Teaching Excellence Seminar Series – December 2024
6 January 2025
On the 4 December 2024 we were delighted to host the first Teaching Excellence seminar of the 24/25 academic year.
This series is an opportunity for our 2024 Enriching Student Life nominees and awardees to share examples of their excellent practice which led to their nomination and for attendees to have a relaxed and informal discussion around these topics.
The Enriching Student Life Awards (ESLAs) recognise the hard work of staff and students who make a positive contribution to the student experience. The awards are run in partnership between Cardiff University and the Students’ Union.
Our inaugural seminar welcomed Dr Thanasi Hassoulas, School of Medicine, who was nominated in the ‘Most outstanding use of the learning environment’ category and Dr Ricky Hellyer, School of Healthcare Sciences, winner in the Most Outstanding Learning Experience category and also nominee in the Learning and Teaching Collaboration of the Year category.
Thanasi presented on his work within the Hybrid Interactive Virtual Environment (HIVE) team in the School of Medicine, which includes technology enhanced learning, virtual reality and immersive suites for learning, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which has had a positive impact on their student learning experience. The recording of the session is available to review.
Ricky was joined by one of his students, Samah Taylor to discuss the work they’ve done with developing empathetic environments and compassionate curricula. This included the introduction of writing clubs for students to support them with the literature review assessments they are required to do, but sometimes struggle with, and the use of video reflections in place of written reflections at the end of placements. Again the recording of the talk is available to review.
Those that attended gained a lot from the session and had an opportunity to discuss the topics, but also to discuss some of the areas of practice they’re working in to get input from colleagues.
Feedback from our colleagues included:
‘An absolute pleasure to attend. Activities like this should be encouraged, even at school level, to encourage partnership working and exchange/discuss ideas.’
‘It’s such a fantastic idea to have these seminars and I got so much out of it.’
Our next Teaching Excellence Seminar takes place online on 19 February 2025 12:30-14:00 and features Dr Katy Burgess, School of Psychology, Champion for Student Voice and Partnership winner and Dr Chris Heffer, School of English, Communication, and Philosophy, Most Impactful and Outstanding Use of Assessment as Learning winner and Personal Tutor of the Year nominee. To book onto this session please book on Microsoft Forms, choosing the Excellence in Teaching theme. This series is part of the Learning and Teaching Academy’s wider CPD Programme for Learning and Teaching.