseloading practice, timely completion of my PhD also provides a platform for bidding the research councils. Little is known for example, of the emotional work of caseloading for students and midwifery mentors, or how best to prepare and support practitioners for this experience. Further work around service user perspectives is also required. These strands afford opportunity for co-working and c-constructing research projects with students, practitioners and service users. There is also the potential for collaborative work across HEIs in the UK, and countries offering similar educational schemes.
Thank you Fusion Investment Fund!

Fusion Investment Fund: Millennium Development Goal Fusion of Ideas Update!

Fusion

Back in February, Bournemouth University hosted an international conference thanks to the Fusion Investment Fund awarded to Vanora Hundley, Edwin van Teijingen, and Zoë Sheppard. It brought together clinicians, academics, policy makers, students, and other stakeholders to help set the future global midwifery agenda post the Millennium Development Goals.

A smaller follow-up meeting took place in June. The two days were spent discussing arising research ideas from the conference and collaborative funding opportunities to take forward. These networking events have indeed led to a number of outcomes including important local, national, and international links; collaborative publications in progress; a potential research programme; increased media coverage for the University; and the showcasing of students’ work thereby fusing research, education, policy and practice. These important outcomes will help ensure that midwifery continues to be on the global political agenda and raise the international profile of the University.