At Oxford Brookes University, we have, and are continuing to add to, a large number of resources available to help support colleagues deliver digitally enabled programmes of study. This summer we are all tasked to undertake a range of professional development to ensure we can play our part in offering Brookes’ students a flexible and digitally enabled study experience. In addition to working closely with our colleagues, we’ll need to reflect on our individual development needs.
This page provides an overview of the support and resources available to you from across the university and curates some ‘best of the rest’ resources. This page will update as new events, guidance and resources become available, so do check back.
Please email further suggestions of resources or support for staff to develop their courses and digital skills for teaching to ocaed@brookes.ac.uk.
Beyond Brookes
As the sector moves to more flexible, more online and more digitally enabled programmes, there is a wealth of material being made available to support HE educators. We’ve curated some of the opportunities here, but there are many more.
- Take your teaching online - 24 hours of study from the Open University.
- Lecturemotely.com - support for remote teaching and student support.
- Block teaching activities - activities that can be used in a face to face or online context, with some notes to help start you thinking about how to use them in a classroom where physical distancing is required.
And don’t forget the potential value of your professional bodies and subject networks and their contribution to your development for teaching and supporting students.
Brookes International HE Reading Group
The Brookes International HE Reading Group meets throughout the year to discuss recent articles that could make a difference to the way we think about our teaching, curriculum or students’ experiences. The articles are chosen to provoke reflection, insight and critical engagement. Anyone is welcome (feel free to bring your lunch), or if you can’t make the date and time we’re proposing to meet, do feel free to read the article and meet with your colleagues to discuss it when it’s convenient to you
Upcoming reading groups are listed on the Brookes International HE Reading Group.
Developing your online teaching skills - Inclusive Digital Teacher course
The Inclusive Digital Teacher (IDT) is a short course in Moodle. IDT comprises five, one-hour learning bites using and modelling features available in Moodle for asynchronous learning. You can complete as many of the five topics as you like, in any order, with no limit of when you access it. Programme teams may find it especially useful to do this course together to share learning and apply this to their programme as part of planning and preparation for teaching.
Digital accessibility
- Brookes is committed to providing online information and services that are accessible to all, especially people with disabilities. Therefore we need to make sure that our Moodle sites and teaching and learning materials meet digital accessibility guidelines.
- The Brookes Accessibility Checklist offers simple instructions on how to prepare teaching materials to meet the regulations. To complement the checklist, the Digital Accessibility Guidelines (Self-Directed) Moodle Course is designed to get you working with live documents and presentations and see how to check if materials are accessible and then, crucially, to give you practice in fixing any errors. The checklist and course are recommended for all academic and professional services staff who create pages or documents for use by students.
- The accessibility tools home page includes guidance for staff and curated links to digital accessibility tools and documentation to help staff create accessible digital resources, check for accessibility in their content and resources, and find good tools to enhance their own working experience.
New policies
The new Recording Teaching and Academic Contract Sessions Policy and the Assessment and Feedback Policy can be accessed directly from Academic Policies A-Z
Reading lists
Creating and looking after reading lists for the courses you teach is an essential part of academics’ responsibilities at Brookes. The Library recommends that as far as possible, essential and recommended reading should be available online (see Statement on reading lists and e-resources for online learning) and that our online reading lists system, Aspire, is used to provide students with easy access to reading. Guides on how to use Aspire are available in RADAR, and your Academic Liaison Librarian can set you up as a List Publisher and support you in using Aspire effectively to constructively align your reading lists with your module teaching.
Talking Teaching webinars
The popular Talking Teaching webinar series brings together Brookes staff (and invited colleagues from across the sector) to discuss and explore inspirational practice in teaching and learning. The series provides an opportunity to keep abreast of developments in the way we create effective student learning environments. Each webinar or workshop offers the opportunity to share practice, ask questions and consider ways to enhance your academic practice.
TEL Support - the place for technical know-how
The Digital Services team and the Digital Media e-Learning Developers (DMeLDs) are extending the guidance on using Moodle. Staff in the Brookes Teaching and Learning Community have shared their priority know-how needs to develop more digitally enabled programmes next year and these are informing the development of new guidance notes. This guidance is available through the TEL Support pages.
Individual support with queries about the use of technology for teaching can be addressed to Faculty DMeLDs or to the digitaleducation@brookes.ac.uk email address.
