Project lead: Helen Thomas-Hughes (Cabot Institute)

Project summary: This project examines service-learning as a mechanism for bringing professional, industry-specific and community-engagement opportunities into taught curricula across the University through the piloting of a new curricula approach to teaching community-engagement within the English department’s English

Literature and Community Engagement programme (ELCE). ELCE is a unique offering within the university. It is a part-time, evenings and weekend taught, direct application programme which has an embedded, accredited approach to community and civic engagement combining teaching and practice. Students study with the programme for six years during which they design and run and are assessed upon a community-engaged literature or literacies-based project. ELCE has been an experimental programme for ten years and has only recently become a permanent feature of the English Department. The existing taught framework has been developed to draw more expansively on service-learning as a theoretical framework for community engaged and civic-learning (the new curricula will be launched in 2018/19). The proposed project will focus on the delivery of this developed curricula and assessment model in ELCE to examine how practise-based teaching of ‘community engagement’ can apply the service-learning model in the UK context. Through this, the project aims to create a demonstrative evidence base and framework for integrating accredited community-engaged projects within wider taught programmes within the University.

Project lead: Alison Catterall (Bristol Veterinary School)        

Project team: Rachel Christopher and Sam Brown (Bristol Veterinary School)

Project summary: The project aims to evaluate the Clinical Skills Lab (CSL) at Langford as an active learning space to identify best practice, new ideas and areas for further improvement. The findings will be used to continue to develop the CSL to support student learning and will be shared with others within and beyond the university.

Clinical skills are considered core competencies for all health professionals and the associated teaching is reviewed as part of accreditation visits. The veterinary CSL at Langford has evolved as an active, student-centred learning space that combines taught practicals with an open-access policy that allows students to practise ‘just in time’ i.e. as required. A variety of supporting learning resources are available including innovative uses of technology e.g. YouTube, tablets, QR codes and the Haptic Cow. The Bristol CSL is now considered one of the best veterinary examples in the world; it was described as ‘exemplary’ by the AVMA accreditation team and the transformative effect on student learning is evident in feedback from students, recent graduates and employers. The CSL regularly hosts visitors from overseas and the team have been invited to help others set up similar facilities and run workshops, including in Africa.

It is timely (at time of writing) to review the use of the CSL as the BVSc curriculum (and the use of the CSL) enters a period of greater stability, evolution rather than revolution. The aim of this project is to evaluate the CSL using a survey and focus groups and align questions with factors considered important when designing and running active learning spaces, including: the physical space; how students are using, and learning in, the CSL; how the variety of resources, including technology, support student learning. 

The project findings and outputs have potential to benefit students across the university. While specific findings related to clinical skills have most relevance to medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and nursing, by aligning the research with key factors related to active learning spaces, it is anticipated that many outputs will be generalisable. Additionally, the research will be disseminated to the international clinical skills community, informing similar developments elsewhere and will help to keep Bristol at the forefront of innovation in the field.

Project resources: Evaluating a clinical skills lab as an active learning space: sharing best practice and identifying areas for improvement - project summary

Project lead: Joanna Large (School of Policy Studies)

Project summary: We (BSc Criminology team supported by Digital Education Office) aim to create a ‘Criminology Skills Academy’ (CSA) which provides an integrated and innovative space to promote active learning and skills progression. This project will create a searchable database of ‘just-in-time’ style 2-5 minute video content on academic and research skills supported by ‘Livecasts with Q&A’: with a focus of embedding these within specific disciplinary and programme examples. Content will be created by the teaching team and will be responsive to student needs.

Although the initial focus is on creating a Criminology Skills Academy, the project has a wider remit of developing a replicable framework which will see the model rolled out across the School for Policy Studies (SPS) undergraduate programmes (BSc Social Policy (SP)/BSc Childhood Studies (CS)), tailored by programme staff to pathways of study. This will allow the success of the model and its wider portability to be evaluated, whilst ensuring consistency in student experience across SPS undergraduate programmes.

In 2017/18, SPS introduced a Level 4 “Critical Skills” unit. Whilst students were positive about workshop style seminars, their feedback was critical of learning academic/research skills via lectures and many simply disengaged. Staff noted (similarly to Level 5 “Social Research Methods”) that students do not consider these as part of their degree programme as the cross-programme delivery lacks disciplinary specificity. In line with the broader development of Bristol Futures which aims to create ‘innovative learning resources’ and ‘development of academic skills’, we recognise problems of traditional and “bolt on” methods for teaching academic/research skills and the need for these to be embedded in curriculums (HEA, 2018; Wingate, 2007). Additionally, we recognise the need to engage students with taking an active approach to their own skills development (see HEA, 2018) and the increasing diversity of learners needs (Gordon, 2014). The Academy will create a space where students can drive their own personal development, embedded as part of their suite of learning opportunities in their wider degree programme. Drawing on the popularity of YouTube tutorials and the ‘prosumer’ interfaces of Web 2.0, the project takes advantage of technology enhanced learning (Gordon, 2014) and reinforces the movement towards a better integration of online and offline learning spaces (Peberdy, 2014). Focused video content allows students to select material when required, allows for differentiation in learning styles and needs, and is dynamic as we can respond to student feedback to adapt and update content.

Project lead: Emma Love (Bristol Veterinary School)

Project team: Chloe Anderson, Lucy Squires, Sheena Warman, Simon Atkinson (all Bristol Veterinary School)

Project summary:  Enabling students to develop the skills and enthusiasm for independent learning is essential in veterinary medicine where lifelong learning is vital for career success and fulfilment. Case-based learning (CBL) is widely used in medical undergraduate education where it is perceived to motivate and engage students (Thistlethwaite et al 2012). Case-based learning in whole year (120-150 students) teaching sessions was successfully introduced into the existing undergraduate BVSc programme as part of the curriculum review (Crowther & Baillie 2015).

The Accelerated Graduate Entry BVSc programme (AGEP) is a four-year veterinary degree, exclusively for graduates, which will complement and feed into the existing five-year BVSc degree.  The AGEP students will join the 5-year cohort partway through the 2^nd year of the AGEP (3^rd year of the BVSc). The first cohort (35 students) started in September 2019. The introduction of an innovative new curriculum for Graduate Entry Students will be a unique selling point for Bristol Vet School and the programme will adopt many aspects of current best practice in andragogy with a focus on independent, self-directed, and/or cooperative learning, making it unique in veterinary education in the UK.

The learning outcomes for the first two years of the course will primarily be met using case-based learning in small tutor-facilitated groups of 8-10 students. Case material will be time-released, with students accessing materials electronically via iPads/iPhones and using interactive white boards to share resources and explore answers to questions.

The environment in which the students study is key, and will include small group teaching rooms and digital resources, providing a “home” for the students to study in.  As part of the development of the classroom environment we are engaging with the Digital Education office within the University.  This project will play a significant role in finalising the design of these spaces at Langford.

The aim of this pilot project is to ensure that a robust and effective strategy is used for the delivery of CBL in the new AGEP. 

Project summary: Supporting graduate learners: Optimising the physical and digital environment for case-based learning in veterinary education - poster. 

Project lead: Helen Health (School of Physics)

Project summary: The Institute of Physics, twice, lists problem solving as an essential attribute of the Physics Graduate in “The Physics Degree” which describes the content of accredited programmes. Enabling students to learn to solve problems and assessing that they can do this is therefore essential.  There is a wealth of literature on developing problem solving skills in students, however many staff are unaware of this and advocate for teaching methods that suited them as students. The literature describes differences between novice and expert problem solvers. Given the academic success of many staff it is likely that they moved quickly from the novice to expert mode and this affects their perception of how problem solving should be taught. For example, this leads to strong resistance to providing full solutions to problems when the literature strongly suggests that good worked examples are a good way to develop problem solving skills.

The aim of this project is to develop the understanding in the 1^st year and Foundation year Core Physics lecturers of the literature around problem solving and use these to design and develop materials for formative and summative assessment based on best practice. Through an understanding of the aims of the formative assessment, i.e. what skills are being developed and techniques are being taught, and the purpose of summative assessment should be clarified.

The objectives are

• To develop an understanding of the literature on problem solving in a selected group of staff with responsibility for delivering Core Physics in the 1^st and Foundation years through away days and development of an “early years” team.
• To produce guides for Physics staff to best practice in developing formative assessment materials to enable students to develop problem solving skills and summative materials which test these skills. The guides would focus on material relevant to our courses, but which could be adapted to other programmes.
• To develop materials based on best practice, these would include both online formative assessments and problems book material, for student use and as examples for staff to build on. So far, the adaptive release aspect of online testing has not been explored.

As an additional outcome working as a project team on the early years would provide a basis for moving towards a more programme level view of our courses and how to assess problem solving across the programme, linking to the Universities move towards programme level assessment.

Project resources: How do we encourage our students to engage with formative work when it's difficult and they struggle to make progress? - blog