We are so delighted to present you with our 3rd series of A Cup of TEA where we continue our exploration of the University’s fantastic teaching and celebrate the work of colleagues across disciplines. We’ve loved capturing their passionate voices talking about their practice, all keen to share their experience and make a difference in their job. In this series you will also hear undergraduate students as they recount, along with staff, their partnership and transformational experience in projects meaningful to them, our whole institution and possibly beyond!
Podcasts this season include:
- Karen Hubbard, lecturer in the School of Psychology and Social Work, presenting A 100 ways of knowing project undertaken with staff from her school and areas across and outside the University, a journey of decolonising the curriculum kick-started with Jill Childs from Oxford Brookes last year.
“There has to be built in the opportunity to not know the answers, the opportunity to get it wrong, the opportunity to feel deflated etc. It’s all part of that!... “
- Ann Kaegi, lecturer in English and Lesley Morrell, Faculty of Science & Engineering Associate Dean (Education). They are joined by Ben Ryan and Emma-Rose Walters, students respectively in History and Criminology, two of the eight student partners on their project Education for Sustainable Development Changemakers. They passionately report on their achievements last year with the support of Student Organising for Sustainability UK
"It's important for us to understand that without an understanding of the role of humanities, the social sciences and the arts, we will not be able to pivot towards the sort of revolutionary changes in our behaviour, in our technology, in our outlook about what we need to do individually and collectively to create a more sustainable world."
… “one of the conclusions we came to is that science is what’s going to save the world but humanities is why it’s worth saving!”
- Clare Whitfield, lecturer in Advance Practice in the School of Paramedical PeriOperative and Advanced Practice, shares her assignment burger, how this stroke of inspiration came about and helps embed a robust research strategy in evidence-based practice in an engaging and accessible way.
“[an extra] way of going through an assignment… not just ‘that’s what you are expected to do’… using it in the classroom, it’s not a waste of a session… it’s a really important moment when students make it their own assignment… and using pictures to make things just every day where people feel they can be comfortable with the idea.”
- Dom Henri, senior lecturer in Zoology and currently seconded 50% of his time to TEA, whose disciplinary specialism is conservation and ecology, but whose primary focus is Higher Education pedagogy (particularly the interface between assessment, student development, and employability). Dom recounts the publication of a study evidencing one way of raising the visibility of diversity in STEM subjects in HE and the importance of engaging with diversity not just for students but for one’s own understanding of the subject and the narrative that our students take from our teaching.
“What you conclude on a subject holds weight... If you say that something is good or bad or well-evidenced or not, some students are going to remember that.”
- Andrea Hilton, Reader in Advance Practice in the School of Paramedical PeriOperative and Advanced Practice, talks about her experience of blended teaching approaches on the Faculty of Health Sciences non-medical prescribing course.
“Its’ not ‘one size fits all’! It’s almost like you want to cherry pick techniques and then… that will work, that won’t work! […] Try it, refine it and don’t underestimate time… be open to change and developing your own competence.”
- Brian Houston, Knowledge Exchange lecturer based in the Aura Innovation Centre, discussing his academic journey through research, teaching and knowledge exchange.
“The ethos of Knowledge Exchange is integral to both research and education […] whenever I was standing in a lecture theatre projecting to a group of students, you could generally always be confident you were the most knowledgeable in that subject in that room at that particular time. In the Knowledge Exchange domain, I find myself standing in front of public audiences and you just look into the audience, and you could have someone there with 40 years in the industry, an expert in that particular area. At the same time, he is probably there to understand what I know about the subject at that time because he is open minded to be engaging in that way. So I tend to, as a result, go into a conversation humble, expecting to understand the person you are speaking to, before you are expected to be understood... and I think that works for the other domains as well. You need to know what level of understanding of your subject students have.“
- Hannah Worthen, post-doctoral research assistant and early academic in the Energy & Environmental Institute with Asher Donaghy-Roering, undergraduate student in Geography, recount their journey searching for and highlighting trans identities in Gender Geographies.
“It's nice that Hannah is trying to include trans identities in lessons because it is nice to see yourself represented in the curriculum.”
"When I inherited this lecture [...] about gender and the body, there was no content on trans geographies and I thought that was not good so I had to go away and do the learning myself and find this whole field of trans geographies, emerging field in gender geographies and then incorporate that in the content I was teaching [...] this is something I am learning about myself [...] trying to represent the whole spectrum of student experiences for teaching to feel more authentic and real of people identities."
We cannot stress enough how extremely grateful we are to colleagues and students for making the time to come and talk to us! We hope you enjoy this new opportunity to listen to them and may find inspiration for your own practice. And... if you wish to share an aspect of your practice on a future podcast, please contact us.
So if you are ready, grab your favorite cup of tea (or go on... coffee!) and without further ado, join us and enjoy the show!
You can listen to all three Cup of TEA seasons in all of your preferred platforms (Apple, Google etc) and subscribe by using this RSS feed.