Chris Rust

Chris is Head of the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development and Deputy Director of the Directorate of Human Resources at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.  

For the last five years he was also Deputy Director of two Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs) at Brookes - ASKe (Assessment Standards Knowledge Exchange), and the Reinvention Centre.

Chris initially trained as a teacher of English, and taught in comprehensive schools for 11 years. During that time he was also always involved in some way with the management of learning resources, and acquired an MEd. After a brief involvement in teacher education, he arrived at the Educational Methods Unit (now OCSLD) in 1989 with specific responsibility for the Unit's AV service, as well as being a member of the academic team. Since then, amongst other things, he was course leader for the University’s initial training course for new teaching staff for six years, and course leader for the Postgraduate Diploma course twice, for a total of six years.

In the 90s he contributed to the design and delivery of a national programme of staff development in higher education on the issue of teaching more students and has run numerous workshops around the country and internationally on that, and a range of other issues including assessment strategies, developing teaching in higher education, and course design and evaluation.

He has researched and published on issues including:

• the experiences of new teachers in HE
• the positive effects of supplemental instruction
• ways of diversifying assessment
• improving student performance through engagement in the marking process
• the effectiveness of workshops as a method of staff development.

He achieved a PhD by publication in 2003, and became a professor in March 2010.

Currently he is involved in research into improving student learning through active engagement with assessment feedback, and the significance of both explicit articulation and socialisation processes in improving students' understanding of assessment requirements and assessment feedback. He has also recently become interested in exploring the design, development and use of social learning space in universities, and also the potential effect on university organization and development of research-based learning in the undergraduate curriculum.

He is a Fellow of the RSA, and a Senior Fellow of both SEDA (Staff and Educational Development Association) and of the UK Higher Education Academy, for whom he was also an accreditor.