Teaching & Learning Strategy

Below is an article from Spark (24/11/06) on the Teaching and Learning Strategy. After reading the below.....It would be great if students could do a small survey to rate the values they feel underpin the teaching and learning experience here at Reading.

CLICK HERE TO DO SURVEY - it will take no more than 2 minutes.

These values will be compared to the staff results..! They will then go on to form part of the strategy. So have your say!

Thanks Ryan
r.j.e.bird@reading.ac.uk

Spark Article (24/11/06) - T & L

Students will get the opportunity to have their say on what they think about teaching and learning at the University of Reading in the next week.

Newly appointed Pro-Vice Chancellor for Teaching & Learning Professor Rob Robson is keen to update the current approach to how the university teaches and what the aims are for the future.

The Teaching and Learning Strategy is a document which outlines the direction of teaching and learning for the next five to six years making it extremely important for current and prospective students.

Professor Robson will be working with student officers, VP Education Ryan Bird and VP Development Emily Beardsmore and will next week be asking students and staff to rank the values that they think underpin teaching and learning at the university. For example, do you find it more important to have a stimulating lecture or how diverse the course is? The response will be worked into the new strategy which lasts until 2010.

Mr Bird is keen to emphasise the importance of this document even though it does not sound a particularly sexy topic. He said: 'Universities exist to produce knowledge, and students are a focal part of that existence, and the teaching & learning strategy puts students at the heart of this.”

Importance is placed on the skills needed by graduates to break into the job market after university. As a result the university wants to highlight the skills gained from students’ courses, and programmes outside the academic sphere. For example employers are looking for more graduates who have volunteered during their degree so as a result the university wants to improve this to enhance every Reading graduate to their full potential.

For those of you reading this dying to know more of this important and interesting strategy here are a few extracts from it. Under the title, Vision, it states: “Using our distinctive taught provision based upon the ‘Reading graduate’ and underpinned and informed by the research and scholarly activities of our staff, we will foster an increasingly diverse student population; enable them to achieve their learning ambitions through the flexibility of our delivery and the support of a strong learning and teaching community; and equip them with the academic and transferable skills necessary for them to succeed beyond graduation.”

By the time students graduate the document says you should have demonstrated scholarship appropriate to their level of award in their chosen discipline(s), demonstrated the ability to communicate effectively both orally and in writing, acquired appropriate IT and information handling skills and the list goes on.

The university is one of the United Kingdom’s leading research intensive institutions of higher education and their mission? “Our mission is to promote the growth, transfer and application of knowledge.”

Rebecca Cain

If you want to read the current strategy go to www.rdg.ac.uk/vc/whatwedo/tandl.htm.

TAKE STUDENT SURVEY HERE