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TILT Practice and Scholarship Groups

Find out about the goals of TILT Practice and Scholarship Groups, which are improving learning and teaching across NTU.

About Practice and Scholarship Groups

TILT Practice and Scholarship (P&S) Groups contribute to eight core Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) themes as part of NTU’s overall strategic plan.

These groups are situated within one Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) theme and their work often intersects with other different themes. This regularly involves close collaboration with other P&S Groups.

We welcome any queries about P&S groups. Please contact us if you are interested in finding out more: tilt@ntu.ac.uk.

Groups by theme

1. Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability in Higher Education

These P&S Groups have a specific interest in excellence in assessment, inclusivity and evaluation and accountability in Higher Education settings.

The Inclusive Assessment P&S Group works to identify, develop and promote innovative approaches to accessible and inclusive assessment at NTU and across the Higher Education sector. Inclusive Assessment is a cross-cutting area of work which speaks to all TILT SoTL themes and involves collaboration with Groups across TILT SoTL themes with a view to advance NTU’s Success for All agenda.  The group will continue to review final dissertation module assessment(s) to identify and share good inclusive assessment practice(s).

Chair: TBC

2. Curriculum Change, Decolonisation, Social Justice and Critical Pedagogies

These P&S Groups are interested in how the curriculum and curriculum in action in Higher Education settings have been shaped by wider historic, social, political and cultural factors and associated implications for diversity and multi-perspectivity in the curriculum and social justice.

The Decolonising the Curriculum P&S Group explores the legacy of colonisation in the British academy. It takes action to facilitate conversations on the impact of coloniality on the curriculum and contributes to efforts to open up the curriculum in Higher Education so that in addition to Euro-American knowledge, pedagogies, research and training, students, lecturers and researchers will engage with multiple other perspectives.

Chair: Deanne Bell, Kevin Love, Simon Cauvain

3. Digital Education (Online Learning)

These P&S Groups are interested in inclusive online and flexible learning and teaching practices. With the current shift in the Higher Education landscape, the development of innovative and inclusive approaches to blended and online learning is valuable sector-wide for the impactful delivery and internationalisation of the curriculum.

The Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) P&S Group works to enhance the internationalisation of the curriculum at NTU through developing and promoting opportunities for NTU students to gain intercultural experiences online as part of their learning and for staff to innovate under this platform. COIL is collaborative by nature, working across NTU and with international partners. The group is working on building an infrastructure for COIL to be taken up across NTU more easily, at scale and disseminate insights and effective practice.

Chair: Chris Crabot

The Flexible and Online Learning P&S Group works to support NTU’s vision of online and flexible learning across all degrees by 2025. It develops flexible and online guidelines, evaluation structures and facilitates conversations across NTU to ensure the sharing of effective practice - cross-cutting all disciplines and levels of study. The group is focusing on trialling programmes that have potential to increase student engagement in learning activities.

Chair: Clive Whysall

4. Innovation in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education

These P&S Groups are involved in the identification and / or development of novel approaches to practice in the pursuit of excellence in learning and teaching in Higher Education.

The Innovative Pedagogy P&S Group builds conversations around pedagogic research to enhance the theoretical, conceptual and empirical understanding of learning and teaching processes, experiences, and outcomes at NTU. The group also works to support career progression at NTU based on distinction in learning and teaching and raise the profile of NTU as an institution of pedagogic rigour. In 2019/20 group delivered university-wide training on pedagogy through technology in response to the pandemic.The focus will be on delivering a series of events across NTU focusing on planning pedagogic scholarship / research, ethics and writing.

Chair: Rob Ackrill, Phil Wane & Michael McCann

The Maths and Statistics for Non-Mathematicians P&S Group provides a forum for staff and students across all disciplines and subject areas with an interest in statistics and mathematics to come together and share good practice(s) around the learning and teaching of statistics and mathematics. The Group will also be sharing good practice(s) around online learning and teaching.

Chair: Chris Pritchard

The Multidisciplinary P&S Group promotes multidisciplinary collaboration across different disciplines at NTU. Newly relaunched, the Group will continue to provide a forum for the sharing of good practice(s), approaches and techniques to learning and teaching across all subjects / disciplines.

Chair: Ian Whittaker, William Carey

The Apprenticeships & Work-Based Learning P&S Group is primarily concerned with exploring approaches to learning and teaching in work-based and vocational higher education, including apprenticeships, skills and technical education. The Group seeks membership from across further and higher education and other work-based learning and skills contexts. This is a newly formed Group which aims to promote conversations around effective pedagogy and practice(s) at NTU and across the sector.

Chair: Andy King and Co-chair: Joanna Booth

The group is underpinned by a shared passion for raising the profile of student-staff co-creation initiatives linked to innovation in learning NTU. Learning is viewed broadly as what happens within the core assessed curriculum as well as outside it, on campus or elsewhere. It encompasses student as well as staff learning and development – in partnership, from each other. The focus is to provide a supportive space for the development of co-creation projects, through the use of cross functional team working, partnership, utilising and valuing both student and staff expertise.

Chair: Ana Souto Galvan

This group will look to address inequalities in student retention and success for students transitioning to HE from nonstandard entry routes (e.g. BTEC, City and Guilds, Access to HE).  It is recognised there is intersectionality between Success for All characteristics, with non-standard entry route students being more likely to also be ethnically diverse and from socioeconomically deprived areas (IMD Q1/Q2).  This is of greater relevance at ARES where students from nonstandard entry routes (58% - 2.6% above NTU average) are overrepresented. Additionally, Confetti has the highest nonstandard entry routes in the university (71% non A-level) followed by SST (45% non A-level).

This TILT group, therefore, has the potential to support collaboration across the University and is closely aligned to both Success for All and NTU University, reimagined strategic aims: Creating opportunity and Enriching society through supporting social mobility, Valuing and sharing ideas from collaboration with colleagues through research and scholarship and finally, Empowering people by working together to explore solutions to overcome the challenges presented by differing routes into HE.

Chair: Sarah Broadberry, Conor Naughton

Underpinned by Carol Dweck's research into the predictors and implications of fixed vs. growth mindsets during learning, the Mindset P&S Group's works to develop knowledge and practice(s) relating to student mindset. The group also aims to develop and evaluate effective strategies and interventions intended to enhance students' growth mindset, as well as their resilience.

Chair: Alex Holland-Leavens, Juliet Wakefield

The Supporting Learning for Employability Group promotes the integration of research informed employability learning across the curriculum, exploring the dimensions of both lifelong and lifewide learning. Recent activities undertaken by this group include hosting an Employability month on TILT Online, producing guest speaker highlight videos, creating a work-related learning podcast series and facilitating a peer led Coffee O’Clock series. All of these activities have been designed to enhance NTU's reputation as sector leading in learning for employability, and in 2021/22 we will continue to develop and disseminate scholarship, research and best practice that supports graduates future success in the workplace and beyond.

Chair: Richard Machin, Iain Wilson and Adam Shaw

The Active Learning @ NTU Practice & Scholarship group is a Community of Practice of / for academic and professional service colleagues and students drawn from across NTU interested in sharing knowledge / experience of effective Active Learning approaches / practices in the classroom and beyond. This includes, but is not limited to, SCALE-UP pedagogies. The group will continue to identify, develop and promote a wide range of Active Learning approaches and resources across NTU and evaluate the impact of Active Learning on student engagement, satisfaction and progression.

Click here to join the Group

Chair: Bianca Fox, Anita Love

5. Learning through Community Engagement, Sustainability and Social Action

These P&S Groups are interested in the role of community engagement, volunteering and / or environmental sustainability in learning and teaching in Higher Education.

The Education for Sustainable Futures P&S Group aims to help staff teach about sustainability in an engaging, informed way. By bringing together staff from across the University, the group aims to facilitate multi-disciplinary collaboration, with group members helping each other to achieve the integration of sustainability into their teaching. Recently, and looking forward to 2021/22, the Group will work to provide opportunities for staff across NTU to experiment with learning and teaching methods and materials that have potential to enhance students’ knowledge of sustainability.

Chair: Alex Meredith, Hua Zhong

6. The Personalisation of Learning and Student Experience in Higher Education, Success for All and Social Mobility

These P&S Groups are interested in the personalisation of learning and / or student experience in Higher Education and support NTU strategic goals of Success for All and Social Mobility.

The Personal Tutoring P&S Group is interested in the lived experience of personal tutoring/academic mentoring at NTU. The Group will work to advance understanding of experience(s) of tutoring/mentoring across the institution, identify and synthesise best practice drawn from across the sector, and make recommendations for policy and practice based on primary research conducted by the group.

Chair: Jelena Matic

The Student Motivation and Engagement Practice and Scholarship Group is interested in how student motivation and engagement is influenced by the curriculum and curriculum change, as well as the role different student characteristics play. Group members include experts in the field of motivational theory, and supports colleagues interested in identifying useful ways to measure and capture student motivation and/or evaluate the impact specific teaching techniques have on student motivation and engagement. View this presentation to find out more.

SME are partnered with the Education, Motivation and Learning (EDMAL) research group. Members of EDMAL and SME will attend the same meetings with a view to optimising your scholarship, practice and research opportunities and ambitions.

If you would like to learn more, please email Dr Richard Remedios at richard.remedios@ntu.ac.uk.

Chair: Richard Remedios

7. Technologies in Learning

These P&S Groups are interested in the future of learning and teaching and explore technologies (and gaming) that have potential to expand opportunities to learn.

The group will act as a central hub for AI related activities at NTU as well as provide a platform for colleagues to collaborate, share, and innovatively apply AI in practice. The group will also focus on scholarly output, providing colleagues with a place to sound out ideas for potential papers and the opportunity to apply to present at AI conferences.

Chair: Alastair Town and Tom Newham

The Games-Based Learning P&S Group provides a forum for staff and students to share and test ideas and engage in scholarship, research, discussions and activities related to the creation, development and deployment of games in learning that support staff and students learn better. A flagship learning tool 'Creative Connections' developed by group Chair James Leinster reached the final of the European Games-based Learning competition in 2017. Recently the Group has continued to provide a platform for close-to-practice games-based learning research / innovation to be disseminated and heard and opportunities to learn from the experiences of peers.

Chair: James Leinster, Mike Coffey

This group is for staff of all disciplines interested in the intersection between digital technologies and human cultures. Digital Humanities is a broad and interdisciplinary field incorporating expertise and critical methodologies in Digital Archiving and Data Preservation, Digital Scholarly Editing, Digital Storytelling, Mapping, Computer Visualisation, Data Science, Data Mining, Big Data, Digital Heritage, Machine Learning and AI via collaborative projects.

Chair: Natasha Hodgson

Virtual Reality (VR) (including Extended Reality (XR) and Immersive Learning is a growing specialist area across HE. Therefore, this practice and scholarship special interest group aims to explore the potential, current practices and review related literature to develop expertise and support.

Chair: Daniel Scott-Purdy

8. Advancing Recognition for Learning, Teaching and Scholarship Careers in Higher Education

These are closed P&S Groups with a remit to develop and promote opportunities for NTU staff to achieve recognition and career advancement based on learning and teaching distinction. Membership is by invitation.

The Teaching and Scholarship Associate Professor/Professor Network (TSAPN) is for Associate Professors and Professors on the teaching and scholarship pathway who seek to raise the visibility and impact of scholarship and the scholarship pathway at NTU and beyond, as well as to role model routes into T&S and to offer peer-support for progression.

Chair: Rose Gann and Co-chair: Lia Blaj-Ward

The National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) P&S Group is formed of National Teaching Fellows who continue to raise the profile of NTFS at NTU.

Chair: Rob Ackrill