AEPD October updates

Welcome to the October Edition of the AEPD Newsletter

The new academic year is well underway, bringing with it new challenges, opportunities, and the excitement of engaging with students once again.

To help you navigate the months ahead, we have carefully curated a wide range of academic development opportunities and resources, specifically designed to meet the diverse needs of all staff within Coventry University Group. These activities aim to build on your existing expertise, offering practical tools, fresh perspectives, and innovative strategies to enhance both your professional practice and your students' learning experiences.

By participating, you can ensure that you and your students are fully equipped for a successful and fulfilling year ahead.

Nano #10 is taking place Wednesday 23^rd October, 10:30-12:30.

We’re delighted to bring you a Nano collaboration with Aston University where you’ll hear practices on AI-generated case studies for health, embedding audio feedback, AI for driving equality, neurodivergence, and more! To view the agenda and book your place, check out the event page.

Why Join Us? Frankly, we’d like to remove any stress from planning and engaging with CPD. The mailing list ensures our staff automatically receive calendar invites and joining links for all future Nano Conferences to glean innovative teaching and learning practices to support your development. Most importantly, Nanos are…

• Online: join with a single click (no more travel!)
   
• Bite-sized: each presentation lasts just 15 minutes so, squeeze one in between meetings or listen over lunch!
   
• Convenient: be inspired by colleagues wherever your location! Join for all sessions or just one.

Any questions? Get in touch via nanocon@coventry.ac.uk
 

AdvanceHE Member Benefits 2024-25: A Wealth of Opportunities for Coventry University Group Staff

We are delighted to share with you the exciting opportunities available through Advance HE’s Member Benefits for 2024-25. These resources are designed to support CUG staff and across higher education as we navigate the evolving landscape of our sector.

Key Themes for 2024-25:

• Governing and Leading Transformation
  Advance HE is offering valuable leadership programmes, such as the Change Academy, to help leaders at all levels drive innovation and transformation within their institutions.
   
• Securing Student Outcomes
  Join insightful webinars like the Essential Frameworks for Enhancing Student Success, taking place on 23rd October. These sessions will provide practical guidance on enhancing student retention, attainment, and progression.
   
• Designing Education for the Future
  Engage with Advance HE’s initiative to foster collaboration with Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies (PSRBs) to shape the future of education, with an opportunity to contribute your own case studies.
   
• Protecting Inclusion in Times of Change
  Explore strategies for maintaining inclusivity and supporting diverse student and staff communities, even in challenging times.

Upcoming Member Activities

This autumn, Advance HE is hosting a range of free activities for members, including webinars, case studies, and blogs that showcase data-driven approaches to improving student outcomes and institutional transformation.

We encourage all CUG staff to engage with these valuable resources and events, leveraging them to enhance our collective impact across the sector.

STAR - Space for Teaching Advancement and Research

If you are interested in continuing conversations around teaching and learning after completion of the Post Graduate Certificate in Academic Professional Practice (PGCAPP), you may like to join STAR.

Facilitated via a dedicated MS Teams space, this five-strand framework has been co-created with Coventry University Group PGCAPP alumni to offer a programme of continuing professional development beyond the point of Fellow.  Value is afforded to getting together, both informally and in more formal settings, sharing and exchanging practice, continue to learn, and supporting others. Each strand of the framework offers opportunities to advance practice and PGCAPP alumni are warmly invited to join, participate, contribute and lead activities to continue to evolve an inclusive and authentic programme. The five strands are:

1. CONNECT: Informal get togethers offering time to catch up, check in, swap ideas, and eat cake!
    
2. CO-CREATE: An invitation to share and exchange practice around a given theme leading to a collective output.
    
3. PUBLISH: Callouts and guidance to support writing up practice for publication and conference presentation
    
4. LEARN: Guest speakers, information, and resources to advance practice and explore what’s new in HE.
    
5. LEAD: Opportunities to mentor, guide, and share experiences with new and early career academics

2024-2025 programme: Activities are scheduled to take place twice a semester (around week 3-4 and week 8-9) on-line and on-campus. Details and joining instructions will be shared with all STAR colleagues.
 

Planet eStream's automatic speech recognition integration has been upgraded & tested out in the field and is recognised as fit for purpose!

Why are you telling us this?
Those of us that have been here at CUG during Planet eStream’s early introduction will be familiar that the early auto speech recognition facility bundled with it at the time was “not fit for purpose” [sic]. However, with the recent rollout of guidelines to capture learning we are re-examining all tools at our disposal in this respect.

Is there methodological proof to convince me now?
Edtech & CUOL departments have been doing random testing samples with live authentic academic users uploaded Planet eStreams, this enabled representative sample testing & feedback within our teams of a number of authentic recent real use recording types; and we have jointly independently concluded that Planet eStream's accuracy is now comparable to similar offerings from other platforms such as MS Teams (& Zoom).

Why should we believe you?
Don’t just take our word for it, click on the following link for an opinion from the computer coding sector February of this year:

"High Accuracy: Employs state-of-the-art deep learning techniques, delivering competitive accuracy in speech recognition tasks."

That’s great, how do we use it?
Here is the Teaching Knowledge Base Simple Guide

Participate in our research and help us bridge the gap between what staff want and what students do when it comes to assessment.

Our research project “Enhancing assessment literacy: Balancing staff’s expectation with students time and effort” aims to produce a framework for effort-focused assessment design and an assessment literacy toolkit for staff and students to improve and expand on the existing time-on-task tool designed by Coventry University.

We are looking for both staff and students who will be willing to spend 30minutes to complete a survey that will help us to:

1. Explore your understanding of assessment literacy
2. Explore your understanding of time and effort around assessment
3. Explore your Initial views to the assessment literacy tool developed by Coventry
4. Identify candidates for the focus group participants (£10 vouchers will provided for those that will join the focus group sessions at a later date)

The project is led by Coventry University in partnership with Aston University, University of the West of Scotland, and University of West London, that is funded by the Collaborative Enhancement Project initiative by QAA. You can find out more about the project here.

For any queries, please contact the project lead Dr Christina Magkoufopoulou (ad8497@coventry.ac.uk) or the project co-lead Dr Misrah Mohammed (ae2996@coventry.ac.uk) 

You can also scan the QR code below, to complete the survey

Inspera: 2024/2025 Roll Out Plan Published

As we move into the second year of using Inspera, a Roll Out Plan for 2024-25 has been published on the Office for Teaching and Learning Staff Portal pages. The plan sets out the areas of focus for the use of Inspera through 2024-25.  In addition an annual report on use through 2023-24 has been produced - Annual Report 2023-24.

Inspera continue to release monthly developments, details of the October updates, which include changes to multiple attempts are explained on the Teaching Knowledge Base.

You will know that the Course Quality Enhancement & Monitoring (CQEM) process is an essential mechanism underpinning the development of a course-focused approach for the student experience. 

You can ask your Student Representatives to book a place on the CQEM Training- this will help them to receive the support they require to write the Student Statement for your interim/annual CQEM reports. Our ongoing series of training is designed for this purpose, taking student reps through the role and to explain what is required of them as part of the CQEM. 

This event is open to all students (You can nominate 3 to 4 students to attend the training per course). When booking please remind students to use their student email address and not their personal email address. We look forward to meeting your students at the training!

Video and audio recordings, both of live teaching sessions and supporting guidance, provide valuable resources to our students, particularly recognising the diversity of our student population.

The University has now developed a Learning Capture Framework.  Learning Capture has been intentionally used as a term to provide a broader context that encompasses the recording of learning events (i.e. lecture capture and the recording of face to face and synchronous online teaching) but also where recordings are used in assessments and undertaken by students.  The framework document is set out in three parts:

• Expectations for learning capture Setting out the minimum expectations and recommendations for practice across the University Group.
   
• Lecture capture practices Providing an overview of actual and potential applications and provides a pedagogic focus to the framework.
   
• Learning Capture tools Providing an overview of tools available across the University Group to deliver the functionality.

Look out for guidance on the Teaching Knowledge Base and Support sessions which will be developed through Semester one.

The University Group can put forward up to three individuals for a National Teaching Fellowship.

The criteria on which the awards are made are:

• NTFS Criterion 1: Individual excellence Evidence of enhancing and transforming student outcomes and/or the teaching profession; demonstrating impact commensurate with the individual’s context and the opportunities afforded by it.
   
• NTFS Criterion 2: Raising the profile of excellence Evidence of supporting colleagues and influencing support for student learning and/or the teaching profession; including demonstrating impact and engagement beyond the nominee’s immediate academic or professional role.
   
• NTFS Criterion 3: Developing excellence Show the nominee’s commitment to and impact of ongoing professional development with regard to teaching and learning and/or learning support.

Workshops to outline the University’s process for selecting the three candidates who will be put forward are being held on Wednesday 16th October 2024, 11.00-12.00 and Tuesday 22^nd October 2024, 10.00-11.00.