University Teaching and Learning

This course is intended to be of use to anyone new to teaching in higher education. Whether or not you are involved in building courses, it is important to learn the principles of good course design and how to apply them in order to maximize the chance that the students you teach will have a positive learning experience.

1: Contextualizing the course

2: Designing a course that promotes learning

3: Ensuring your course is aligned

4: Building your course

5: Evaluating your course

Understanding the principles of course design contains 12.5 hours of optional activity content and 18 hours of associated peer-to-peer and tutor-led activities.

Professor Chris Rust

Associate Dean (Academic Policy) and Professor of Higher Education at Oxford Brookes University

This course will address issues such as anxiety – but its main focus reaches beyond pure survival and into the crucial question of how to ensure that students actually learn something from lectures – and the answer does not involve talking all the time! The aim is to provide useful guidance for the ‘new lecturer’ and a refresher for more experienced lecturers who would like to build their confidence, solve problems and improve their students’ learning and satisfaction.

1: Introduction to lecturing

2: Evidence about lecturing

3: Structuring lecture content

4: Lecturing using questions and technology

Lecturing 1 contains 12 hours of optional activity content and 9 hours of associated peer-to-peer and tutor-led activities.

Professor Graham Gibbs

Retired Director of the Oxford Learning Institute, University of Oxford

This course looks at a range of ways to deliver your lectures effectively, to ensure that students are engaged and supported. It will also offer options to faculty to handle problems and unpleasant incidents.

1: Presentation skills

2: Increasing student engagement during lectures

3: Supporting student note taking

4: Supporting students with special needs in lectures

5: Handling problems during lectures

6: Evaluating and improving lectures

Lecturing 2 contains 17 hours of optional activity content and 9 hours of associated peer-to-peer and tutor-led activities.

Professor Graham Gibbs

Retired Director of the Oxford Learning Institute, University of Oxford

This course focuses on your professional growth in teaching. It is based on the premise that you can stay vital in teaching by continuously reflecting on your teaching practice and, through this process, develop new teaching skills and approaches.

1: Developing your teaching identity

2: Getting and using feedback

3: Strategies for development

4: Continuous teaching development

Developing your teaching contains 16.5 hours of optional activity content and 16 hours of associated peer-to-peer and tutor-led activities.

Professor Nancy Van Note Chism

Professor of Higher Education at the Indiana University School of Education

Professor Mike Theall

Professor of Education at Youngstown State University

This Course is designed to give practical advice on marking students’ work consistently, reliably and efficiently, and giving them effective feedback. It covers areas such as creating rubrics in line with learning outcomes, dealing with problems including plagiarism, delivering feedback (including use of new technologies) and peer-to-peer feedback.

1: Introduction to marking

2: Dealing with plagiarism

3: Giving students feedback

Marking and giving feedback contains 21.5 hours of optional activity content and 10 hours of associated peer-to-peer and tutor-led activities.

Professor Marilla Svinicki

Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin

This Course offers tips and strategies which will help teaching staff to prepare, lead, evaluate and improve discussion experiences, whatever the size and nature of the course being delivered. It includes areas such as building a good rapport with students, whether/how to grade discussion, using technology, keeping discussions going and fielding questions.

1: Preparing yourself and your students for discussion

2: Creating a comfortable environment

3: Starting a discussion

4: Guiding a discussion

5: Managing online discussions

6: Evaluating and improving discussion

Making the most of discussion contains 17 hours of optional activity content and 13 hours of associated peer-to-peer and tutor-led activities.

Professor Barbara Gross Davis

Vice President for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges

This Course takes a step-by-step approach to the process of finding, choosing, creating and using resources – and then evaluating their effectiveness. It covers the full range of resource types – from textbooks to podcasts.

1: Planning student learning resources

2: Locating and selecting learning resources

3: Designing effective learning resources

4: Using and improving learning resources

Resources to enhance student learning contains 17 hours of optional activity content and 9.5 hours of associated peer-to-peer and tutor-led activities.

Professor Sally Kuhlenschmidt

Professor of Psychology and Director of the Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching at Western Kentucky University

This course is intended for faculty that is either new or relatively new to supervising substantial student projects or dissertations at either undergraduate or graduate level. It may also be of interest as a refresher for those who have been supervising for a number of years.

1: Preparing for supervision

2: Getting students started

3: Keeping students going

4: The final stages of supervision

Supervising projects and dissertations contains 17.5 hours of optional activity content and 9 hours of associated peer-to-peer and tutor-led activities.

Professor Vicky Lewis

Emeritus Professor at the Open University