Cake And Scholarship

By  Janet Cronshaw, Dave Turton, Fran Henshaw and Rebecca Barnes

First, there was scholarship....

At the recent UoS Education Conference, several Biosciences teaching specialists went along to a workshop entitled "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning as a path to building staff communities". We didn’t know what to expect but it sounded interesting and most of us have an interest in scholarship but are often unsure of how to go about it. Building a staff community sounded like a great idea too - The School of Biosciences is the product of a recent merger of three different departments and we are still getting to know each other.

It was an informal workshop - almost a chat you might say (and here we would like to thank the staff from the Law School who ran the workshop: Kate Campbell-Pilling, Katie Steiner, Joan Upson, Pete Odell and Louise Glover). There was something really empowering about a group of staff with a shared interest in pedagogy who had decided to actually do something about it.

They talked about regular meetings (but acknowledged that these weren't as often as they'd like), cups of tea were mentioned, the word "accountability" was used. It seemed like a really supportive, collegial group of staff, who were enjoying real benefits from the time invested.

We came out of the workshop and most of us looked at each other and said "that would be nice wouldn’t it?"

Then, there was cake....

I think it might have been the mention of tea during the workshop. Or maybe we were hungry (it was right before lunch). Either way, "cake" was very quickly added to the idea of scholarship. Before scholarship, obviously. And "cake and scholarship" was an official idea. It just needed to actually happen!

So, there was a room booking - that took at least 30 seconds. There was a spreadsheet to sign up for cake making and pedagogy presenting (another 30 seconds). And there was an email to interested parties - that was about it really.

We combined the cake and scholarship meeting into a monthly social meeting of the Biosciences Teachers groups: the first 20-30 minutes or so is open to anyone and everyone (the more cake-making options, the better really). And the 11 or so academics who are interested in pedagogy and/or collaboration hang around afterwards (along with anyone else who wants to or just hasn’t finished their cake yet). It’s really quite informal.

What have we talked about so far?

In all fairness we have only met three times. This is a work in progress and we plan to write another blog in a year’s time (if only for our own accountability). But so far, the meetings have been about:

• Meeting 1

A social and logistics planning meeting: when meetings will be, how often, who is going to lead, and who should make the cake. This first meeting also highlighted the breadth of teaching and pedagogic research experience within the group, with a nice mix of colleagues new to this field and others who are in the process of writing up their own research projects.

• Meeting 2

We discussed a few potential projects:

1. A joint student co-working project between Student Voice and Assessments on exam format and content. Action: Members have contacted leadership and management to enquire about funding of student interns. They have arranged a meeting with academics who have carried out similar projects in the past.
2. Potential project on student feedback. Action: Member has met with academics from other departments about their feedback format and is planning a study for the next academic year.
3. Making an Open Ed resource. Action: Member has set up a shared Google Drive for contributions and is meeting with library representatives for further support.

• Meeting 3

We developed ideas around some proposed member projects, identifying actions to be taken before discussing a recent teaching event:

1. We provided feedback to a colleague on their PGCert research project design and discussed suggestions for good types of feedback to collect. Action: Member is going to draft an ethics application for the collection of staff and student feedback.
2. We explored pedagogic publishing - where are these resources, what makes a "good" outlet for our findings and who do we go to for help with this. Kate Richardson (Faculty of Science Education and Employability manager) kindly joined us in this meeting and provided helpful guidance and support to members thinking of publishing their research. Action: Kate shared a wealth of information after the meeting (open access publishing, scholarship, education databases). A member is going to link up with Kate to discuss this in more detail and look to develop their research towards publication.
3. We also discussed a recent Learning and Teaching Scholarship Exchange event which showcased some excellent practice around laboratory training videos from the Multidisciplinary Education Team. Action: A member interested in this area has contacted the speaker to arrange a meeting to share practice.

Most importantly though....what cake have we had so far?

Double cake for the first meeting: a gluten-free carrot cake and banana bread left over from a previous meeting (no pictures I’m afraid).

Salted caramel bundt cake

A very delicious-looking orange and blueberry cake sadly did not make it to the meeting because of illness. Instead, we bought some biscuits. Chocolate digestives and hobnobs, in case you were wondering.