Sharing views and making links: student perception of outstanding teaching and exceptional learning (SPOut)
- Start date: 2010-09-14
- End date: 2011-07-29
- Status: complete
- Funding Initiative: EQUIP
The SPOut project aims to build capacity within the institution by taking a holistic view of DMU's approach to quality improvement. DMU already has strong processes in place for putting into practice recommendations for improvements: we make significant use of the internal and external data and processes available to us and central departments work with the students' union to take forward learning and teaching projects.
The SPOut project will further enhance and embed these processes. It will also link with work which has investigated staff perceptions of what outstanding teaching and exceptional learning might look like across subject disciplines together with other research which looks at the ways subject staff define good practice in learning and teaching. Both pieces of research show that whilst there may be links and similarities across subject areas, these are often unexplored due to the predominance in higher education of the subject ethos. The SPOut project aims to focus on the students' views of outstanding teaching and exceptional learning to investigate whether there is an echo of the findings found amongst academic staff groups.
The identification of examples of outstanding teaching and exceptional learning and an evaluation of what characterises them will help stimulate institution-wide debate around learning and teaching, leading not to a slavish copying or unthinking transfer of practice from one context to another but a deeper critique of the practices within subjects which will promote the process of identifying similar examples of excellence within individual subject teams.
Lead Contact: Nick Allsopp
- De Montfort University