Overview of the Teaching and Learning Hub

The Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences' Strategic Plan 2007-2012 has "excellence in teaching" as one of its priorities. The plan also commits the Faculty to providing staff with the appropriate resources and supports to help them to achieve excellence in teaching. This resource is provided as part of that commitment.

In this resource the term "teaching" refers to all forms of teaching and facilitating learning (giving lectures, laboratory practicals, facilitating tutorials, delivering clinical or workbased teaching) along with teaching related and learning support activities (course design, curriculum design, assessment, evaluation of practice), student supervision and pastoral care.

This resource has been designed for independent study as a part of continuing professional development. Each of the headings on the left hand side of this web site represents a teaching activity area that has been derived from the University policy document on academic grades, performance standards and criteria. If you take a look at the headings you will see that teaching activities include delivery of teaching, design of courses and/or programmes, assessing student learning and providing feedback to students and student support, guidance and supervision.

The content for this resource has been developed from the same policy document with reference to the University's criteria for judging performance in each of the teaching areas. For example, if you visit the section, Delivery of teaching to facilitate learning, you will see that the first question is What makes a good teacher? According to the University policy document, engaging students in learning is required to achieve a rating of satisfactory in teaching.

You can take a look at the full list of activity areas and the Faculty's expression of the  associated criteria for judging teaching performance by visiting the Performance Criteria section of this website.

How might I use the website?

You might start with the Performance Criteria in order to determine the performance standards for your particular academic grade. You might then use then look at the different sections of the website to answer questions that you might have about achieving the standard. Another way to use the site would be to start with a section that is of particular interest to you right now. For example, you might have a particular interest in course design or in assessment. Once you've looked at the resource you might then visit the Performance Criteria to see how you are doing relative to University requirements.

No matter how you decide to use the site we would recommend that you make use of myEPORTFOLIO to maintain records for your academic CV, annual performance reviews or promotion applications, and for your own development as a teacher.

This teaching and learning resource had been made possible by the work of many people:

Project sponsor: Mark Barrow (Associate Dean Education)

Project leader: Iain Doherty

Project team: Iain Doherty, Mark Barrow, Judy McKimm, Jennifer Weller, Marcus Henning

Lead content authors and editors: Iain Doherty and Judy McKimm

ePortfolio: Wen Chen Hol, Craig Housely, Iain Doherty, Fiona Spence

Learning design: Fiona Spence, Iain Doherty

Video direction: Richard Smith

Web development: Craig Housely, Wen Chen Hol

We would also like to acknowledge the support and input of FMHS academics who contributed their knowledge and expertise during  this project. You will see many of these staff in the various videos and in the exemplar section of this website. However, many more staff contributed in multiple ways including advising on content, design and development and through reviewing the modules.