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Department staff meetings are a rare and fantastic opportunity to gather together not just the teaching staff but researchers, administrators and student support staff. In this post, we share our learning and experience from one of our Biomedical Sciences (BMS) staff meetings, where important issues were discussed in a fun and memorable manner. The teaching network is comprised of teaching staff aiming to promote engagement, interactivity and inclusion in teaching.
We love attending such meetings as it enables us to catch up with colleagues that we have not seen for a while, and is also a great opportunity to promote, discuss and celebrate teaching.
We got together to discuss three important topics: Neurodiversity and Disability inclusion, challenges and pathways to curriculum transformation, and assessments.
The event
When entering the Playfair library, everyone was handed a coloured piece of card, and those with the same colour of card were to sit at the same table. This was a refreshing and simple technique used by the organisers to enhance engagement.
The meeting started off in a positive manner by celebrating recent academic promotions across BMS. With 22 successful promotions, and a 95% success rate, our peers have had outstanding success, and something positive for us to aim for.
We felt a sense of inclusivity that we are part of a group of like-minded individuals with similar aspirations. We were proud to be part of an institution where such successes are acknowledged and celebrated.
BMS Promoting Inclusion
Dr Carol Torsney highlighted the importance of promoting inclusion, with reference to BMS Neurodiversity and Disability↗️. About 1 in 7 individuals are neurodivergent, but it is notable that there are low rates of disclosure, inadequate support and resources, and a recurring cycle where individuals don’t feel secure enough to reveal their neurodivergence, which in turn perpetuates the issue.
It was encouraging to see a BMS Neurodiversity Action Plan which teaches training in neurodiversity awareness, ensuring visible signposting and develops a neuro-inclusive physical working environment. Also highlighted was the University support for neurodiversity↗️. Powerful images were used to relay how the neuro-inclusive toolkit was implemented correctly.
Interactive sessions
Three key issues were discussed and each table posted their results using Padlet↗️ for group discussion.
‘What do you want our graduates to do (what skills should they have)?’ The results showed that:
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- independence
- resilience
- time management and
- resourcefulness
were some of the graduate attributes mentioned. It was thought provoking for us as to how we could help our students obtain these graduate attributes.
‘What sort of outlook do you want the students to have? The participants detailed that:
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- reflective learners
- students with research skills
- creative students
were some of the attributes we had for our student vision.
Challenges related to skills were discussed and the results showed that the participants discussed the following:
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- Lack of self-motivation
- Keeping up appearances in front of staff and
- Taking responsibility for your own learning
It made us aware of the depth of involvement that we could have with our students and how different all students can be.
‘The challenges related to knowledge’ were discussed and the following points were raised:
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- Forms of assessment
- Multi-tasking
- ChatGPT
‘How challenges related to outlook’ raised points like:
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- Managing expectations
- Response to failure
- Engagement
All which were relevant to us running our own elective courses.
It was great to discuss the importance of assessment and learning outcomes with questions like:
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- Should every learning outcomes (LO) be assessed?
- Is the assessment of what students learn and know a useful indicator of the quality of institutions and study programmes
- Can assessment of LO aid in improving course/programmes?
The BMS staff meeting of August 2023 was a huge success, hats off to the organisers and the speakers. Important issues were discussed in a fun and memorable manner. The biggest take home message to us was that discussions with colleagues can be hugely beneficial. Taking the time to be engaging and interactive with our colleagues will really help shape our future careers in teaching.
From chatting with several members of staff after the event, it was clear that everyone felt that they benefited from this meeting with an understanding of the University’s vision to promote, discuss and celebrate teaching.
There was only one question which remained unanswered: Why is the clock in the Playfair library running backwards?
Yvonne Odey
Dr Yvonne Odey graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an Honours degree in Pharmacology with Industrial experience where she worked with the pharmaceutical company Organon. She subsequently gained a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in Neuroscience working on neuro-degenerative diseases. From 2014-2022, Dr Odey was a post-doctoral scientist in Professor Evelyn Telfer’s lab and worked on isolating and characterising oogonial stem cells from adult woman. She worked on testing their utility and function using the in vitro system developed in the Telfer lab. From 2022 Dr Odey has been a teaching fellow in the Biomedical Teaching Organisation. She started off teaching the core courses to 1st year students and has now migrated into predominantly fourth year honours teaching.
Andre Phillips
Andre is a Teaching Fellow within the Biodiversity, Wildlife and Ecosystem Health online, a fantastic part time Postgraduate Programme. His background is Fish Behavioural Ecology, specifically the Bitterling fish and their parasitism of freshwater mussels, alongside some Evolutionary Biology and Fisheries. More recently he has been interested in endocrine disruptors and their impacts on animals and humans. He teaches on several undergraduate courses including Reproductive Biology 3, Conception to Parturition and Reproductive Toxicology. He is also passionate about staff support, running events for staff mental health and involved in BSOC and the Teaching Network.
