LITE Annual Review - Supporting Pedagogic Research
This year LITE has increased support for staff across campus who are keen to engage with pedagogic research and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
As well as delivering focused workshops to help staff develop their expertise in pedagogic research LITE has introduced a number of new funding initiatives to help engage academic communities in scholarship activity.
LITE delivered its first Getting Started in PedR workshop in April.
It filled up almost immediately and we were able to run another in May before running a more intensive PedR Retreat in June.
To date more than 100 colleagues across campus have attended one of our workshops.
We have been delighted with the response to these sessions and really pleased to meet so many new colleagues from the University who are really engaged in developing their scholarship activity.
To continue to support this enthusiasm, for the academic year 2019-20, LITE has put together a series of workshops to support pedagogic researchers at various stages of their projects.
Alongside these, LITE has also introduced a monthly PedR Surgery to offer drop-in advice on learning and teaching related research projects.
To continue the theme of sharing ideas and encouraging debate and discussion around PedR LITE launched a monthly Journal Club in March.
More than 80 people have come together to discuss an article of interest.
Further support will be able to be offered to colleagues across campus with the relaunch in 2020 of the LITE Mentoring Scheme.
Novice researchers will be able to sign up to the scheme and be paired with a mentor to support them in their research journey.
The Supporting PedR Fund was launched in May in response to feedback from participants at our workshops who indicated they wanted the chance to network with colleagues within their discipline area and to develop ideas related to learning and teaching.
This fund has already supported 5 events across campus with over 75 people attending.
Funding and support from LITE goes beyond the generation of ideas and we are committed to helping colleagues disseminate their findings and generate impact.
To this end, LITE offers conference funding for colleagues who are presenting their work.
In 2019, 23 colleagues benefited from this fund and were able to travel to learning and teaching related conferences across the UK and in Europe.
To provide more ‘on the ground’ support the Transferring Innovation Fund was launched in September.
As its name suggests, the aim is to encourage the dissemination and sharing of good practice.
It provides up to £500 for staff to work in collaboration with colleagues from a different School to implement an intervention.
Two exciting projects are already being funded with collaborations between Maths and Electrical Engineering, and Computing and Medicine.
The LITE team now looks forward to seeing these progress in the New Year.
Testament
It was helpful to listen to other colleagues’ scholarship and research ideas
It was useful to connect with LITE and meet other staff interested in pedagogic research
Several new collaborative projects started’ – ‘a new MS teams has been set up for a pedagogic research community within our discipline where resources have been posted and new conversations started
I welcome this type of creative/imaginative play on training and teaching
Positive outcomes included staff networking and sharing ideas regarding inclusive practice and taking away action points to implement immediate change to their pedagogy and teaching and learning processes.