September 2022 TLD Bulletin
1. Staffing updates – Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) team
We welcome Linford Butler as the new TEF Coordinator who is mainly responsible for the Student Outcomes aspect of TEF. We also have two out of three of our new TEF interns starting this month – Monique Sung and Tingyuan Yang. Monique will mainly be working with Humanities and supporting the educational gain theme within TEF and Tingyuan will be mainly working with FSE and supporting the Academic Experience and Assessment theme within TEF.
We have started a large data gathering exercise pulling out good practice examples from SEAPs and previous accreditation documents. If there is any area of good practice that you think we could include in the TEF submission, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at TEF@manchester.ac.uk.
2. Unitu
The Programme Enhancement Team are currently working with colleagues across the university to launch the second-year pilot of an exciting digital feedback platform called Unitu.
The platform allows students to share feedback with staff to initiate constructive dialogue around key aspects of their learning experience. Students can select different options for feedback including issues, ideas and praise and ask for feedback and engagement from staff. Staff, student reps and students can then work collaboratively to co-create solutions to any issues, share areas of excellent practice and offer praise for aspects of their learning which they particularly enjoy.
The Year 1 Pilot saw some excellent practice from colleagues across the university and we are hoping to build on this in Year 2. Several new pilot areas are joining us this year as we expand the use of the platform, with the aim of embedding student voice at the very heart of our daily practice.
If you would like to know more about Unitu, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with either Rebecca Tyson or Daniel Bayes.
3. Institute of Teaching and Learning (ITL)
- A New Cohort of ITL Fellows
We're making plans with our third cohort of ITL Fellows, who will begin their projects in September. We'll be sharing details of who our new Fellows are and the areas they'll be working on very soon! Fellows from our second cohort, who began their projects last September, have been doing brilliant work, and we're looking forward to bringing you more on this in the coming months.
We’re currently developing our ITL workshop programme for 2022/23, and you can find details of past sessions (including recordings where available) and an overview of workshop themes on our Past Events page. To keep up to date with our events, keep an eye on Upcoming Events and TALON, and you can let the team know of any sessions you’d find particularly useful by contacting them on teaching.learning@manchester.ac.uk.
On our TEA blog this month we hear from FSE Teacher of the Year award Winner Percy van der Gryp, on what it means to take your Lecturing to the next level using data informed pedagogy.
- Message from ITL colleagues regarding document sharing sites, and what to do about them
The University is aware of a number of student document-sharing websites to which course content belonging to the University has been uploaded (e.g. StuDocu, Course Hero, OneClass, Study Drive).
The Library’s Copyright Guidance Service sets out below some simple steps for requesting the removal of material from these sites:
Additionally, students or staff can also report concerns about a website that enables, or appears to enable, academic malpractice through selling or sharing essays, or publishing course materials to:
cheating.spam@manchester.ac.uk
Note that these sites may present themselves to students as legitimate ‘study resources’. The University is working on messaging to students about the pitfalls of using these sites to share work that is either:
- the intellectual property of the University, such as course materials, or
- student-authored work, which may lead to concerns about academic malpractice
Further information:
- For more information about tackling contract cheating and promoting academic integrity, see the Contract Cheating Toolkit
- The University’s Academic Malpractice Procedure
4. Contact
If you are aware of other staff members who would like to be added to the TLD Bulletin mailing list to receive future editions of the Bulletin, please contact Miriam Graham (email m.graham@manchester.ac.uk).
If you are from a Collaborative or Validated Partner and you are having difficulties accessing any of the linked documents or web pages, please also contact Miriam Graham (m.graham@manchester.ac.uk).