Sally Brown

This week I am really delighted to be working with Plymouth Associate Lecturers on an intensive week as part of what I believe to be an unique drive to encourage all associate lecturers to achieve Associate Fellowship of the HEA. I will be back again in October running briefing sessions three times a day to familiarise as many as possible part-time staff with the Plymouth scheme requirements. I am also providing one-to-one support for this and other categories of HEA Fellowship as required.  PVC Pauline Kneale and I are very pleased with the turn out!

This week Margaret Price and I are again working on enhancing assessment practice at ARU. As you can see from my twitter feed, great fun was had with the group assessment practical task, the slides for the workshop are here.   ARU Jan 2015 (713 downloads) Those present will know we barely looked at the slides, busy as we were with the assessed task, so I hope they prove useful to participants in a kind of ‘backward flipped’ way!

The last two Faculty days, and the last three ‘Assessment Design Intensives’ are taking place this week before we move on to the next phase of supporting the devising of an assessment compact.

This week Phil and I are contributing to the Geosciences Department’s Assessment Week at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. We are being made very welcome here and look forward to learning from contributions from our Dutch colleagues as well as making our own presentations. Mine are here: Streamlining assessment (821 downloads) ,   Assessing more students (619 downloads) Peer assessment (943 downloads)

The Transforming Assessment project at Anglia Ruskin I am co-leading with Margaret Price of Oxford Brookes University continues in 2015, with a series of faculty away-days and Assessment Design Intensives in January for courses wishing to enhance assessment and feedback. It was really pleasing to see the significant improvements ARU colleagues made last year to assessment and feedback, as evidenced in their much improved NSS scores , and we were very happy to play a part in this. The briefing note for the ADIs and the Power Point presentation for my input to the Faculty of Science and Technology away-day are here. ARU slides (669 downloads) , Briefing Note (711 downloads)

Many colleagues have used our ‘HEA Fellowships-on-one-page’ handout, which is best printed out A3 in colour when working on your applications for Associate Fellowship, Fellowship, Senior Fellowship and Principal Fellowship.

Phil and I have now revised the grid to incorporate updates from the HEA, and would recommend that you use this version rather than the earlier versions. UKPSF summary: update 2015 (884 downloads) Note that the ‘2015’ column is current information from the HEA website, which supersedes the job descriptions still present in the 2011 UKPSF document.

We are also pleased to provide the main slides UKPSF slides 2015 (907 downloads) we currently use at workshops assisting people to draft their applications, with slides with black headings drawing from resources from the HEA, and those with purple headings consisting of our own thoughts and some we’ve gathered from other sources.

We are happy for both these downloads to be used as Open Educational Resources (Phil Race and Sally Brown)

After an extended Christmas break with no travel away from home and minimal computer screen use due to my cataract operation on 17 December (long live the NHS and fight for its survival!) I am back to work today. Once more I am working with senior staff at Nottingham Trent University on their PFHEA applications. The materials Phil and I use for our workshops are here  UKPSF slides (871 downloads) and the grid is here grid (751 downloads) .

In the lead up to Christmas I will be working at London South Bank University on Wednesday 10 December as the external on their UKPSF panel, and on Friday 12th at Napier University, Edinburgh, running a session helping colleagues start drafting their principal fellowship applications after which I will pretend to be on holiday for Christmas. The slides for Napier are here: UKPSF slides (871 downloads) and the grid is here grid (751 downloads) .

Next week I am having a cataract operation so will be out of email contact for a couple of days and won’t be working on text heavy activities for the Christmas holidays.

Phil Race and I are supporting education for girls in Afghanistan this year instead of sending Christmas cards to colleagues, so we wish you all a delightful and peaceful Festive Season!

The Transforming Assessment project continues today at Anglia Ruskin University where Margaret Price and I will be working with the Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences on their away day. My slides for my presentation are here.  ARU slides (691 downloads)

As a continuation of my work on the Transforming Assessment project at Anglia Ruskin University with Margaret Price, I am working there again on Thursday 4 and Friday 5 December, and here are the slides I plan to use, together with a descriptor of an activity I use to help people think about self and peer assessment. Feel free to use any of these you think would be helpful and fun!  Group work slides (727 downloads) , Self and peer assessment slides (648 downloads) , Egg game handout (961 downloads)

Today I am contributing to the steering group of Michelle Morgan’s £2m HEFCE- funded groundbreaking Postgraduate Experience. project led by Kingston University.  We are at one of the treasures of British higher education: a delightful outpost of Kingston University : the stunning Dorwich House. http://www.dorichhousemuseum.org.uk/index.php 

And also today we celebrate the graduation of Dr Sarah Nixon of Liverpool John Moores University who has graduated with her doctorate by published works at Liverpool Cathedral today. Congratulations Sarah on your well deserved success from all of us in the PhD by publications group at Newcastle.