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Research as Learning – The Reinvention Centre for Undergraduate Research

Description

A collaborative project based in the Sociology Department at Warwick and the School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes that aims to re-invigorate the student centred focus upon research within teaching and learning.

Main Aims of the Reinvention Centre:

• Promote new methods in teaching and learning with a focus on research-based learning.
• Redesign the spaces in which students learn.
• Fund undergraduates to carry out research.
• Fund academics to develop research-based teaching.

Current Projects:

Academic colleagues across the two universities will be encouraged to bid for Reinvention Fellowships (£10,000) to develop their teaching in ways that correspond to the aims and purposes of the Reinvention Centre. Student research will be further enhanced through curricula redesign to include an expansion in the number of modules across the faculties within which there are undergraduate research opportunities, particularly in the second year, or part-time equivalent. As well as innovation within modules the Reinvention Centre hopes to increase extra-curricula research opportunities, research scholarships, accreditation for research skills, student exchanges and joint ventures with outside organisations. Initially focusing on the collaborating departments, the Reinvention Centre’s work will be extended into other departments within the two universities over the lifespan of the CETL. As the Centre is working across departments a key issue is the way in which undergraduate research differs in different disciplines.

What is being offered to the wider teaching/subject community:

A useful set of case studies is available on the website
The website has links into two subject centres – Sociology, Anthropology and Politics (C-SAP) and the Centre for Education in the Built Environment (CEBE).

Planned Events:

Research-Based Learning in Higher Education: the Warwick Experience, October 2006

This conference explores the way in which research-based learning in the undergraduate curriculum is encouraged and supported by WarwickUniversity. With the focus on the successful and well established Undergraduate Research Scholarship Scheme (URSS) and with reference to other initiatives at Warwick, e.g., The Reinvention Centre for Undergraduate Research, this event will have two main priorities. Firstly the conference will look at the ways in which research-based learning is being embedded in the undergraduate curriculum at Warwick and, secondly, the conference will assist participants in thinking about how to establish such schemes in their own institutions.

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