Fellows

During the CETL period 2005-10, ASKe Fellowships were awarded in recognition of excellence in, and commitment to, learning, teaching and assessment. Fellows acted as local ambassadors for ASKe. They were well informed about ASKe’s work, and were able to provide guidance on future projects and disseminate the findings from those already completed. ASKe had 17 Fellows drawn from 7 of the 8 Schools from across the University. ASKe Fellows included both academic and support staff. (Please note their job descriptions may no longer be current.)

Mandy Archer is a Student Support Coordinator in the School of Social Sciences and Law.

Greg Benfield is an E-learning specialist educational developer at Oxford Brookes in the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development (OCSLD). He joined OCSLD in January 2001. Previously he was a Learning Technology Mentor for RMIT University in Melbourne’s Faculty of Education, Language and Community Service, where he taught Mathematics and the graduate education subject, 'Teaching and Learning Online'.

Greg’s work focuses on supporting E-learning, and he is a tutor on the Postgraduate Certificate of Teaching in Higher Education and he runs workshops and online courses for higher education staff across the UK. Greg leads the Course Design Intensive (CDI) workshops (see https://mw.brookes.ac.uk/display/CDIs/Home) for programme renewal and redesign at Oxford Brookes and externally. He has been involved in a number of JISC and HEA projects (see, /services/ocsd/5_research/innovation.html).
His particular areas of interest are:

• Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), with a research interest in the use of CMC in 'blended' or 'on-campus' contexts
• Student experiences of e-learning - see /services/ocsd/5_research/exp_elearning.html)
• Technology-mediated group work - see /services/ocsd/5_research/collaboration.html)
• E-learning course design - see /services/ocsd/5_research/designing_elearning.html)
• Online assessment - see /services/ocsld/institutions/one_day/multi_choice/index.html

Greg strongly identifies with the mission and work of ASKe, because improving assessment standards is key in his primary research and development areas: transformative programme redesign and technology-mediated group work. 

Steve Burholt is an E-learning systems developer based in the Media Workshop. He is currently working on the RADAR project to develop an institutional repository for learning materials and as a central store for research papers.

He has worked on many E-learning development projects at Brookes. He instigated the induction video ‘Getting Online at Brookes’ which is shown to all new students, and has worked closely with the library and the Business School to produce a series of podcasts. Much of this development work is now centred around the use of the Brookes Wiki. He has advised ASKe on the use of equipment for the social learning space as well as the recruitment and training of IT Advisors. He was delighted to become a Fellow and to be able to contribute to the development of the project.

Steve also has a background in training and the arts, and has professional experience of audio and music production.

Glauco De Vita is a Professor of International Business Economics and a University Teaching Fellow at Oxford Brookes University Business School. He teaches international students and runs teaching and learning development workshops at universities and colleges in several countries, including the UK, Italy, Spain, Turkey, India, Malaysia and Hong Kong. 

As an ASKe Fellow, his role is very much advisory in nature though, recently (Oct. 2007), he gave the keynote lecture at the ASKe-Brookes Workshop ‘Assessing International Students: Inclusivity and Equity’ entitled ‘Putting culturally inclusive assessment into the context of the internationalisation of UK HE’. His research interests also include the internationalisation of business education and culturally inclusive pedagogies.

Teresa Finlay has a number of responsibilities in the School of Health and Social Care as a Senior Lecturer, including being Course Leader for MScs in Health Care Practice and leading the School-wide postgraduate Dissertation module.

Teresa has a long standing interest in assessment, particularly the relevance and effectiveness of assessment to students and stakeholders for whom advanced health care practice skills and knowledge are important. As an ASKe Fellow, she anticipates becoming more involved in University forums and expanding her network, meeting and working with those who have the same interests and initiatives in relation to curriculum design and assessment for postgraduate courses, and dissertations in particular.

Within the School, Teresa has developed an ambassadorial role to share good assessment practices with colleagues. She runs a development group to assist her team of academic staff with developing and maintaining robust pedagogic practice, especially in the area of curriculum development and assessment for qualified healthcare professionals undertaking courses for continuing professional development.

Teresa Finlay - RN, BSc (Hons) MSc, PGDip HPEd

Karen Handley is a Senior Lecturer in the HRM and Organizational Behaviour department at Oxford Brookes, and completed her doctoral degree with the title 'Achieving closure: the function of feedback in e-learning activities' at Imperial College, University of London, in 2003.

Karen has a strong interest in research methods, and leads the undergraduate module Methods of Enquiry. She is committed to supporting others in their research activities, as well as conducting her own pedagogic and discipline-based research. Pedagogic research interests include e-learning, student assessment and assessment feedback.

Karen's interests in these areas have led her to become involved in the HEA-funded FDTL5 project Engaging Students with Assessment Feedback (see http://mw.brookes.ac.uk/display/eswaf/Home), where she is an Assistant Director. The project is contributing to debates on assessment and feedback at practitioner and policy-making levels.

Marc Howe is a Senior Lecturer in Law and also a Principal Lecturer and Head of Advocacy in the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice, which in August 2008 became a fully integrated part of Oxford Brookes University within the School of Social Sciences and Law.

Marc has a particular interest in methods of assessment which encourage students to reflect upon and experience for themselves how academic law finds expression in a professional legal context. Marc is also closely involved in student mooting and client interviewing activity in association with the Student Law Society. A moot is a legal problem set as an appeal case in the Court of Appeal or the House of Lords. Marc is currently involved in both organising and judging internal student mooting and client interviewing competitions, and in supporting the winning teams which go on to represent Oxford Brookes University in national mooting and client interviewing competitions each year.

Marc is currently working on a project funded by BSLES on courtroom advocacy and legal mooting. As part of this, digital recordings of demonstration moots and mock trials are to be created for use as part of a sustainable archive of learning and teaching resources within the university.

Andy Kilmister is a Senior Lecturer in Economics in the Business School at Oxford Brookes and is field chair and programme director for combined honours degree programmes in Economics. His main teaching areas are macroeconomics, finance and European economics. He is an Oxford Brookes Teaching Fellow, working on a project designed to explore interactive and interdisciplinary ways of teaching finance and has just been appointed as a Fellow of the Re-invention Centre at the university, looking at ways of integrating student-led research into the curriculum. His main pedagogic interests are in the area of problem-based and enquiry-based learning, focusing on ways of breaking down traditional lecture-seminar formats and encouraging student engagement through working on classroom-based projects and other forms of collective activity. This has led him to explore a variety of assessment-related concerns. In particular he is interested in the nature and role of formative assessment, in the use of electronic media (especially wikis) for assessment purposes and in the appropriate assessment of student research and group project work.

Alysa Levene is a Senior Lecturer in the History Department and a member of the Centre for the History of Health, Medicine and Society. She teaches early modern history, the history of the Industrial Revolution period, and the history of childhood. She is also the First Year Tutor in the department, and one of the curriculum development officers.

Alysa wanted to become an ASKe Fellow because of her increasing interest in using assessment and feedback to help bridge the gap between school and university. It is increasingly clear that students do not find this transition easy and she believes that she is failing them if she doesn't take this into account and help them overcome it. Her primary interest in assessment is therefore how to help students use it to guide their progress into independent learning.

As the Chair of the API Programme Development team, she is also interested in increasing the diversity and effectiveness of assessment across a whole programme.

Michele Paule works within the Westminster Institute of Education, where she is the Learning and Teaching Co-ordinator for the school’s Philosophy, Culture and Education Division, and joint field chair for the BA in Communication, Media and Culture BA. Her own research focuses on the ways in which ability and gender identities are constructed in education and popular culture settings, in schools, on television and on-line (see www.smartgirls.tv)  

Michele’s research and her role as Learning and Teaching Co-ordinator lead naturally to an interest in the roles that both formative and summative assessment play in the creation of academic identities. She was appointed as an ASKE fellow for 2007-2008 and as such she has been developing resources for structured and formative support for students undertaking research projects. In her teaching modules, she has been developing assessment models which combine the timed rigour of examinations with the collaborative elements of group assessment.  She felt that a key aim in both of these projects is to use formative assessment to expose and foster independent learning strategies which lead to successful summative outcomes.

Judith Piggott is a Principal Lecturer and Business Academy Co-ordinator for the Economics and Strategy Department. She is an Associate and on the Advisory Board of the Economics Network of the Higher Education Academy.  In this latter role she has helped run workshops on problem based learning, assessment and presentation skills.

Judith’s main interest in the area of assessment is the development of the necessary skills to help students in this area; in particular looking at the necessary presentation skills students need in their University life and in terms of employability.  How should these skills be taught, and when?  This is currently the subject of an ASKe project.  As part of her ASKe fellowship role, Judith is also on the Advisory Board of ASKe.

John Prior is a Senior Lecturer and Head of Undergraduate Programmes in the Business School. He joined the Business School 10 years ago, following a career in the clothing industry. His teaching has focussed on the core first year business modules but he also enjoys teaching subjects such as ethics, strategy and issues surrounding globalisation. His research interests are online learning and experiential learning. His most recent project combined both of these interests with the development of virtual groupwork on the Team Challenges module (working with Greg Benfield).  He is also interested in the use of Wiki’s and audio podcasts.

In John’s current role as Head of Undergraduate he is closely involved with all aspects of the student experience and also the development of the new Undergraduate Courses.

Sue Robbins is a Principal Lecturer in Student Experience and a University Teaching Fellow in School of Life Sciences. She has been working at Oxford Brookes since 1989, first as an hourly paid biochemistry lecturer, then also taking on the leadership of Extended Sciences, the Life Sciences foundation programme that she has now run for over 12 years.  In the later role, she developed pastoral support for those students who come from diverse backgrounds.

During her time at Brookes, Sue had studied for two higher degrees: MPhil (1995) and PhD (2001) both in biochemistry related to cancer research.  She is a University Teaching Fellow and Fellow of the HE Academy.  Her current post is PL in Student Experience and Biochemistry, which aptly describes her two diverse but interrelated areas of interest, supporting students and teaching biochemistry.

Alice Szwelnik is a Senior Lecturer in the Business School, Oxford Brookes University. Her teaching expertise is in international business law, international management and economics. Her interest in pedagogy resulted from the CTHE programme, and since that time Alice has been involved in a number of pedagogic research projects including (i) FDTL-funded project: Engaging students with assessment feedback (ii) FDTL-funded project: Quality in Business Education (iii) BMAF-funded project: Embracing 2.0 Web Technologies in teaching (iv) quality management in transnational education.

Alice’s recent project on engaging student with assessment feedback resulted in developing CRAFT model (Collect, Reflect, Apply, Feedback and Transfer), an innovative approach to giving feedback based on application of feedback. She is particularity interested in international students’ experience with assessment in UK.

Carol Taylor is an Associate Lecturer and Undergraduate Course Manager in the Business School. She has recently joined the ASKe Team where she is employed as the Centre Manager, with responsibility for staff, finances and general management of the ASKe project. Prior to joining ASKe Carol was employed in the Business School as the Field Chair for Business and Management and associated degrees, looking after over 1,000 students. Her role was very student focussed with involvement in student recruitment through visit and open days, induction and continued student development, providing programme counselling and advice where appropriate.

It is felt that Carol has made an invaluable contribution to the success and the development of the Business and Management Field through her in-depth knowledge of the programmes and commitment to the student experience, combined with her interest and involvement in quality and pedagogic issues. Carol has particular interests in how to enhance the student teaching and learning experience; fairness in assessment; and overall student development. She is currently involved in new programme development being an active member of the Management Programme Design Team.

Jane Towers-Clark is a Senior Lecturer in Accounting Governance and Information Management, and a Module Leader for Accounting Business. She is interested in alternative assessment practices, development of practice and policy at Oxford Brookes and the implementation of practices in other institutions.

Her role in ASKe has led to her engagement in a number of other activities linked to assessment, such as being a part-time panel member of a Quality Review Group for the new Business Diplomas.

Helena Webster is the Deputy Head of Department (Academic Management) in the Department of Architecture in Oxford Brookes. Her research is based on assessment and she wants to see what other disciplines are doing in the area, as it is important to share practices and to promote assessment for learning.

Helena has both a research and professional interest. Her role involves having responsibility for assessment within the department. She is particularly interested in assessment for design based subjects, creative art and with a special reference to Architecture. It is important to develop good practice whilst identifying areas for improvement. She finds there are lots of critiques of assessment but not many new practices have been put forward, and she would like to see more of this.