Teaching Matters

Teaching Matters is going into cosy winter hibernation for Christmas!Huge thank-yous to our readers and contributors - we will be back with you second week in January 2025! ☃️ ❄️ 🎄

Students Kimberlee Ten and Juliette Remillat-Scarpa, from The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, describe how they used Student Partnership Agreement funding to improve community outreach for All4paws. All4paws is a student-led charity, which provides veterinary treatment for cats and dogs belonging to homeless and vulnerably housed individuals. For this project, they set up two initiatives to increase community engagement: 1. Offering interactive workshops to the general vet student body. 2. Increase awareness of All4paws to vulnerably housed individuals of Edinburgh, such as organised hostel visits. Read more at link in comments below!

"The value of knowledge and skills have always been in flux, and educational institutions have historically adapted to these changes; you can’t change the wind, but you can adjust your sails (or engine). What’s crucial, however, is that we continue to evolve." In this reflective post, Prof Steve Loughan (Professor of Social Psychology University of Edinburgh School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences) considers how the value of knowledge can shift dramatically over time. Now in the era of AI, he questions what this means for teaching practices and assessment in HE. Read more at link in comments below.

How can we better support students who take a year abroad during their studies? In a Student Partnership Agreement-funded project, School of GeoSciences Senior Lecturer Nina Morris, along with former MA Geography students Harriet Eaton and Megan Jones, aimed to: "understand study abroad motivations and barriers, explore the student experience, and develop recommendations for the 2024-25 academic year. We aimed to improve students’ study abroad experience and expand student participation." They found three recurring themes emerged specific to the study abroad experience: financial concerns, mental wellbeing, and university support, and, in the blog post, they offer a series of recommendations to improve support in each of these areas. Read more at link in the comment below.

How to decolonise counselling and psychotherapy training, research and practice - reflections from a year long Principal Teaching Award Scheme-funded project by Rhea Gandhi, Nini Kerr and Mariya Levitanus from the University of Edinburgh - School of Health in Social Science. "We delivered a series of four public-facing seminars and one final community engagement event, bringing together academic staff and students from across disciplines, stakeholders, and wider therapeutic communities in Edinburgh and beyond... The seminars exemplified the value of culturally diverse perspectives and were transdisciplinary in nature: it critically intersects counselling and psychotherapy with sociology, critical childhood studies, queer studies, political and cultural analysis, and critical studies, drawing a highly diverse audience from various fields and professional backgrounds. " Read more at link in comments below.  

We are looking for an exceptional Events Officer to join the IAD team! Could this be you? Find out more about the role here: https://lnkd.in/eff7T9uN #Events #HE #Hiring #Edinburgh #UniversityOfEdinburgh

Jenny Scoles, Maddie Kurchik and Clare Cullen introduce the Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching Manifesto – 11 provocative principles that argue for a radical rethinking and reframing of ‘traditional’ education to support interdisciplinary learning and teaching practice. The abridge version of the 11 Principles are: 1. While interdisciplinarity cannot be singularly defined, general agreement can be achieved on its basic tenets.  2. The world’s inherent complexity ought to be honoured in learning environments. 3. Power structures should be dismantled:  4. Participatory practice is vital for interdisciplinary learning. 5. Existing academic institutional structures inhibit interdisciplinary teaching.  6. The notion of expertise should be interrogated. 7. Relational, affective and embodied pedagogy in the interdisciplinary classroom is an ethical imperative. 8. Students’ lived experiences and awareness of one’s own worldview can be more important than their disciplinary background. 9. Be wary of ‘anything goes’ relativism. 10: Teaching should make space for clumsy and messy exploration. 11. Learning will be, at times, uncomfortable and necessarily slow. Read more about the creation of the manifesto at link in comments below! #interdisciplinarity #maifesto #teaching

How do you promote academic community building and wellbeing? With a trip to Edinburgh Zoo! Edinburgh Medical School student, Rozet Balliou, describes the Student Partnership Agreement-funded and organised trip for WellMed students and staff, who found the trip a fantastic, sustainable break from studying and a good networking activity with peers: “I really enjoy nature and animals so it was lovely to take a break from studying to do something like this that I enjoy and otherwise don’t get much time to do/can’t really afford” Read more in link below:

Introducing the Toolkit for Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching (TILT)! https://lnkd.in/dHU-8hx9 Last week, the PTAS-funded 'Crossing the Line' project team (Clare Cullen, David Overend, David Jay, Jenny Scoles, M. Winter, and Seongsook Choi) launched the Toolkit website to a group of students and staff at an event held in Edinburgh Futures Institute. The Toolkit website offers a collection of ideas, methods and resources to support anyone interested in the possibilities of working across, and beyond, disciplines. It collates insights from interdisciplinary learners and educators, references to relevant publications, teaching resources, and videos from the interdisciplinary classroom under six categories: 1. What is interdisciplinarity? 2. Working with Challenges 3. Collaboration 4. Interdisciplinary Methods 5. Assessment Strategies 6. Ethical Practice. Read more about the co-creation of TILT in the blog post: https://lnkd.in/dRWyrpjz #interdisciplinarity #toolkit #highereducation

A new Programme and Course Design resource has been developed by IAD with contributions and feedback from colleagues across The University of Edinburgh. The resource provides an introduction to Programme and Course Design at the University and signposts you to high-impact teaching practices and guidance, which are founded in evidence-based learning and teaching scholarship. We will continue to develop the resource and are embedding it into our curriculum development support. Visit the resource here: https://lnkd.in/eVsuQ3Yd. #UniversityOfEdinburgh #Teaching #CourseDesign #ProgrammeDesign #Learning University of Edinburgh College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences/ College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine, The University of Edinburgh/ College of Science and Engineering, The University of Edinburgh