ChangeMakers Teaching Dialogue

 What is it?

Discussion, exploration, shared learning. 

ChangeMakers Teaching Dialogue facilitates conversations between staff and students about an element of education as a way of developing shared understandings about that topic. Topics for the dialogue will be based on arising challenges and opportunities at UCL or within the sector. The dialogue you create will then have a practical/exploratory element, almost like a 'mini project'. 

Who is it for?

Staff

The opportunity is open to any member of staff teaching on an undergraduate or postgraduate taught programme, keen to explore their own educational practice in collaboration with a student. Whereas ChangeMakers projects provides funding for broader changes across a programme or within a department, ChangeMakers Dialogue is intended to help individual staff. That said, we hope that some of what you discover or learn will be something you share with other colleagues.

You will work with a student to discuss your teaching practice, focusing on making positive changes to the curriculum that will benefit students and staff in your area in 2025-26.

Students

This opportunity is open to all undergraduate and postgraduate taught students. You don’t need any prior experience and we will provide you with some friendly training to help prepare you for the role, like having coaching conversations. We particularly welcome applications from students who are underrepresented and/or identify as belonging to a marginalised group. As we cannot predict how many staff wish to take up this opportunity, we cannot guarantee every student who applies will be matched with a member of staff, but will endeavour to do our best.

How does it work?

Staff should have an initial meeting with their student partner. This is an opportunity to get to know each other. During this meeting, you can agree a focus for your work and a timeline for it.

Although dialogue is in the title, we want to ensure this is a practically useful opportunity. This means that we also would like you to identify something would like to do or try out with your student partner as part of this opportunity. Examples could include:

• Observation of teaching.
• Using a new tool and testing it out with your student partner.
• Reviewing and making changes to your Moodle, assessment guidance etc.
• Desk research by your student partner into other approaches to assessment, skills development, professional development etc
• Other approaches to engaging students.
• Developing pro-formas, student guides, teaching/learning resources.

At the end of the opportunity, we will ask you to record a brief 5-minute video with your student partner where you can both reflect on your learning that we can share more widely.