Sally Brown

Much of the last fortnight has been spent helping Laura Ritchie and her fellow National Teaching Fellows’ Symposium organisers finalise arrangements for  the NTF Symposium  which is being held on March 21-22  at the Burlington MacDonald hotel in Birmingham on the topic of ‘Serious play: playful learning’.  Although only NTFs can register for the first day, the second day is open to other colleagues  and you are warmly invited to register.

On 19th January, Phil and I are delighted to be working with staff and students at Reading University’s Assessment and Feedback conference  I am particularly looking forward to working with RUSU’s Niall Hamilton in conversazione on assessment matters as well as jointly keynoting (twice) with Phil, and running my own workshop on assessing group work fairly. My presentations for the day are here and I also enclose the Egg Game I am using in the afternoon session.  Reading-prog-level-assess-w-1.pptx (713 downloads)   Egg game handout (769 downloads)    Reading-group-work-Jan-2016-w.pptx (575 downloads)

On Thursday I am working with Manchester University colleagues on Recognising and Rewarding Teaching Excellence together with a workshop on working towards Fellowships of the HEA, the slides and handout for which are here.  Manchester-teaching-excellence-2016-w.pptx (952 downloads)   UKPSF slides (775 downloads) , grid (617 downloads)

Thirdly I attach here the response of the Association of National Teaching Fellows to the Green Paper on Teaching Excellence which we hope will usefully contribute to the debate and that colleagues will enjoy reading.  CANTF-TEFConsultation-Response-FINAL.docx (661 downloads)

After a cracking Christmas and a lively New Year, Phil and I are back on the road starting our working endeavours in January with a trip to Plymouth for Pauline Kneale’s Masters’ Level Conference on January 8th, as well as some workshops with the faculty of Health, Midwifery and Social Work on improving assessment, the presentation for which will follow here: streamlined-assesment-Plymouth-Jan-2016-w-2.pptx (690 downloads)

On Thursday 7th January I will be convening at Plymouth University a second pop-up consultation meeting for National Teaching Fellows on our response to the Government Green paper which is due in on 15th January. Any National Teaching Fellows who wish to contribute to the discussion can do so either by attending in person, or by sending to me and Pratap Rughani at the University of the Arts your brief comments in relation to questions 2 to 11.

After the submission of our response we will be targeting MPs and peers known to have an interest in Higher Education with a briefer version of our comments, so again Pratap and I would welcome your suggestions (particularly personal contacts) of those likely to champion our cause in the Commons and the Lords, so we can influence decisions on how to recognize and reward  teaching excellence.

En route home from Plymouth I will be working at Sheffield University on January 13th on Getting Published on Teaching and Learning, and the handout will be here: streamlined-assesment-Plymouth-Jan-2016-w-1.pptx (1496 downloads)