"I just wanted to touch base with to say following being on the first cohort of the PGCEE, I became the Programme Lead for a Level 3 Diploma in Nursing and Midwifery.  This is a new flagship course for DMU and is focused on widening participation.  I had validation yesterday, passed with no conditions.

The content I learnt on Decolonisation and Sustainability helped me immensely.  Even using my proposal idea in module 3 in strategies for developing access and equity to education for minoritised groups.

So just wanted to say thanks to you and the team for sparking new ideas.  Also my module teams are all PGCEE students either past or current.  Showing innovation in teaching and the panel were really excited by our ideas for changing the face of teaching".

Student Choice Teaching Award for dedication to innovative teaching and continuous support. Colleague comments -

'I feel one reason for this nomination is my understanding and application of what we have learned in our PGCEE Programme, which I always strive to put in action. Thank you for your continuous efforts.'

I’m truly delighted to receive the FHEA award. I’m very thankful for the effort and dedication the entire DMU Academy team poured into supporting us during this journey.

My colleagues are telling me how useful these sessions have been, and I am thrilled that 100% of attendees want to adopt the techniques or activities that have been demonstrated. I am confident that these will have an impact on our teaching practices and they will, in turn, help with retention, NSS and other metrics.

Having been at DMU for a very long time, I would also like to add that it is incredibly refreshing to have these sessions run with the philosophy of "practice what you preach". Several years ago, I would have been frustrated at attending training where we were subjected to death by PowerPoint whilst being told not to do that to students.

I wanted to say a big thank you to you and your lovely team for all the sessions that you have put on over the last week.  They have been super useful.  I would definitely like to liaise with yourself and the team more in the future.  I think it would be especially useful to utilise your expertise and knowledge when we are designing teaching sessions. 

Thank you for the prompt and insightful feedback on my project proposal, which was incredibly helpful in strengthening my work. I especially appreciate your support despite my sharing the draft quite late.

I’d also like to thank you for the excellent delivery of the module. Even though the topics were quite different from the usual discussions in higher education, you and Megan made them engaging, thought-provoking, and highly relevant.

I’m really looking forward to applying these learnings within my own modules.

I learned a great deal throughout the programme, met wonderful colleagues, and, most importantly, had the opportunity to critically reflect on and enhance my teaching practice. The experience has been both professionally and personally rewarding. Thank you for your encouragement and support.

I had taken on a new topic of contraception for Women's Health and my teaching on the MPharm programme. This is a complex topic which is approached differently by healthcare professionals as the patient should be informed of all contraceptive types so that they can choose one which they prefer. The healthcare professional should then supply their chosen contraceptive providing it is safe for the woman to use.

I wanted to help the students understand the different features that women will use to consider which option is best for them.

This led to me designing a Top Trumps game (renamed as ‘Stop Bumps’) which had a card for each contraceptive type and seven categories describing the different features. I assigned a number to each category which indicated its relativity to other contraceptives. I used objective measurements where possible, such as for reliability, and created figures where objective measurements were not available, for example in the category impact on intimacy. I did this by considering all of the different contraceptive types and assigning a number out of 10 where 0 represented no impact on intimacy and 10 represented the most impact on intimacy.

Within the deck I created a card which had the rules on one side and more detail about what the categories meant on the other side.

Within the self-directed learning for the topic I included an explanation of the features of each contraceptive type based on the categories used in the Top Trumps deck. I also included a chart to demonstrate the comparison of the different contraceptive types to aid the students understanding and to provide them with the detail outside of the classroom, since they could not have a deck of cards to take home.

This was one of a number of activities in the seminar. At the start of this activity, I sat down with the student and went through one round with them so that they understood the rules. They then continued to play the game for their allocated time of 20 minutes.

I requested student feedback on the session as well as having a peer observation. Students reported the session was really engaging and enjoyable and they really liked the game and they felt this helped with their learning. My peer observer reported a buzzing atmosphere, highly engaged students and in-depth thinking demonstrated by the questions being asked.

In addition to this I really enjoyed both creating and delivering this session.