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Tune in to UCL's new 'Talking and Learning' podcast

10 August 2016

UCL's Office of the Vice-Provost (Education & Student Affairs) has launched a new podcast this summer, examining key issues in affecting teaching and learning at UCL.

UCL Education Strategy

The 'Talking and Learning' podcast, featuring both staff and students, currently has three podcasts in the series with more in the pipeline.

Research-based education

In the first of the series, Professor Anthony Smith, Vice-Provost (Education & Student Affairs), and former UCLU sabbatical officer Wahida Samie explain what a research-based education means and how it "speaks to our changing relationship with the body of knowledge".

"It is not about saying that the ways that students have been taught in the past are wrong or different to what they need to be," Professor Smith says, "it's about a focus on questioning and inquiry." Professor Smith says staff are increasing seeing students as a "wonderful, creative intellectual source and a great way of crowdsourcing and testing ideas".

In the second podcast, Professor Smith discusses proposals to make teaching and education leadership as important as research when it comes to academics' promotion prospects.

Student feedback

In the third podcast, we tackle the thorny issue of student feedback. Dr Fiona Strawbridge, head of Digital Education at UCL, and Dr Simon Banks, faculty tutor in UCL's Faculty of Engineering Sciences, talk about My Feedback report. This new tool, developed at UCL, enables students to see many of their grades and assessment all on one screen. 

Dr Banks says the tool, which has been tested by about 700 engineering students, helps identify students' strengths and areas for development across an entire programme. Dr Banks explains how some students want to see the tool give them a ranking against their peers. Other universities are watching the development of the tool closely, Dr Strawbridge says.

Tune into our podcast and email us at teaching.learning@ucl.ac.uk to let us know what you think of it, which topics you'd like us to cover and who you'd like to hear discuss them.

Office of the Vice-Provost (Education & Student Affairs)