CAPOD Short Report, Dr Iain A. Smellie, HEA STEM workshop “Making... Based Teaching More Effective”

CAPOD Short Report, Dr Iain A. Smellie, HEA STEM workshop “Making LaboratoryBased Teaching More Effective”
On 13-11-2013 Dr Florence Laibe and I attended the title event at the University of
Liverpool. The University of Liverpool has recently moved laboratory teaching in many
disciplines to a new “Central Teaching Hub”, this approach has been seen as a success and
has been highlighted in a recent report (https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspacejspui/handle/2134/13389). Such examples of good laboratory practice are of particular
interest to the School of Chemistry since we have engaged in a review of laboratory teaching
in years 1 to 3.
I have listed the presentations given below:
Kate Hammond (School of Life Sciences) ‘Experimental design and analysis in a large first
year class: an abstract idea’
Liz Rushworth (CTL – Environmental) ‘Assessing group work in Geography practicals’
Tim Bullough (Engineering) ‘Incorporating student evaluation into the electronic submission,
assessment and feedback process for engineering laboratory practicals’
Benjamin M. Zwickl (School of Physics and Astronomy, Rochester Institute of Technology)
‘Transforming and evaluating upper level laboratories’ (via videolink)
Helen Vaughan (CTL -Physics) ‘Using a skills diagnostic to profile students’ basic skills in
preparation for lab work’
Gita Sedghi (Chemistry) ‘The role of undergraduate students in creating pre-lab activities in
the Chemistry Department’
Leah Ridgway (Electrical Engineering and Electronics) ‘Building confident engineers using
group design work’
All the presentations showed fresh and innovative teaching, assessment and administrative
practices. In particular the presentations by Liz Rushworth, Leah Ridgway and Gita Sedghi
were of great interest. Our review of laboratory teaching has highlighted the potential
introduction of pre-laboratory activities, the experiences discussed by Gita Sedghi will
certainly influence our future discussions. The assessment modes discussed by Liz
Rushworth may be appropriate for level 3 chemistry laboratory teaching, we may wish to
discuss this further with her.
Iain Smellie