Inclusive Supervision Toolkit

The Inclusive Supervision Toolkit is designed to help supervisors of undergraduate dissertations to reflect on their supervisory practices. The toolkit aims to raise awareness of the ways in which some students with disabilities (eps. Specific Learning Difficulties and Mental Health difficulties) might struggle to engage with supervision, and to consider adopting practices which might better meet the needs of all students.

You can access the toolkit using the link below – it will take you to Xerte (which is a site which host interactive presentations) and you will need to login with your university login and password.

https://tools.brighton.ac.uk/learning-objects/xerte/play.php?template_id=29

Sustainability Toolkit

This toolkit, provides a series of lesson plans to help you introduce Education for Sustainable Development into any programme, including outlining the intended learning outcomes of each session. In a world where businesses and organisations expect their employees to be aware of the impact and importance of sustainable development, these tools provide important guidance and support on how to successfully integrate sustainable development into your teaching practice. Each tool tackles ESD from a different angle, including discpline specific.

https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/sustainable-development-toolkit-tutor-resource-and-student-activity-series

Review article about how students engage with feedback

Article reviewing the literature on how learners engage with feedback and presenting a taxonomy of 4 different processes of engaging with feedback which are often targeted by interventions to increase engagement. This review and taxonomy provide a theoretical basis for conceptualizing learners’ responsibility within feedback dialogues and for guiding the strategic design and evaluation of interventions

Engaging psychology students in real world challenges

As part of a student/staff collaboration to encourage research-focused teaching, two members of staff and two students have come together to develop a module that we think will be extremely useful for our students. Following discussions regarding the kind of things we would like to work on, the students spoke of how they were inspired by examples of modules in Canada where students planned, implemented and evaluated outreach efforts in response to environmental health issues. Our team realised that there was a space where we could develop a module where our 2nd year students could put their psychology and research methods skills to good use in addressing some real world issues in their local communities. The module would start from problems or issues presented by a local stakeholder(s). Students will then work in groups throughout the module to use many disparate resources to plan, design and execute potential solutions to these community issues. The students work would be assessed not only by academics but by the local stakeholders at the end of the module. The intention is that stakeholders benefit from the work done by the students, the students benefit from developing applied psychology skills in real world contexts (and the feeling that work they are developing really matters) and the broader community benefits from a solutions being developed and implemented for key local issues. The next stages for our group are to meet to plan and write the module outline form to be fed into the Undergraduate review in the hope that we can get the module off the ground.

Taking the university to the community and back

The School of Social Science has always emphasised the applied nature of the degrees we have on offer.  This characteristic is particularly important to an area of study – social policy – that consciously aims to promote wellbeing and actively seeks to bring about progressive social change. The way we approach social policy at Brighton goes even further in that we aim to seamlessly bring together the work of community organisations with our students’ learning through long term placements as an integral part of their degrees in years two and three. The strategy must be working if we consider the enthusiastic desire on the part of these students, to respond to a growing social problem of homelessness in Brighton, by supporting the fundraising efforts of local organisations working in this area. What began as ‘a bit of fun’ – an extracurricular activity that lecturer and students could do together – turned out to provide ample opportunities for growth. Sleeping rough for one night to fundraise was only the visible part of this. In the process, students engaged in campaigning and advocacy, being interviewed by the local radio station about the action and its significance;  they engaged in setting up a marketing strategy and fundraising hundreds of pounds for a local organisation; above all, they engaged in deep learning, by what I mean, the type of learning that challenges received wisdom and promotes personal growth leading to changes in the way we relate to the world. The experience has had a strong effect on students, their ability to relate their studies to the real world, and their relationship to the university and staff. I can think of no better vote of confidence on this programme of study.

Pedagogies of partnership

This report presents findings and recommendations relating to experiences of students-as-partners (SaP) pedagogy. The research draws on the discipline of Psychology and represents a new approach to the scholarship of teaching and learning regarding partnership with students, through focusing on aspects of learning, feedback, and assessment. In particular, we investigated the impact of teaching and learning methods aimed at fostering partnership in undergraduate students, and estimated how these experiences are perceived by graduates as relating to their current roles. The findings illustrate the value of students-as-partners teaching and learning methods in relation to a range of outcome measures, most notably the development of graduate attributes. We highlight a range of considerations relevant for enabling greater partnership with students; through assessment, dialogue, and experiential learning.

https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/impact-pedagogies-partnership-student-learning-experience-uk-higher-education