Centre for Fusion Learning Innovation and Excellence
Embedding excellence through fusion of education, research and professional practice
Another big week in policy land. We’ve big features on grade inflation and post-qualification admissions to get your brain buzzing. Feel free to turn to your neighbour and discuss! Brexit news for EU citizens setting in the UK This week the Government released further details on how EU citizens and their families could apply for… Read more » about HE Policy update for the w/e 22nd June 2018
This week I attended the 4th International conference on spirituality in Trinity college, Dublin, Ireland. The theme was ‘Spirituality at a crossroads’, interesting timing of the title in relation to the current debates being discussed in Ireland at this time. The conference was organised by the Spirituality research and innovation group in the school of… Read more » about Attendance at International conference on Spirituality in healthcare
R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. More information on R is available here. I started using R recently as an alternative to both SPSS and Excel. I am finding that the tasks for which I used SPSS can be carried out in R and the presentation of information is superior… Read more » about Do you use R in your teaching practice?
Martha Leyton (@marthaleyton) and Martin Shovel (@martinshovel) run a company (http://www.creativityworks.net) which helps to create speeches, presentations, pitches, campaigns and brand stories that are engaging, persuasive and memorable. This year we invited them to work with small groups of staff as part of our ‘Large Group Learning’ symposium, to offer some tools and techniques for… Read more » about What can speechwriters usefully teach university lecturers?
This year, CEL have facilitated workshops focused on the knowledge-making potential of creative processes. Students, even if they are hesitant at first, appreciate the time to think, process and create something. These approaches can be adapted from short five minute bursts of activity to longer pieces of collaborative work. Examples include the use of collage,… Read more » about CELebrate2018 – Creative approaches in large groups: workshop on photos and collage
CEL have worked with interested staff to create a number of workshops using creative approaches in research, education and professional practice. Our final ones are coming up – come and join us! book your place with Organisational Development These workshops are hands-on making events to gain skills for you to use these techniques yourself, please… Read more » about Next week: Origami workshop and Lego workshop
Colleagues involved with introducing statistics to students who are uncomfortable with maths may be interested to hear that an updated edition of my bestselling STATISTICS WITHOUT TEARS is about to be published (July 5th) by Penguin — and that they can claim an inspection copy of the new edition by sending an email from their… Read more » about STATISTICS WITHOUT TEARS – order an inspection copy…
=== apologies for cross posting, some BU staff may be interested==== Undergraduate Awards (for those of you who might not have come across it, a Dublin-based awards programme celebrating creativity, excellence, and innovative thinking among undergraduate students; it started off, a decade ago, as an Ireland-only programme, but it has since gone global, and become… Read more » about Expressions of Interest sought for undergraduate awards panels
BU hosted Dr Diana Beech from the Higher Education Policy Institute on Wednesday morning for a policy breakfast, part of this year’s CELebrate symposium. In a packed room and despite the early start, we had a great discussion about student perceptions, value (and value for money). Diana started with a review of the HEPI/AdvanceHE 2018… Read more » about What students really want – a CELebrate/policy event
HEPI Student Experience Survey The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and Advance HE have published a joint report on student academic experience. The report was launched at the annual HEPI conference and Sam Gyimah gave the keynote address. The report includes a lot of insight and is worth looking at – there are some new questions… Read more » about HE Policy update for the w/e 8th June 2018
