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Assessment, Teaching & Learning Journal
Number 11 - Summer 2011 - special issue on internationalisation
This special issue of the ALT Journal is timely in its focus on internationalisation; timely for the UK HE sector in general as work in this area is moving onto or up the agenda for many institutions, and timely for Leeds Metropolitan University in particular as we consolidate our reputation for a comprehensive and values-based approach through CAPRI – the Centre for Academic Practice and Research in Internationalisation – and timely for our work to refocus the undergraduate curriculum, perhaps in particular with an eye to the graduate attribute of ‘a global outlook’. It is also timely that this should be the focus of the first online journal, since this offers greater international exposure, and allows more opportunities for voices to ‘talk back’ through peer review and citations in other publications.
- Editorial (pages 1-4)
- Assessment, learning, teaching and internationalisation – engaging for the future (pages 5-20)
- Internationalisation, multiculturalism, a global outlook and employability (pages 21-49)
- The challenges and opportunities of diversity in university settings (pages 50-67)
- International fieldwork within the undergraduate curriculum: a personal reflection (pages 68-82)
- International field trips – the Tourism & Entertainment Management field trip to The Gambia, West Africa (pages 83-92)
- PMI2, Physiotherapy and international placements: our experience (pages 93-99)
- Using a business simulation to develop internationally-minded UK/China-based accounting students: a case study (pages 100-106)
- Support for international students at Leeds Metropolitan (pages 107-118)
- Reflections on an international teaching experience (pages 119-127)
- Be sensitive to your cross-cultural side – a reflection on course development in Events Management (pages 128-133)
- A lonesome journey? Internationalisation and the postgraduate research student experience (pages 134-147)
- Book reviews (pages 148-149)
- International Reflections (pages 150-151)
(Direct link to PDF)
Number 10 - Winter 2010 - special issue on Employability
This special issue of the Assessment, Learning and Teaching Journal on employability is published at a highly pertinent time. As the Browne Review sets higher education towards a more competitive phase in which students, as consumers, will dictate the success of courses and even institutions, the perceived benefits of those courses, in terms of increased employability, will be of paramount importance. Employment outcomes are already seen as an important factor in young people’s decisions on courses (Connor et al, 1999). This issue, however, focuses on employability in the longer term in line with Watts (2006) who proposed: “Employability can focus on immediate employment, on immediate employability, or on sustainable employability…” The interventions described in this issue all focus on longer term sustainable employability, though whether young people will be able to see these long-term benefits in their new and crucial role as rational decision-makers pre-entry remains to be seen.
- Editorial (page 2)
- Enhancing employability in a final-year undergraduate module using groupwork and peer assessment (pages 3-5)
- Baking Professional Development Planning by design (pages 6-9)
- Soft skills for scientists: not a soft option (pages 10-13)
- Concept mapping - a reflective tool in Personal Development Planning (pages 14-17)
- An enquiry-based and self-developmental approach to employability at the University of Birmingham (pages 18-20)
- Promoting the concept of competency maps to enhance the student learning experience (pages 21-25)
- Darwinism and the Durham Award: the missing link between education, employment and engagement (pages 26-29)
- Enhancing the employability of language graduates (pages 30-32)
- The reality of employer engagement in work-based learning (pages 33-36)
- Engaging employers in the provision of work-related learning (pages 37-39)
- Work-related learning in undergraduate non-vocational courses: a case study (pages 40-43)
- How e-portfolio technologies can support the employer engagement agenda (pages 48-50)
- What KUBIS did: creating educational space for small and medium-sized enterprises (pages 44-47)
Number 9 - Summer 2010
You spoke, we listened. We carried out an online survey of ALT Journal readers from April–July, receiving responses from 77 individuals across all Faculties, including both academic and support staff and management.
- Editorial (page 2)
- Scousers, traffic lights and the ‘red’ bits of Peer Observation of Teaching (pages 3-6)
- EuroFone: calling all language learners (pages 7-9)
- Using new technologies to develop Student Y. (pages 10-11)
- Met mates: the development and evaluation of a course-specific social network site for pre-registration Nursing students (pages 12-15)
- Using the principles of digital storytelling for student engagement and assessment (pages 16-18)
- A reflective evaluation of group assessment (pages 19-22)
- Formative assessment in project-oriented learning to improve academic performance (pages 23-26)
- Information literacy clinics: creativity on prescription (pages 27-29)
- Information Smoothies: embedding information skills in assessed learning (pages 30-33)
- The state of the art: development of the research degree in the UK (pages 34-36)
- Academic reflections between Polynesian tattooing and reflective practice (pages 37-41)
- Reflection: The Learn With Leeds Met project (pages 42-43)
- Book review: Using assessment to support student learning (page 44<)
Number 8 - Spring 2010 - special issue on Enterprise
This special issue of the Assessment, Learning and Teaching Journal focuses on the theme of enterprise in its broadest sense. This edition is an important landmark for the Institute for Enterprise.
This Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)-funded Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) reaches the end of its five-year funded span in April 2010, and this edition showcases some of the work catalysed by the Institute. The wide range of articles, research papers, case studies and opinion pieces within this edition represents some of the work, projects, activity and thinking that have been generated by University and CETL staff, students and our CETL partners.
- Editorial. (page 2)
- Enhancing and embedding enterprise (pages 3-5)
- Bringing creativity, risk and reality into the classroom (pages 9-11)
- Exploring enterprising partnerships with West Yorkshire Police (page 12-15)
- Community Enterprise: success stories of engaging students in social enterprise (pages 15-18)
- The Music Studio Challenge: effective practice in developing enterprise and employability skills while supporting transition. (pages 18-21)
- Enterprise and employability: to conflate or not to conflate? (page 21-23)
- Student employability and enterprise: a widening participation perspective (page24-27)
- Making enterprise happen (page 27-29)
- Enterprise education: now you see it, now you don’t! (pages 30-33)
- Evaluating the impact of enterprise education. Or is it entrepreneurship education? It’s not as easy as you think! (pages 33-36)
- Using activity theory and Q methodology to model activity and subjectivity in enterprise education (pages 37-41)
- Stuck in neutral? HE entrepreneurship and enterprise education and gender (page 42-44)
- Opinion: Enterprise education or entrepreneurial graduates? (pages 45-46)
Number 7 - Winter 2009 - special issue on technology enhanced learning & learning spaces
This special issue of the Assessment, Learning and Teaching Journal brings together articles on two significant and topical subjects: technology enhanced learning and innovative learning spaces. The environments in which students learn, and the technologies they use while learning, are both critical factors in the quality of their learning experience. Designed well, both can scaffold learning and support innovative and effective practices. Both are focused on enhancing the student experience. Both are about applying advances in understanding learning processes and associated theoretical understanding. They are of course also more closely connected. They may have direct implications for each other. Increasing use of technology may result in less demand and need for space, for example, and when new and innovative learning spaces are being commissioned, the contribution of technology is an important element of the design. So, the two areas are often seen as complementary and considered together when policy-makers and institutions are planning investment in educational facilities. In short, learning spaces can be enhanced by the technologies located in them, technology can make ‘everywhere’ a learning space and, sometimes, the technology even becomes the learning space.
- Editorial (page 2)
- Same place – different space? (page 4-6)
- Creating a culture of co-construction (page 7-9)
- Enhancing learner engagement in e-learning provision (page 10-13)
- The magic bullet: formative assessment with peer and tutor feedback in the VLE (page 14-17)
- X-stream assessments: utilising new technology to assess sports marketing students (page 18-21)
- Sounds Good: using audio to give assessment feedback (page 22-24)
- Enriching student experience through access to novel technology (page 25-28)
- Highlighting accessibility issues to staff (page 29-31)
- Re-using externally sourced learning objects (page 32-34)
- Reflection: ‘TEL Us More’ winner (page 35)
- You Tube if you want to – a Web 2.0 approach to staff development in web conferencing (page 36-39)
- What is library space at Leeds Met? (page 40-41)
- "What can students do in here that they can’t do anywhere else?" (page 42-44)
- Missing only the inkwells – or is this truly a learning space fit for the 21st century? (page 45-48)
- When learning spaces become learning homes: applications and implications (page 49-51)
- Book review (page 52)
Number 6 - Summer 2009
For this issue of the Assessment, Learning and Teaching Journal we return to a general overview of assessment, learning and teaching, with articles illustrating many of the priorities in our 2009-11 ALT Strategy. These include: helping our students to learn in stimulating environments; encouraging creativity; ensuring that our practice reflects our values by incorporating ethics into the curriculum; using up-to-date and enabling technologies to enhance learning; enabling students to develop skills for learning, information literacy and enterprise; sharing learning with our Regional University Network (RUN) partners; and promoting student employability and engaging our students in work-related learning.
- Editorial (pages 2-3)
- Student-centred learning – reality or rhetoric? (pages 4-6)
- Embedding ethics and ethical practice within and across the curriculum: emerging findings from a TQEF-funded project (pages 7-10)
- Supporting the assessment, learning and teaching needs of parttime teaching staff (pages 11-13)
- The benefits and challenges of team projects and how Web 2.0 tools can help (pages 14-17)
- Beginning to blog: methods for dialogue with students (pages 18-20)
- Rebooting the student’s attention span by using Personal Response Systems (pages 21-25)
- Reflection: A critical look at the use of metaphors in the development of electronic learning resources (pages 26-27)
- Promoting Open Access to research: an Institutional Repository for Leeds Metropolitan University (pages 28-30)
- A reflection on the ‘Big Draw’ events (October 2007 and 2008) (pages 31-32)
- Assessing Art subjects in Personal and Professional Development modules (pages 33-35)
- Mapping the case for a permacultural provision in the Faculty of Arts and Society: or, what is creative enterprise? (pages 36-38)
- Rigorous and relevant? The challenge of managing and assessing learning on a work placement (pages 39-41)
- Learning from visiting speakers: the case of events management (pages 42-44)
- Book reviews (page 45)
Number 5 - Spring 2009 - special issue on National Teaching Fellowship projects
When we launched the Leeds Met Assessment, Learning and Teaching Journal in 2006 its aims were to build awareness of innovations and research and to share good assessment, learning and teaching practice across Leeds Met. This special issue of the Journal is dedicated to raising awareness of a collection of national Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)-funded projects managed under the Higher Education Academy’s National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS). The project strand of the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme was set up in 2007 to provide funding for institutions to build on the expertise of National Teaching Fellows. Project teams are able to bid for funds of up to £200,000 for use over a period of up to three years with a view to bringing significant benefits to students’ learning experiences across the sector.
- Editorial (page 2)
- Transitions and tensions: getting a project off the ground (pages 3-4)
- Absorbing the shock of the early undergraduate experience (pages 5-8)
- First-year assessment: aligning perceptions and practice with purpose
- Developing teaching in research-intensive environments: implications for teaching-intensive universities
- Leading, promoting and supporting undergraduate research in the new university sector
- Doctoral learning journeys: supporting and enhancing doctoral students’ research and related skills development through research evidence-based practices
- Building research capacity in a practitioner network: the National Action Research Network on researching and evaluating Personal Development Planning and e-portfolio
- ELPSS: e-learning in Physical Science through sport
- "It’s almost like a medal that you wear afterwards": undergraduate student experiences of work-related learning in the public and third sectors
- Employability and disability
- Creating future proof graduates
Number 4 - Summer 2008
Welcome to this special issue of the Assessment, Learning and Teaching Journal, dedicated to what is commonly referred to as the first-year ‘experience’.
- Editorial
- Building student resilience through first-year Outdoor Adventure residential experience in higher education
- 700 into 3: your first day in Business
- Footprint timetable: the next step
- "Catch them before they fall"
- Involving students in the assessment process from day 1: group, peer and self assessment
- First- and last-year experience: assessment, learning and teaching on a top-up degree
- Information literacy and the first-year learning experience
- Enhancing the first-year experience: ten ways to involve library services
- An integrated approach to supporting first-year students through Personal Development Planning and monitoring attendance
- Encouraging first-year students to take more responsibility for their learning through a VLE
- Embedding a selection of feedback mechanisms into innovative curriculum to enhance the first-year experience
- Virtual Site as an aid to first-year learning
- Finding friends and freaking out: the potential of enquiry-based learning to enhance the first-year experience
Number 3 - Winter 2008
Welcome to the third issue of the Assessment, Learning and Teaching Journal. The Journal’s success is two-fold: it gives all staff an opportunity to submit details of ongoing research and thoughts about assessment, learning and teaching, and it also gives everyone the chance to read about the varied and exciting challenges that have been taken up and can be developed further. Surely an ideal journal for enterprising Leeds Met staff!
In line with the first of our seven Assessment, Learning and Teaching priorities for 2007-08 – increasing the take-up of Technology-Enhanced Learning – the first section explores technological developments and the various applications that can be used by staff and students. We work and live in a changing e-learning environment and the drivers of change make us more eager to provide stimulating, work-related assessments and teaching media. This section concludes with details of a research project using recorded voice messages in two schools 1,400 miles apart.
The next section begins with a charming article on creative writing, followed by articles considering the work of creating mentoring teams for research initiatives, and another on thinking skills: surely a feast for our language and social networking skills.
The third section turns to teaching and assessment with an excellent group of innovative research projects, giving us a chance to pause and reflect on the challenging research projects taking place, putting students at the top of the agenda.
Two book reviews complete this review of work which represents only the tip of the innovative teaching and learning carried out within this University, some driven by funding and some led by a pure desire to find out more and reflect on one’s own practice and that of others.
More articles are already waiting for the next issue, and the editors would be delighted to receive more contributions and any comments.
- Podcast Solutions Pilot – exploring teaching and learning through mobile technologies
- Web development on a stick
- Developing a case study for the MySpace generation
- X-stream inclusion
- The rise and fall of Mr Choakumchild – learning outcomes and the teaching of creative writing
- Research mentoring in the Carnegie Faculty of Sport and Education
- Thinking skills and the context of higher education teaching today. What is known?
- A pilot study investigating the relationship between tutorial participation and assessment performance
- The development of an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) for use with event management students
- Attitudes towards reflective practice: emerging findings from a TQEF study
- What we can learn about the relationship between ‘Events Strategy’ and ‘Events Business’ in the region
- Learning Objects: issues to do with obtaining and labelling
Number 2 - Summer 2007
Welcome to the second issue of the Assessment Learning and Teaching Incubator Journal. This publication gives Leeds Met staff an opportunity to submit short articles about their activities in relation to assessment, learning and teaching.
This issue relates closely to the university’s underlying values outlined in the Assessment, Learning and Teaching strategy.
The first three papers recognise the importance of fostering a supportive learning environment to enhance learning and teaching. Stuart Hirst presents the case for a rethink of the student learning experience if we are to exploit the potential of blended learning opportunities, whilst Ollie Jones and Marie Kerr explore student usage of virtual learning environment (VLE) tools and draw conclusions about the priorities to consider for student adoption. The challenge of engaging students in group work is explored by Chris Gorse and Iain McKinney who suggest that an awareness of group behaviours is fundamental to group work success.
The need to rebalance assessment practices to improve formative assessment and feedback to students is highlighted by Bob Rotheram’s consideration of the design and usage of multiple choice questions; whilst Cath Sanderson suggests that debates can provide an exemplar for developmental, authentic assessment.
One aspect of how best to support and develop teaching staff is considered by Jacqui Dean, who suggests that a cognitive apprenticeship approach supported by tutors with current workplace experience has much to offer both staff and students.
The need to foster research that supports teaching is discussed by Louise Warwick-Booth, who suggests that effective teaching can best be underpinned by teachers understanding a range of perspectives and applying them to their pedagogical practices.
David Killick argues that Leeds Met must continue to broaden staff and student horizons within the curriculum and in particular focus on developing curricula that prepare our graduates for the global community.
Finally, support for dyslexic students, in line with the University’s focus on recruiting, supporting and retaining diverse students, is explored in the paper by Andrea Gorra and David Moore. Amongst other things they suggest the need to provide on-line materials before lectures and to consider the positive aspects of practical work for these students.
We hope that you enjoy reading these short papers and that they will encourage you to reflect on your own practice.
- Teaching smarter with a blend of different learning experiences
- Student engagement with blended learning: leading the horse to waters
- Engaging students in group work
- Good question! In praise of multiple choice
- Using debates to develop and assess critical reasoning abilities
- Cognitive apprenticeship: meeting the needs of student teachers
- Teaching and feminist thought: can feminist perspectives contribute to gender equality in learning and teaching within higher education?
- Internationalisation of the curriculum: cross-cultural capability and global perspectives
- Preparation of assessment, learning and teaching materials for dyslexic students that benefit all students: presentation of results from an empirical study
Number 1 - Spring 2007
The University's Assessment, Learning and Teaching strategy commits us to publishing a journal showcasing staff activities in relation to Assessment, Learning and Teaching. The Assessment, Learning and Teaching Journal is practice-based, reflective and pragmatic, and comprises papers of up to 1,500 words and book reviews of up to 200 words. The journal is refereed, all submissions being reviewed by two reviewers. It is normally published three times a year both in hard copy and electronically.
- Editorial
- Feedback within 24 hours
- Computer based feedback: friend or foe?
- New digital media and the student learning experience
- Making e-learning less didactic
- Working to improve the learning experience: engaging students in workrelated learning and promoting employability
- Bridging the theory practice gap: an innovative approach to praxis in professional education
- Learning together: is peer buddying a useful tool for the advancement of understanding within the context of seminars?
- Retaking the lecture theatre: a model for effective student learning in a traditional environment.
- Influences on WebCT usage: a study of attitudes and practices in the School of Tourism, Hospitality and Events
- Some lessons from school on unravelling the global dimension and 'global citizenship'