Learning and Teaching Approaches Used on the PGCAP

The PGCAP programme deliberately employs a variety of teaching, learning and assessment strategies (including face-to-face, online and blended learning approaches) as appropriate to the module, and in order to provide an engaging learning experience for you as well as to model good practice in teaching, learning and assessment approaches. It offers you flexibility in undertaking the assessments around your ongoing professional practice. The variety of teaching, learning and assessment approaches used helps create a highly immersive learning experience.

The programme workshops and the learning sets in particular, provide unique and valued opportunities for cross-disciplinary sharing of practice and perspectives. The learning sets also offer a mutually supportive environment for developing your understanding and for critiquing professional practice. The online learning environment will be used to encourage an enduring community of practice around educational enquiry and HE professional practice.

An awareness of the need for equality of opportunity and to accommodate diversity is integral to the programme design and in the teaching and learning approaches used. This includes offering flexibility to you in terms of the range of learning activities and in the format/focus for your assessments so that, wherever possible, assessments can be tailored to your specific learning needs, subject focus and/or interests.

Each of the learning activities is briefly outlined below:

The Induction Event: the PGCAP programme’s core module (Learning and Teaching in Higher Education) commences with a half-day induction event: introducing key concepts and ideas relating to learning and it will also consider the arena within which you are working i.e. aspects of the HE context and current drivers and issues being addressed/faced in HE. We will introduce you to the UK PSF in its Dimensions of Practice and Descriptors (D1-D4). Some pre-induction tasks will be set in advance of the Induction event to help you get started and to encourage you to be actively participating on the programme.

Sessions: these will be interactive, discursive and participatory - drawing upon your experience and understanding. Workshops will require you to critique key readings in preparation for participation in the workshop, as well as to bring evidence from your own practice, as relevant. A variety of teaching approaches will be employed to provide a rich and diverse, immersive and flexible, experiential learning environment.

Learning Sets: these will provide more focused opportunities for small group discussion, peer review and feedback, support and challenge. They will be designed to encourage cross-disciplinary sharing and critiquing of practice and perspectives, operating largely online to enable flexible participation patterns.

Personal Tutor and Mentor Support: you will be allocated a personal tutor (from the PGCAP programme team for the whole duration of the Programme and you will also need to identify a mentor (normally based in your school/professional area). (See also Section 10 above, on programme communication and supporting your learning.)

Learning Diaries: you will be strongly encouraged to start and maintain a reflective log or diary in your e-portfolio, throughout your participation in the PGCAP using the e-portfolio: used to collate evidence, ideas and reflections as statements/resources that will feed directly into the module assessments. At key points in the LTHE module, you will engage in peer-review of these statements/resources for formative feedback. Statements/resources from the e-portfolio will particularly be important in the final, summative assessment on the LTHE module ie in informing the substantive reflective account of practice.

Observations of Teaching and/or Support of Learning: will be an integral element in the core module undertaken with your mentor, a PGCAP peer and with a PGCAP tutor or academic. There are 4 observations: reciprocal with a peer (you observe a peer and they observe you); you are observed by your mentor; and you are observed by a PGCAP tutor. You will use these to develop your first assessment on the LTHE module.

Online Learning: LearnUCS, the Blackboard Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) will be used for all programme and module documentation and for sharing resources. It will also be used as the main channel for course communication and for enabling collaborative learning outside face-to-face contact times. The use of the VLE is integral to the programme delivery and communication, used to enable flexible and distributed online collaborative working. In addition to the VLE, social media will be used throughout the programme.

Guided Reading and Individual Scholarly Activity: will be used for example preparing for activities, preparatory reading for workshops, individual reading for development, and for personal reflection.

Work-based and Broader HE/Subject Engagement Activities: there will be opportunity within modules for you to undertake enquiry or development work in your Department or professional work area, or with cognate colleagues within your discipline area or (say) through your personal learning networks - such as in pursuit of producing eg learning products and tools, as relevant to the module.

The e-Portfolio: this will be used throughout the programme for you to assemble the evidence for your assignments and we will encourage you to structure your portfolio around the Dimensions of Practice of the UK PSF. It will be used to promote and model advanced approaches to reflection on practice and as an immersive experience in personal/professional development planning (PDP).