Tag: fellowship

A Rich Tapestry of Learning & Teaching

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Applying for HEA Fellowship through the NTU Professional Recognition Scheme is about making sure you can evidence how your practice is making a difference to learning and teaching and gaining recognition for your work. And this isn’t just for lecturers. We have a large Fellowship community at NTU with over 1,300 Fellows working across different schools, disciplines and roles. Lots of NTU colleagues have been awarded Fellowship from their work within roles as technicians, employability consultants, researchers, educational developers and student support colleagues.

Sometimes it’s hard to see your claim to Fellowship. So, we thought we’d share some recent examples of colleagues who have achieved Fellowship status from a range of different roles to highlight this diversity and encourage you to join the NTU Fellowship community.

Meet the Associate Fellows

Associate Fellow is the appropriate category for individuals who have a narrow scope of practice in learning and teaching (i.e. their experience and evidence represents a limited number of the areas of activity on the UKPSF). Often associate fellows are individuals starting out their academic career and are new to teaching or they are undertaking supporting roles.

Katie Longsdale (AFHEA), Science Technician

Katie submitted case studies about her achievements supporting lecturers in the Secondary Science Education team for Initial Teacher Training which helps prepare trainee teachers for careers in Secondary Science Education.

Katie’s case studies discussed how she applies her professional knowledge to help students consider how they might develop practical science lessons within the school environment. Katie told the story of how she works with initial teacher training students using role modelling and demonstrations in preparation for these students entering their teaching careers.

Laura Stinson (AFHEA), Academic Practice Advisor

Laura works within the Academic Practice Team and helps other colleagues develop their submissions. Laura focused her claim on the mentoring work she had undertaken with placement students and supporting them to develop their employability skills through volunteering opportunities with local secondary schools. This was before Laura joined NTU, but this is still valid when making a Fellowship claim.

Richard Plant (AFHEA), Technical Team Leader (Animal), School of Animal Rural and Environmental Sciences

Richard’s case studies referred to the use of multimedia within demonstrations that support students learning how to handle animals. Richard shared with the reviewers the variety of ways he sets up the classroom to enable more collaborative and peer learning. Importantly, Richard also presented that he had received very positive feedback from students about his approach.

Meet the Fellows

The category of Fellow describes someone who has a broad understanding of learning and teaching and can demonstrate all areas of activity. This can be evidenced even if the individual isn’t in a lecturing role.

Ellie Howitt (FHEA), Learning Designer

Ellie was awarded FHEA based on one of her case studies referring to her work designing and delivering SCALE-UP induction sessions for academic, support and professional NTU staff. This practice was not linked to them directly working with students; however, their work was influencing the practice of those who would then go on to deliver SCALE-UP sessions to students.

Rish Baruah (FHEA), Career Consultant

Rish achieved his Fellowship by presenting his work designing and planning learning interactions to improve NTU students’ employability skills. Rish’s submission discusses his use of activities such as a CV card sort to help students consider appropriate language and phrases. Rish also presented his use of social media and blogging as a means of engagement with students with the impact being demonstrated through web analytics.

Meet the Senior Fellows

Senior Fellow is awarded to individuals with evidence of sustained effectiveness in learning and teaching. Case studies for this category must also highlight how an individual has influenced the practice of others to improve the learner experience.

Vanessa Dodd, (SFHEA), Educational Research and Evaluation Specialist

Alongside her international teaching experience, Vanessa presented evidence of how leading an educational research project was influencing the academic practice at NTU and the wider HE sector. Vanessa’s research into the value and experience of student placements has informed policy development and curriculum design.

Kerry Truman (SFHEA), Technical Team Leader, School of Architecture Design and the Built Environment

Kerry demonstrated his academic leadership through a series of case studies, including how he had redesigned workshop inductions into a virtual experience and how he has established the NTU Maker Club.

Michele Zala (SFHEA), Careers Consultant Team Manager

Michele was awarded Senior Fellow for her work across two HE institutions (NTU and Loughborough University). Michele talked about how she implemented a series of action-based realistic learning simulations/workshops of large Employers Assessment Centres, enabling students from all schools to work together to learn from employers and from peers. Michele also led on a series of bespoke workshops, events and careers interventions for the international student community.

So, you can see that a wide variety of colleagues, all in different roles, have gained recognition for their work in learning and teaching. Congratulations to all the colleagues who have achieved their Fellowship status. Hopefully, we have debunked the theory that Fellowship is just for teaching staff – are you ready to gain recognition?

Visit our NOW Learning Room to find out more. You can also follow our Fellowship conversations on @NTUTilt #NTUwritenow

Pivot? More of a leap

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How do you best support colleagues to achieve their fellowship status through the institution’s Professional Recognition Team? This is a question that rolls backwards and forwards within our team. A nice little wicked issue, right? Wicked in the sense that there are many grey areas and design knots to unpick within such a dynamic environment. Should we split categories up for support sessions or is there a beauty in seeing breadth of practice and interaction across the UKPSF? Is there something to be said about timing support in relation to need- that “just in time” training. We see individuals across the spectrum of readiness for writing up their practice- from pre-contemplation stage right through to requiring final editorial input. Then there is the age old conundrum of matching up expectations from candidates with the capacity of a service or indeed (yes, sounds pompous….) but delivering support that achieves results rather than what is comfortable. That final comment relates to knowing when to stop giving advice pre-writing and supporting a person to start and continue.

Ping…COVID-19

Like most learning provision we’ve had to pivot our offer. We had planned this year to begin developing a more blended approach to supporting fellowship based on the assumptions above and feedback from our communtiy. The wholescale, cross-institutional shift to virtual provision however meant our slow and planned entry to online support had to pick up pace. We had several face-to-face workshops that needed a revised format and so with 2 days to prep we were running writing sessions and 1:1 support via MSTeams. Two months down the line we are ready to pause and reflect.

Manipulating MSTeams for Fellowship Writing Session?

We were keen to keep hold of the various activities we use in the face to face workshop that help participants surface appropriate fellowship material and promote writing productivity. We also needed a space that would allow some participants to join a “scheduled” workshop but also be welcoming to those who needed to dip in and out or enter the space when their calendars allowed (we were really aware that many colleagues wishing to write up their fellowship were also frantically supporting learners in significantly different formats).

We used the posts to serve up the activities that help individuals progress their writing. See examples below;

Notice the colour-coded step number? That was our workaround as the order of posts changes when people reply- the forthcoming pinned post facility might help with this. We also repeated the colour-coding through our agenda to help with navigating the activities.

Posts contained a series of activities (sometimes linking to narrated powerpoints, prepopulated padlets and our fellowship biteables). The activities then lead onto our NTUwritenow format which involves a series of pomodoro writing bursts. Whilst the participants can work through the activities at their own pace we do intersperse the writing throughout the day with optional drop-ins using the “meet now” facility. During these drop-ins we encourage participants to share progress and practice whilst facilitating discussion about the place of pedagogy, CPD and impact within a submission.

And so….

Yeah I know it is only fellowship (yes…professional development and recognition of good practice is important) but this model of capturing learning from the healthcare context is helpful. Here’s how our pivoting leap onto online is influencing our NTU fellowship support.

End– the complete social distancing perhaps but really we haven’t needed to put in short-term measures that haven’t found themselves being adapted for long term gain.

Amplify– Blend, blend and blend again! Going forward our new practice will include MSTeams-based writing sessions with synchronous and asynchronous opportunities. The feedback we have received suggests colleagues like choice, in terms of medium, pace and delivery. The ability to step on, join in, silently or vocally engage, park and return to fellowship via MSTeams are all pluses. No surprise there, just that the benefits of blended learning are emerging in fellowship support. The peer exchange is working well and so is the feeling that participants are supported through the process. The teams channels are now tangible destinations where a participant can track their progress through a navigable path and also meet other travellers on route! – something we weren’t necessarily achieving on our VLE space. However within the channels we are also able to repurpose and re-serve material we have stored on our VLE using the tabs.

Let Go– Dependence on face to face is high up there. But so is rejecting the idea that the pursuit of fellowship is a lonely/ solitary endeavour. We have been struck by how collegiate it can be, the sharing of learning and teaching practice alongside the sharing of “how I am doing this fellowship thing” has been tremendous.

Restart– MSTeams is a find for our scheme support but spending time with colleagues on their campuses alongside their students, classrooms/labs/etc is not only really pleasurable but also brings to the fore the diversity of teaching across NTU in a much more visceral way. This is important knowledge so we don’t loose touch with the variety of teaching and learning modalities and continue to ensure our scheme is inclusive.

It would be great to hear how other schemes are adapting their support offer through lockdown and beyond. You can engage with all things NTU Fellowship by following @NTUTilt #NtuWritenow