At the start of academic year 2022-23 the university embarked on an ambitious programme of curriculum redevelopment. This encompassed all of the universities taught provision, categorised in various ways: ‘standard’ undergraduate teaching; taught postgraduate teaching; practise focussed education and apprenticeships. The aim from the University were to simplify course structures…
Category: Students
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Finding the positives from online learning in a pandemic
At the moment I feel like Rumpelstiltskin trying to find golden threads of what we have delivered over the past year. Some say that this year will have changed University education forever, I must agree, I htink we can take some really positive things from it. We also need to see what aspects of the face to face and campus experience we have really missed and look at getting those back as soon as possible.
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The big shift online
his blog has some thoughts on notes from designing the shift from fully campus based learning to a blended approach for the start of the academic year in September 2020. Instead of being simply a backwards review I have posted as it is still relevant and contains challenges we face to move into the next academic year – either with or without covid-19 in attendance.
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Dealing with lab closure and the student practical experience
One of the hardest parts of dealing with the pandemic has been managing the closure of practical labs for our students. With the overnight closure of the university in March 2020 we had to shut our labs. At that time we had completed nearly all of our taught undergraduate and…
Using Google Docs and Breakout rooms for a directed task, collaborative work, and presentation.
This was originally a jotting on a google document, which I then shared with a few colleagues, which then was refined by our digital learning people at SHU as part of resources for other staff. It can be found at: https://blog.shu.ac.uk/digitallearning/case-studies/ I teach a second-year chemistry module called “Chemistry and…
Reflections on moving final year lab based projects into dry projects overnight
The start of a year of shifting sands The past year has been full of changes and shifting of sands under our feet. During this year I have been recording the odd thing to reflect on so thought I would put them into blog form. It may take one or…
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Drones and Textile Evidence – A guest blog
Last year I supervised a final year student, Alistair Bucknell, for his research project. We decided to look at the use of drones in forensic investigations and any affect they may have on crimescene evidence. Alistairs work was so thorough that we decided to submit it to a scientific…
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Hair analysis in the laboratory
Today I decided to try something new in a forensic science student lab, taking small videos (Vines), creating a video lab script, see below. The students had seen a lab script before hand, but this is a dry description of the steps they need to complete. I have decided to capture…
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Blogging to extend the classroom
Tomorrow I will give a short talk on using my blog in a higher education setting. I only have a few minutes to talk so thought I should write a blog to explain in more detail. Read on… My ‘day job’ title is Senior Lecturer in Forensic and Analytical…
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The face of SHU
Any of you who have been on campus at Sheffield Hallam University recently may have noticed lots of pictures of a slightly hairy man watching you: that is me! Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) has recently started a campaign to show the added advantages of being one of our students, such…