Welcome to Teaching Matters, the University of Edinburgh’s new website for debate about learning and teaching, for sharing ideas and approaches to teaching, and for showcasing our successes, including academic colleagues who are leading the way in delivering brilliant teaching.
Over the past few months colleagues across the University, in our Colleges and Schools, in our professional services departments, and in the Edinburgh University Students Association have been thinking about how we give sharper focus to our unambiguous priority around learning and teaching.
There was a strong feeling that we didn’t do enough to show publicly and overtly how important teaching is to us and to build a community of interest around teaching at the University. This website is one of our responses, along with a whole range of meetings and networks that have been set up across the University.
We hope you find the website useful. Every month we will take a theme and explore it through a video feature highlighting one of our ‘4*’ teachers, articles and ‘Practical Applications’, a ‘Focus on a School’, and a number of blog contributions over the month. We will also add news items as they come in and build an events listing.
This month’s theme is a set of learning and teaching highlights from the last twelve months. We have a short video featuring Susan Rhind, Director of Veterinary Teaching at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, a feature article on the Enhancement-Led Institutional Review (ELIR) by Tina Harrison, Assistant Principal Academic Standards & Quality Assurance, and some Practical Applications offering advice and resources for your own teaching.
We’ll also be publishing the following blog posts during the month:
- Promoting Teaching: The Exemplars of Excellence in Student Education by Martyn Peggie (HR)
- Grade Point Averages: What’s all the Fuss About? by Antony Maciocia (Maths)
- It’s Time to Focus on Teaching-Research Synergies by Elizabeth Bomberg (Politics)
- Fair’s Fair: Embedding Equality and Diversity into the Curriculum by Imogen Wilson (EUSA)
Some content will be commissioned, but we really want to encourage readers to engage and contribute their own thoughts. So let us have your news, let us know when you are organising events on learning and teaching we can publicise, and send in your own blogs and comments. We look forward to hearing from you.
Professor Charlie Jeffery is Professor of Politics and Senior Vice-Principal at the University of Edinburgh. His research and teaching focuses on: comparative territorial politics; devolution in the UK; and German politics, in particular EU policymaking and the German federal system.
