Changes to university entry calculations

From 2017, UCAS is changing how it calculates the examination points system for applying to college and university. I’m really not quite sure why as the old tariff system has been in existence for over 20 years and many people are familiar with it. Personally I preferred the old system. 🙂

Do check out the 2017 tariff calculator and look carefully at the range of examinations and awards that are recognised. Of course, always check with the college or university admissions requirements, as they might have preferences as to what A levels or examinations they wish to consider.

HAPPY LEARNING!

June 23, 2016June 23, 2016

Achieving teaching excellence in biosciences – with OER

My week includes meetings at the University of Kingston, Open University and Bath University, largely talking about open education.

On Wednesday in Kingston, Dr Nick Freestone organised an event to explore Teaching Excellence Workshop advert (PDF). I liked his approach in having a mixed audience of staff and students, including those studying biosciences, pharmacy and other medical-related subjects. I think I’m so used to having to do a ‘hard sell’ about open education at times, I was not expecting at all the huge level of interest and enthusiasm that my presentation received.

http://www.slideshare.net/viv_rolfe/kingston-teaching-excellence-event

I started off with a reflection back on my PhD dissertation which examined the secretory mechanisms of E. coli toxins. Some 15 years on, our knowledge has become more detailed but hasn’t really significantly advanced our understanding of gut secretion. It is sad to observe the global statistics on deaths caused by diarrhoeal disease remain little unchanged. One has to reflect on the global ‘business’ of scientific research, and some of my own students commented in a lecture recently on the inequalities relating to health and distribution of funding around the world. In my talk I wondered if science could be done in a different way, illustrated by the ‘BOBCAT‘ project in which a global task force of over 180 individuals worked together to advance the medical knowledge and clinical approaches to the management of Barrett’s Oesophagus.

Discussions around open education

I explored the idea of open and collaborative approaches to science, the sharing of data openly, and sharing open educational resources. It is clear this is an area of interest for this scientific community:

We need to raise awareness of open education – it was new to many people at the event.
Folk need some basic practical skills or to develop open literacies for searching, evaluating and understanding open educational resources.
Folk need to understand Creative Commons licenses as a priority – many didn’t know the ‘CC’ logo.
People seemed very keen to be sharing resources especially around laboratory or surgical techniques and skills.
We need to define approaches to support all of the above – possibly through the professional bodies who sponsored the event.

Open education and teaching excellence

I talked about how involvement in open education links easily to teaching excellence through enhancing your professional development. The very nature of working in the open takes you ‘beyond’ your institution and encourages you to develop your professional networks. These are useful activities for you to create impact around what you do, and to disseminate your ideas, and examples of you doing this can provide evidence to support claims for awards and fellowship, for example part of the HEA UK Professional Standards Framework for higher education (UKPSF). Even better if the framework and some of the performance indicators we are increasingly embroiled in could be reworked to facilitate open pedagogies.

The process of participating in open education – whether it is sharing an open educational resource or sharing data openly, is a valuable learning experience. Lecturers who share OER always comment about how much more they understand about designing good quality materials, they gain knowledge about copyright and licensing, and also gain perspectives on the use of technology in teaching. OER reuse and creation should be part of every PGCertHE or similar courses that train all new university lecturers, and openness should be part of teaching excellence standards and ultimately the TEF framework as it evolves.

How better to demonstrate excellence – that your teaching materials and practices inspire and are reworked by others.

May 11, 2016May 11, 2016

From NHS glasses to sharing research

Revelations at the most unlikely time.

I had a research revelation at the weekend. I’m trying to liken it to something, and I can only think back to about the age of five or six and getting glasses for the first time. I’d avoided it before then by quickly memorising the letters on the sight test on the way in, enough to get me mid-way down to about P-F-C-D-E which must have really frustrated the optician. But when I finally got me “goggles” life was a revelation.

A Sunday afternoon treat was to sit on top of the Dover Cliffs and watch the boats. The purpose of which, with glasses, then became abundantly clear – you could see the cars and boats moving. Before then it was all a blur. The other revelation was wondering why everyone in school assembly was peering at the flip chart at the front of the hall. With glasses I finally noted it was because the words to all the hymns were displayed there. I felt slightly cheated at that one as I practically new all the hymns off by heart by the age of seven. Although I did think “Jesus spits and shines” was perhaps not right (“Jesus bids us shine with a clear pure light”).

I don’t care. Call me “four eyes”.

In the end, I didn’t mind wearing glasses because being called “goggles” or “four eyes” was a small price to pay for being able to see. (And I did get to hold David Muggeridge’s hand in the playground as the only other NHS spectacle wearer. Although his were tortoiseshell).

So my revelation on Saturday morning was as if someone had once again given me clear vision. Something that was confused before, suddenly became clear. I don’t know about you, but if I chose to write a paper, it is because I’m bursting with an idea, or have just had a great thought about how to analyse that data. I want to then write the thing as soon as possible. Of course what normally happens is that you can’t retrieve half the articles. You ignore therefore some of the good work that has gone on before. You might pay $29 for the odd article, and you might contemplate trying to find out once again how inter-library loan works in your institution. (Oh by the way I do like the new $6 article hire for 24 hours. Does anyone else go on a “print screen” frenzy or is it just me?).

So what happened next?

I’m not gonna tell. Ner ner ner ner ner. I stimbled acrost a most enteroisting webseet uphon wheech yam can downloadickles anychops for froibles. Oh my lordy. I’d suddenly entered a dream sequence from a 1940’s Hollywood music. This is what being a researcher could be like. It was like a dream. My room filled with unicorns and rainbows as I rattled through my search strategy downloading about forty articles relevant to my paper. No frustration. No omissions. No, “oh bugger it, I’ll look at this again in six months time”.

If only our collective knowledge was open and accessible!

As part of the academic community, I can only think we should be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves. Why do we perpetuate this ridiculousness of not being able to openly and freely access, share and build on our work? I’ve been a researcher since 1993 in medical research, the food industry and now universities. I have never got the feeling of euphoria that I did on Saturday when I could just openly access, quickly download, read to my satisfaction, an entire body of literature to help me write up an important area of work. OK, I know I’m not saving lives or making pet food any more. But everything is a piece in the jigsaw.

Imagine if we could solve cancer?

So, as recapitulated here by our lovely friends at Sparc, as VP Biden of the US declared, what if all the data relating to cancer research, and all the publications would be made openly available? What advances might we make in the next year, assuming we could readily access the bulk of papers that would be of benefit to our work? And that others could benefit from ours?

As I gain this information and knowledge, I will eliminate the barriers that get in your way, get in the way of science, the research and development. (VP Biden, April 20 2016).

So just think about what could be possible.

Or what should be possible.

I think we should start regaining some of our self-dignity and think about why we went into research in the first place. If we can’t learn from the most incredible scientists of our time like Marie Curie then maybe we should question our values and motivations:

In science, we must be interested in things, not in persons. (Marie Curie).

And I wonder what David Muggeridge is doing now.

Other articles forwarded from Twitter

Post by Peter Murray-Rust: https://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/