Lightning & Practitioner Workshops T2 2024

1pm Wednesday 12 June

Oral assessments such as viva voce and interactive orals are becoming increasingly common in higher education to promote academic integrity, authenticity and to foster communication skills. This workshop will explore different models of oral assessment and offer practical strategies for planning, scaffolding, and implementing this mode. At the end of the workshop, you’ll have some time to workshop your ideas with your peers and education developers.

Speakers

Meredith MacAulay (ADA) is an experienced English language teacher and curriculum writer, passionate about facilitating engaging, goal-focussed learning experiences. She has designed and delivered a range of oral assessments, notably in UNSW university pathway programs. She is also a trained speaking examiner for international English language proficiency exams including Cambridge and IELTS. In her current role as an educational developer in ADA, as part of Nexus, she is interested in how oral assessments can be harnessed to build and assess discipline-based knowledge and skills.

Dr Pranit Anand (Business) is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Information Systems and Technology Management in the Business School. He currently teaches various networking and cybersecurity courses. He is passionate about students’ engagement and success and recognises the important role assessments play towards this. He attempts to design assessments that are meaningful, transferrable, and flexible. Pranit will share his own experience designing and implementing the Interactive Oral Assessment in his post-graduate course.

1.30pm Tuesday 21 May

In this workshop, we will explore how teachers can proactively create a context for learning that supports student wellbeing. Participants will explore how they can create feelings of safety and overcome their own teaching anxieties to better support students. Staff will leave having developed a plan to use observation and intervention skills utilising an authentic teacher persona. This session will be hands-on and interactive. Feel free to bring your colleagues and teaching team!

Speakers

Dr Benjamin Phipps (PVCE) is a musician turned academic (PVCE Nexus Fellow). Teaching world music to students from many cultural and musical backgrounds and interests was a huge spur to developing his truly inclusive practice that opens learners’ minds to the way knowledge is shaped by individuals, society and broader global contexts. Using evidence-based teaching actively involves learners in developing critical thinking skills through activities in listening and analysis, but Ben found this development must be scaffolded to encompass the diversity of musical and other literacies as well as composition and performance skills. By having students analyse, reflect, practice and create in learning sequences, education builds transformative skills across practical real world applications. These same approaches and principles apply in different disciplinary contexts with different cohorts of learners, as Benjamin is now finding with academics as his learners in teaching development programs.

Dr Chris Maloney (Medicine & Health) is a senior lecturer and an Education Focussed (EF) co-lead of the Student Wellbeing Community of Practice and Lead Student Support School of Health Sciences UNSW. Chris has been a teacher in higher education since 2000 with 12 years of experience at UNSW as a convenor, lecturer and tutor for two courses, teaching communication and research skills to Exercise Physiologists. Chris has over 20 years of experience as a medical researcher in the fields of nutritional programming of diabetes and obesity & Epigenetics, with 33 publications and > 3000 citations. Chris has two school awards for Enhancing Student Experience 2012, 2022 and Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence 2021 at UNSW. Chris is passionate about building communities to support both staff and students, enhancing their wellbeing to achieve academic excellence, and research into the process to achieve this.

12pm Wednesday 22 May (In-person only)

Are you an educator or education designer looking to navigate the evolving world of Education Technology? Whether you're grappling with student engagement, administration, feedback, assessment, staff development, etc.… you've probably wondered if you could acquire or build a piece of Education Tech to make life easier. As education becomes increasingly intertwined with technology, understanding and leveraging this relationship is crucial. This interactive session will help you demystify your specific problem, enhance your understanding of the solution, and aid you in planning your next steps. 

You will engage with the design thinking process in the context of higher education and learn about the School of Clinical Medicine's custom-built Ed Tech tools made using the Microsoft Power Platform. Bring the problems you want to address and collaborate at our activity stations to define your educational challenges, brainstorm innovative solutions, and devise a practical action plan. 

You will leave the session with a deeper appreciation of design thinking and a strategy tailored to your teaching context. Don't just keep up with the digital evolution, be at the forefront!

Speaker

Jen Xiang (Medicine & Health) is an Education Designer in the School of Clinical Medicine, where she collaborates with her team to improve learning and teaching experiences across clinical campuses and learning environments. Her journey in higher education began with frontline teaching and moved into cross-disciplinary staff development, leading a team to design and implement university-wide programs to empower educators to teach across modalities and environments. Her ethos is "pedagogy first, enabled by technology, and grounded in human-centred design". Jen is deeply committed to designing environments and tools that foster genuine engagement. As a creative who's passionate about science and technology, she loves combining pedagogy with sound design and development processes to devise fit-for-purpose education solutions. She classifies herself as a generalist with specialist skills and is always looking for the next challenge. 

11am Tuesday 4 June

How can Star Wars help you to deliver a more engaging lecture? Unlike "The Force", storytelling is something you can readily harness to deliver a more engaging and structured student experience in your courses. In this workshop, Poon demystifies the idea of "storytelling", shares his story-centred process for designing engaging classes, as well as some evidence that supports the success of this approach.

Finally, he will eventually stop talking, and facilitate a hands-on activity to guide attendees on implementing this storytelling framework in their own practice.

Speaker

Dr Poon Leung (Business) is an EF academic from the School of Risk and Actuarial Studies in the UNSW Business School. He describes himself as the "mad (but still ethical) scientist of education.