Our Work

Centre for Excellence in Enquiry-Based Learning (CEEBL)

Description

The Centre supported and disseminated new initiatives inside and outside the university.

Contact: Karen O’Rourke, Associate Director

Telephone: 0161 306 6440

Summary Aims:

CEEBL aimed to enable enquiry-based learning methods to be developed widely across the whole of the University of Manchester at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

It is essential that students at the university are educated for knowledge creation, lifelong learning and leadership. They will take on leading roles in their future working environments; directing change, asking important questions, solving problems and developing new knowledge. Basing learning on a process of enquiry will develop the necessary abilities and attitudes, while still taking account of an increasingly diversified student population.

Projects:

Small projects for 2007/2008:

• Introducing EBL to second year undergraduate module Organisations, Management and Technology.
• Reading Ancient Texts Today: Papyri, Narrative and the Articulation of Past and Present.
• Introducing Principles and Practices of Phonetics Through Enquiry-Based Learning.
• A structured approach to preparation for group project work.
• Information Technology Management for Business.
• Development of an Enquiry-Based Learning Approach for Training Translators in the Commercial Domain.
• Values & Worth: an EBL approach to encountering and constructing collections.
• Refining EBL for Scientific Problem Solving
• Life Sciences go to the movies.
• Critical Project Development Skills in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine.
• Linking Teaching and Research: Using Faculty research seminars to enhance EBL activities in final level tutorials.
• Developing personal professionalism and career awareness early in the medical curriculum through Enquiry-Based Learning.
• Building Capacity for EBL through Staff Development.
• Students facilitating and validating peer-learning.
  

Active engagement with the HE Academy is critical to wider dissemination. Co-development is also essential. Institutions will wish to adapt EBL to suit their own missions, CEEBL therefore worked with the Subject Centres. It was agreed with 3 Subject Centres that CEEBL would host and co-deliver an event for their contacts.

An alliance was formed to promote student learning through research, enquiry and problem-solving (Learning Through Enquiry Alliance). This alliance provided a focus for meetings, co-ordination of activity and national events.

Learning and assessment materials were made available to the sector through the new national JORUM (The JISC Online Repository for [Learning and Teaching] Materials). The bid team agreed to provide pilot material as JORUM develops the system before its national launch.

Research and evaluation of student learning and assessment is essential for impact locally, nationally and internationally. The aim was to continue a culture of evaluation within the Centre and to expand the evidence base for EBL, with funding and plans for formative development from the outset.

Organisations / Institutions

University of Manchester

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