Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

In January 2005 two groups of staff at Brookes celebrated the success of their bids for Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs for short). This issue describes what the CETL organisers did to be among the 74 successful CETL bids in England and what they plan for the future.

The first successful bid created the Reinvention Centre. The centre is jointly managed by the University of Warwick and Oxford Brookes and is designed to investigate research as learning for undergradute students. This five-year project puts research at the centre of undergraduate education. The Reinvention Centre will provide a significant boost to projects that are already in place to link students’ learning and research activity. The first three articles linked to the left discuss different aspects of the project; the fourth article in this issue describes a Westminster Institute of Education perspective on undergraduate scholarship and research.

In June 2005, the second Centre for Excellence was also born and named: the Assessment Standards Knowledge exchange (ASKe). This was also a joint bid (in this case involving the Oxford Brookes Business School and OCSLD) and resulted in £2+ million to fund a new building at Wheatley and the same again to fund projects and activities to help staff and students develop a common understanding of academic standards. ASKe will start within the Business School but from year three onwards, will support development across Brookes and beyond. The fifth and sixth articles introduce ASKe and discuss some of its work.

Our spotlight in this issue is on reactions to semesterisation . Vox pop type reactions collected in May 2005 show that academics, students and support staff experiences converge around similar themes. The article captures the first experiences of moving from three terms to two semesters.

As ever, we offer news and hints on teaching, and alert you to upcoming events. And as ever, we want Teaching News to truly reflect news, views and concerns of the schools, so we need contributions from you. We're especially interested in receiving handy hints and tips on learning and teaching, and web links that you have found useful, as well as short articles. If you have anything to contribute to the next issue, please contact us, and if you are not sure about an idea and want to discuss it first you can always contact Jude Carroll (tel: 5827), or Greg Benfield (tel: 5774).

A printable PDF version of this issue is available for download (144KB).