Academic writing
Our expertise on writing development provides a range of opportunities for Oxford Brookes staff and other colleagues to enhance their enjoyment of teaching writing and their own productivity as research writers.
Study advice
Oxford Brookes' study advice: Academic writing
Workshops
We offer bespoke events both online and face-to-face, to support your priorities. The focus is staff development, and the approach is to collaborate with subject specialists in your own context to identify the best strategies for local writing development.
Online courses
Our online courses are part-time professional development opportunities which require participants to dedicate 6 hours per week to the course. We welcome both groups and individuals.
International visitors
We welcome international visitors to Oxford and can arrange events from 1 to 3 days for groups, which include a range of guest speakers, workshops and social time in Oxford.
Assessment and feedback
- Want to improve student engagement with assessment?
- Looking for ideas for new assessment approaches?
- Thinking about how to improve feedback processes in your course?
- Developing assessment in a fully or substantially online course?
- Planning to take a whole programme approach to assessment design?
We have a range of resources and services that can help.
Workshops
- Assessment and feedback for learning: A one day workshop. This workshop explores two main themes in assessment: theory and practice around engaging students in assessment processes; and the purposes of assessment, identifying a variety of assessment processes. It examines practical approaches through which workshop members can introduce alternative assessment methods into their courses.
- Improving feedback processes: A half day workshop. This workshop examines theory and practice around engaging students with feedback and improving feedback practices in our courses.
- Engaging students with assessment and feedback: A half day workshop. This workshop explores theory and practice around engaging students in assessment processes.
- Diversifying assessment strategies: A half day workshop. This workshop examines practical approaches through which workshop members can introduce alternative assessment methods into their courses.
We can tailor these workshops to run 'in-house' for a particular group, team or institution in the UK and overseas. This is especially beneficial where there is sufficient need for training or where you are promoting institutional change.
Resources
Many of our resources are freely available online.
- First Words by David Baume includes a chapter on assessment
- Our ASKe colleagues produced a series of 1,2,3 leaflets which highlight some practical ways in which teaching staff can improve their students' learning. Each leaflet focuses on a piece of assessment-related research and clearly states how that research can be applied to teaching practice in three easy steps.
Assessment Consultancy
We can work with your department/faculty/institution in a variety of ways to help you improve assessment and feedback practices. We have worked with teams within institutions to help them redesign their assessment and feedback policies and practices. We can also help you evaluate your current practices or new interventions.
For example, you can see our work evaluating the impact of the Oxford Brookes University Assessment Compact with some outputs in the form of case studies.
Change management and participative process review
Participative Process Reviews (PPR) adopts a simple approach to process mapping whilst acknowledging there’s a large volume of advice out there to satisfy people who would like to progress to greater complexity. For our purposes, our stakeholders have often greatly appreciated our keeping things simple approach.
See the PPR Toolkit for more information on Participative Process Reviews. The toolkit offers research findings, fundamentals, workshop overview, handouts, enquiry information and support notes and materials.
Coaching and mentoring
The purpose of coaching is to enable people to learn without teaching by facilitating their thinking.
We welcome international visitors to Oxford and can arrange events from 1 to 3 days for groups, which include a range of guest speakers, workshops and social time in Oxford.
Course design
- Thinking about course design/redesign?
- Looking for greater programme cohesiveness?
- Thinking about graduate attributes in your programme design?
- Developing a fully or substantially online course?
- Planning to incorporate new learning/teaching/assessment approaches?
- Want better collaboration within the programme team?
We have a range of resources and services that can help.
Keynote presentations
George Roberts has an international reputation on community, identity and learning online and off. He has given Keynotes and invited presentations:
- Learning on the edge. Keynote at the Solstice Conference, (2016) Edge Hill University. Retrieved from
- The new blended learning? Keynote at the Solstice Conference (2014), Edge Hill University. Retrieved from
- Digital literacies: Opening the frontier. (2012) Invited Speaker at Dundee University E-Learning Symposium. Dundee: Dundee University.
- Rapid Community Building: Innovative Development. (2008) Invited speaker at Enabling Innovation. Birmingham: JISC.
Personal development planning, portfolios, e-portfolios, assessment and reflective learning.
- Keynote at the Learning and Teaching Conference, Falmouth College of Art. (2005).
- Beyond Flexibility: flexible distributed learning (FDL) and e-portfolios.
- Invited speaker at University of the Highlands and Islands Staff Development Conference. Aviemore, Scotland: UHI Millennium Institute.
Course Design intensives
The Course Design Intensive (CDI) is a team-based curriculum development process. It is intended for whole degree programmes, as opposed to modules or units. Typically the process spans several months and involves consultancy and 2 or 3 days of workshops organised by OCSLD. To read more about the origins, development and benefits of the CDI process see Dempster et al (2012), Benfield (2008a) and Benfield (2008b). CDIs are for course teams who have already decided to develop one or more specific curriculum objectives, e.g:
- blended learning
- distance learning
- innovative assessment across the programme
- problem-based learning
- redesigning for graduate attributes
The idea is that course teams bring their syllabus, learning outcomes, assessment regime, etc, and we supply experienced educational developers, learning technologists and subject librarians and work together to (re)design your course. The aim is to do course design in a concentrated, collaborative way. Originally developed to support Technology Enhanced Learning, CDIs worked so well that they are now used to support curriculum development of all kinds. The process has been adopted by several UK universities, including the University of Brighton, Coventry University, Robert Gordon University and the University of Oxford. The CDI process has also been taken up in Australia. In 2013 Greg Benfield, who leads the CDI process at Brookes, was appointed Visiting Fellow at Victoria University, Melbourne, to help establish the process for supporting an ambitious university-wide curriculum renewal project (for more information see Curriculum renewal at Victoria University, Melbourne).
Resources
Many of our resources are freely available online.
- Dempster, J. A., Benfield, G. and Francis, R. (2012). "An academic development model for fostering innovation and sharing in curriculum design." Innovations in Education and Teaching International 49(2): 135-147.
- First Words on course design by David Baume (eBook)
International visitors
We welcome international visitors to Oxford and can arrange events from 1 to 3 days for groups, which include a range of guest speakers, workshops and social time in Oxford.
Testimonial
"The first thing to say is that the work they did for us was incredibly helpful and useful. We are attempting to build a very complex university wide programme with numerous competing ideologies and requirements. The CDI developed for us moved us lightyears ahead. I would never have been able to get us moving so far and so quickly without them. Every session was useful and the participants were engaged, energised and enthusiastic about what we are trying to do. That was in large part down to the planning and facilitation that George [Roberts] and Mark [Childs] did. George was particularly good at the facilitation of the sessions. He also helped pull ideas together and get them down in a way that kept us moving forward. The combination of really understanding mundane QA procedures and processes, having expertise in curriculum development, using groupwork skills and having an external eye was so powerful and helpful. Well worth the money!"
Professor Tim Kelly
Professor of Social Work and Dean of the School of Education and Social Work
University of Dundee
Inclusive teaching
Inclusivity and internationalisation are two important agendas in learning and teaching in higher education. We have a long history of supporting internationalisation and a growing expertise in inclusivity and diversity.
Web resources
Publications
- Moving Towards Internationalisation of the Curriculum for Global Citizenship in Higher Education, by Valerie Clifford and Catherine Montgomery
Workshops
We can deliver bespoke workshops on the following topics to meet the needs of your staff:
- Inclusive learning and teaching
- Inclusive curriculum design
- Teaching International Students
- Global Citizenship
Course Design intensives
Course Design Intensives are a team-based approach to designing and redesigning courses pioneered by Oxford Brookes University. The process involves expanding design teams to include learning technologists, subject librarians, course administrators and other professionals as appropriate, and focuses on high level curriculum objectives , programme level design and peer review of designs.
Examples:
- Brighton University
- University of Leicester
International visitors
We welcome international visitors to Oxford and can arrange events from 1 to 3 days for groups, which include a range of guest speakers, workshops and social time in Oxford.
Online learning
- Thinking about developing an online course?
- Planning to incorporate new technology into your teaching?
- Want to develop your skills on online tutoring?
- Thinking strategically about growing distance learning in your institution?
We have been designing and developing online courses for more than 10 years. Our approach to understanding and developing the use of technology in higher education is learner centred and research informed.
See our publications in this area.
Briefing papers
Workshops
- Designing online activities
- Blending e-learning into the curriculum
We can tailor these workshops to run 'in-house' for a particular group, team or institution in the UK and overseas. This is especially beneficial where there is sufficient need for training or where you are promoting institutional change.
For example:
- Designing online activities for Cardiff University
- Enhancing distance learning and teaching for Southampton University
- Tutoring for distance learning for London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Keynote presentations
- Roberts, George. 2012. “Digital literacies: Opening the frontier.” In Dundee University E-Learning Symposium. Dundee: Dundee University.
- Roberts, George. 2013. “OOCs for the Rest of Us.” In University of Hertfordshire: ELESIG
- Roberts, George. 2013. “Let’s Talk about MOOCS - Business Models, Research and Pedagogy: The Year after the Year of the MOOC.” Hertfordshire Business School Research Seminar. Hatfield, UK: University of Hertfordshire
International visitors
We welcome international visitors to Oxford and can arrange events from 1 to 3 days for groups, which include a range of guest speakers, workshops and social time in Oxford.
