‘Boot-camp’ for Success: Developing core academic skills in first-year business and management students
Dr Zohreh Moghimi (CeDAS), Leanne Workman (Library), Dr Derrick Chong (School of Business and Management)
A tripartite collaboration between CeDAS, the Library, and the School of Business of Management that targets first-year students with instructed guidance to meet the assessment criteria and submission date, thus developing skills critical for academic success. Read more here
Management and Music: harnessing the creative arts and student-led research to create an inclusive co-curated online course
Dr Amal El-Sawad, Department of Human Resource Management and Organisation Studies
My teaching innovation harnesses the creative arts - in particular music and creative writing - to help students critically evaluate core management concepts and theories and share findings from their own original research in engaging ways. Read more here
AR StoryDecks
Dr David Young & Mary Matheson, Media Arts, Nuno Barreiro, Electronic Engineering and Dr Will Shuler, Drama, Theatre, and Dance
AR StoryDecks provides an intuitive web-based application and deck of cards for creating immersive stories, opening new possibilities for lecturers and students to use augmented reality (AR) in their teaching and learning without requiring any expertise in coding. Read more here
Diversifying Philosophy
Suki Finn, Department of Politics, International Relations, and Philosophy
My innovations to diversify philosophy are distinctive by introducing the first module on race, gender, and queerness into the teaching offerings, by building support networks in turbulent times, and by leading the way in the department on equality in organising training and providing guidance documents to help others sign up to good practice. Read more here
SPIKE: Small Parcels of Integrated Knowledge. A teaching format to improve engagement and active learning
Walter Lucchesi, Biological Sciences
SPIKE is a sequence of 10 sections designed to implement engagement, active learning and self-empowerment, with the aim of reducing exam related anxiety, which is known to hinder learning . Read more here
Co-Designing and Co-Delivering English Academic Support: A You Said; We Listened Project
Jenny Neville, Ruth Livesey, Finn Fordham, Lucy Thomas, Tim Moore, Judith Hawley, Mohamed El-Ashkar
We have piloted a model of co-design and co-delivery of our Academic Support programme with our UG Student Reps and recent graduates. Read more here
Tying the classroom together: How to create the ‘best online teaching experience’ through an integrated hybrid classroom
Petar Stankov, Department of Economics
The integrated hybrid classroom lowers the participation threshold for both on-campus and online audiences, thereby encouraging students from diverse backgrounds and individual circumstances to engage with the material. Read more here
Developing cutting edge employability skills in the technology sector for Psychology and Computer Science students through interdisciplinary teaching
Szonya Durant, Department of Psychology, Nuno Barreiro, Department of Electronic Engineering, Carlos Matos, Department of Computer Science
We present an interdisciplinary approach to teaching that provides real-world skills in the context of the rapidly growing area of Virtual Reality for Psychology and Computer Science students, enabling them to develop their interdisciplinary team working, whilst applying their own specialist knowledge. Read more here
LearningTogether@RHUL
Dr Serena Wright, Department of Law and Criminology
Inclusivity is at the heart of the broader Learning Together ethos, as it seeks to facilitate social inclusion across students and staff at partnership HEIs and criminal justice institutions; however, LearningTogether@RHUL goes further than this: firstly, by specifically targeting Royal Holloway students from widening participation backgrounds; and secondly, in seeking to create inclusive HE-level educational initiatives specifically for women and young people in prison. Read more here
Equalising Opportunity and Skills through Year 1 module design: Encountering Medieval Literature
Dr Jennifer Neville, Dr Alastair Bennett, Dr Catherine Nall, Dr Stephen Gordon, Dr Helen McKee, Eleanor Baker, and Rebecca Menmuir, Department of English
Encountering Medieval Literature makes innovative use of stepped activities, including independent study, collaborative work, group discussion, and large lectures, to support and engage first-year students from a wide range of different backgrounds in their challenging first encounter with Old and Middle English literature. Read more here
Online teaching in the Library
Greg Leurs and Eva Dann, Library Academic Liaison Team
At Royal Holloway Library, our online teaching combines face-to-face lectures, workshops, webinars, our subject guides and Moodle space to give students 24‑hour access to learning resources. The aim is to deliver synchronous and asynchronous learning and teaching opportunities for students at point of need. Read more here
Artful Experiments in Atmosphere: Practice-based workshops and Alternative Assessment in GeoHumanities Pedagogy
Dr Sasha Engelmann, Department of Geography
Through practice-based, inclusive workshops foregrounding the sensual, aesthetic and affective dimensions of atmosphere, and an accompanying alternative assessment (“Practice Portfolio”) that challenges students to connect practice with key concepts, this teaching initiative activates situated learning experiences, diversifies learning opportunities, and innovates in the teaching of the geohumanities. Read more here
Rethinking Fast and Slow: Creative Curriculum Design in Response to a Crisis in Psychological Science
Dr Ryan McKay, Department of Psychology
I have turned a global crisis of confidence in the integrity of published psychological research to pedagogic advantage by using it as a springboard for teaching students about the problematic incentive structures that underpin the conduct and dissemination of psychological science – and of science more broadly. Read more here
Stating the Evidence: reviewing evidence for government policy to support student learning and development
Dr Alice Milner, Department of Geography
This initiative is a policy placement scheme for PGR students to produce high-quality evidence reviews to support real-world policy decisions in partnership with the UK Government, and benefit student learning through the development of important career skills. Read more here
Opening the door to the Financial Industry
Dr Pierre-Olivier Fortin, Department of Economics
Pierre describes how he has developed a whole range of activities and offers to “open the doors of the financial industry” for Economics students at Royal Holloway. Read more here
Learning Together: The School of Law at HMP Feltham
Dr Serena Wright, Morwenna Bennallick, Prof. Rosie Meek & Team, School of Law
‘Thinking Criminologically’ brought thirteen of our first-year criminology students into the prison environment on Wednesday afternoons to learn together with eight young people (aged 18-20) at HMP Feltham … Read more here
Simulation-based learning for better feedback and immersive student participation
Dr Endrit Kromidha, School of Management
On my course ‘New Venture Creation’ a range of mobile, computer-based and face-to-face simulations were used to enable students to make decisions and receive feedback in real time…Read more here
Encouraging Self-Reflective Practices in Mathematics
Dr Alastair Kay, Department of Mathematics
In this case study, Alastair describes how he redesigned the course ‘Introduction to Applied Mathematics’ in order to increase student engagement and inclusivity, and encourage self-reflection when writing homework and exam solutions...Read more
here
Arts-based Interventions on the MBA
Justin O’Brien, School of Management
The MBA at Royal Holloway benefits from cross-disciplinary projects and team teaching in an innovative format that sees students stretch and grow from a broad range of learning experiences..
Read more
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Digital Marketing Course Design
Dr Sarah Glozer, School of Management
Launched in Spring 2015 to 142 students, Digital Marketing is an elective for second year undergraduate students within the School of Management. In order to encourage students to actively co-construct course content, I regularly asked students for feedback and their own ‘crowd-sourced’ examples…Read more here
Demystifying biological chemistry: a competency-based approach
Dr James McEvoy, School of Biological Sciences
The 1st year undergraduate course “Chemistry for Life Scientists” uses a competency-based approach which identifies the chemical skill-set that is necessary for a student pursuing a molecular bioscience degree into the 2nd and 3rd years...
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Security and Social Media: the RHULGeopolitics Blog & Securing the Campus
Team from Department of Geography with affiliations to Politics & International Relations and International Security Group
For the MSc in Geopolitics and Security (taught between Geography and Politics and International Relations), we designed a blog as a space in which to publish some of the students' work. We also convened a joint security mapping workshop of the campus using a fictional G8 summit...
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Teaching Early Music Notation
Dr Helen Deeming and Samantha Blickhan, Department of Music
The course The Notation of Medieval Song was planned around new technologies that required student engagement with multiple learning modes, self-reflection, and peer and tutor feedback. Read more here