Colleagues from Lancaster’s Educational Development team have recently made a visit to LU Ghana to work with colleagues to support their progress on the Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice International (ICAP).
The visit also saw the first iteration of the ‘Supporting Learning’ short course for colleagues teaching on the Foundation Programme, and those in Professional Services who are involved in student learning support.
Simon Allan and Dr Chris Longman led the facilitation of ICAP workshops, focused on exploring curriculum design principles and involved a range of workshops that built on a series of online interactive sessions. This included a shared session between colleagues participating in the Lancaster and Ghana iterations of the PGCAP course.
Colleagues joined together to listen to Professor Paul Ashwin’s (Department of Educational Research, Lancaster) presentation about student engagement and curriculum design in Higher Education. Staff in Accra linked in via Skype and made use of a live message board to ask questions and engage with the session.
Simon Allan, PGCAP Director, said, “That Accra is in the time zone as Lancaster facilitates opportunities to engage our Ghanaian colleagues in real-time events such as this. This event is a first step towards harnessing the potential for colleagues to benefit from one another’s experiences in different national and cultural settings.” Further sharing practice opportunities for a wider range of colleagues located in Lancaster and its partnerships are in development and promise to build on recent successes.
The Supporting Learning short course was also received well. Ten staff explored teaching and learning themes of active student engagement, marking and feedback, and reflection on teaching and have been awarded a certificate of participation for their commitment over the course.
The team from Lancaster will return to Accra in late March to continue collaborative work with teaching staff.
