New lead for Arena professional development programme joins UCL

Patrick joined the UCL Arena Centre for Research-based Education in September 2017, as the new Lead for the Arena Programme.

Patrick is responsible for overall running of the programme and its three constituent pathways (Arena 1, Arena 2 and Arena Open) and will work closely with his new colleagues in its continued development. 

He will also shortly begin duties as Arena Link with the Faculty of Brain Sciences. He’ll be providing pedagogical support to colleagues in this faculty in areas such as teaching approaches, good assessment and feedback practice, and curriculum design and enhancement. 

Prior to UCL, he worked at the Department for Learning Enhancement and Development at City, University of London, for twelve years, where he taught on various modules of the MA Academic Practice, also running the programme for five years. Before this, he worked as Head of Distance Learning at the Centre for Labour Market Studies, University of Leicester. 

Patrick commented, “I’m very pleased and excited to join UCL. The Arena Programme is already a great success and I am looking forward to working with the team in ensuring we provide the very best professional development support to staff across UCL. Developing teaching skills and sharing experiences and best practice is key to providing the best student experience and to enable us to achieve our aims in the Education Strategy.”

Patrick’s research and educational development background

Patrick has a background in social psychology and sociology and is currently writing up a PhD in Educational Research, supervised at Lancaster University, and which he has undertaken part-time.  

Patrick has many years of experience in educational development, and has particular interests in areas including assessment and feedback, plagiarism prevention, sustainability in higher education, and development of newer researchers, having published widely in these areas. 

He also has a keen interest in qualitative research approaches including phenomenography (a research approach with its origins in, and used for researching higher education itself). 

He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), a co-convenor for the European Educational Research Association (EERA, Network 22) and has undertaken various responsibilities for the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE).

Professor Dilly Fung, Academic Director of the UCL Arena Centre for Research-based Education commented: “We're delighted to welcome Patrick to the Arena Centre. His experience as a higher education teacher and education developer over many years will be invaluable as we take the next phase of the very successful Arena Fellowship scheme forward at UCL.”

What is the Arena Programme?

UCL Arena is UCL's professional development pathway for teaching: a scheme of awards accredited by the Higher Education Academy giving teaching and support staff nationally recognised fellowships. 

The Arena team also provide a variety of open training events designed to share good practices and develop the skills and knowledge of those who teach at UCL.

• UCL Arena One is a development pathway for postgraduate teaching assistants (PGTAs) who teach at UCL, leading (optionally) to the submission of an application to become an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
• UCL Arena Two is for Lecturers and Teaching Fellows on probation to gain a teaching qualification in order to complete their probationary requirements and enables participants to apply to become a UCL Arena Fellow and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
• UCL Arena Open is for all other staff who teach, supervise, assess or support students’ learning at UCL. The scheme is accredited by the Higher Education Academy (HEA).

View the latest training events.