Academics' teaching innovation takes awards

Supporting dissertation students and improving the ways we use technology to develop learning are at the heart of this year’s 2014 Teaching Innovation Awards winning bids.

The Teaching Centre has invested a total of £18,443.26 in the winning projects to proactively enhance student learning not only in the six departments who won, but across the University. Some of the projects will support students at both Loughborough and Loughborough University in London, whilst others have potentially even wider impact for schools, other universities and in industry.

Dissertation students are a focus of the academics’ attention in two projects, whilst using technologies most effectively also emerged as a strong theme. The technologies in question range from computer aided design, session recording and remote labs to the best effect to support student learning

The 2014 Teaching Innovation Award winners in alphabetical order are:

• Marcus Collins, Catherine Armstrong, Thoralf Klein, Paul Maddrell in PHIR for a pilot project looking at ways of supporting undergraduate dissertations.
• Mark Jepson, Nicola Jennings, Simon Hogg for an interdepartmental project between Materials and Chemistry entitled Understanding the Art of Flipping
• Vicky Lofthouse in Loughborough Design School for a project to create a new teaching tool for carbon footprinting for designers.
• Jonathan Millett in Geography for a project to develop GUMCOM – the development of teaching resources to enable dissertation students to achieve greater depth and scope.
• Abby Paterson in Loughborough Design School for a project to support learning of Computer Aided Design software.
• Sheryl Williams and Richard Blanchard from EESE for work to evaluate student responses to and learning utilising remote, simulation and real labs.

More information from the winners and details of their projects as they emerge will be appearing on the blog in the coming months, together with updates from last year’s winners.

For more about the Awards, visit http://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/teachingcentre/procedures-schemes/teachingawards/teachinginnovationawards/

Another award funded by the Teaching Centre to enhance teaching and learning at Loughborough is the Research Informed Teaching  Awards – applications for which close on April 28th. For details see http://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/teachingcentre/procedures-schemes/teachingawards/researchinformedteachingawards/