A busy week on campus

Exeter Education Incubator Café

We finished last week with an event which allowed Incubator fellows from last year and next year to explain their projects to colleagues. Dr. Sarah Dyer opened proceedings, with an overview of the year to date, and an explanation of the format for the afternoon. The attendees were able to speak to the incubator fellows they chose for 15 minutes, before a bell rang to urge everyone to move to another project, speed dating with an innovative spin. Halfway through the event a cream tea, served in Cornish style, with the cream on top, was welcome fuel for this action packed tour around the incubator projects.

Congratulations to our student researchers who graduated this week

Streatham campus has been a happy, lively place to be this week, with around 4,500 graduating students, proudly wearing their ceremonial robes. I joined the throng on Wednesday, see if you can spot me in the group photo. Several of the student researchers who have been employed in Education Incubator projects in 2017-18 also graduated, they are now moving on to pastures new, whether that is employment, postgraduate degrees, or second undergraduate degrees. It has been a delight to work with them, and to hear how they enjoyed their time in the Exeter Education Incubator.

Ongoing dissemination of the Transitions project

Dr. Matt Finn travelled to the Penryn Campus on the 17th July to present findings from his and his team’s Incubator project which looked at transition to university following the reformed A levels. This workshop was the final one of a series of dissemination events which have seen Matt and the student researchers travel around the country sharing their findings.

Matt worked with a team of eight student researchers investigating the change in A levels and how this change impacts upon transition to higher education. The team now need to consider how the results of their project can inform more effective undergraduate support through first-year tutorials.

Filming our incubator fellows and student researchers

In the Incubator we have been filming short ‘Talking Heads’ videos, as part of the Student Engagement project. Academic Incubator Fellows and student researchers have been interviewed, on camera, about their involvement in the Incubator projects last year. The specific projects discussed in these recordings are

• The Many Faces of Chinese Culture: A Visual Journey through China.
• InVEnTA: Interactive Virtual Environments for Teaching and Assessment.
• Transition to university following the introduction of the new A Levels: supporting undergraduates through effective first-year tutorials.
• Training tutors to coach students in shared/distributed and emergent forms of leadership for managing project teams.

These short videos will be around 2 minutes long, and will précis the projects as well as exploring the nature of student engagement in the projects from both academic and student perspectives. When they have been approved we will link to them on the website. Watch this space for details in the next few weeks.

Finish the week with some creative conjecture

As Friday afternoon drew to a close we had an exciting delivery: a box of digital glasses, to be used in one of next year’s projects. They can take a photo or a brief video, and sync wirelessly with your phone. The team spent a few creative minutes trying to guess how they would be deployed over the next 12 months in the Incubator project. I’m sure the Incubator Fellow will have a fabulous time with them.

 

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