In this post, Stuart Lamont outlines the Teaching Awards 2022 online ceremony. Stuart is the Academic Policy Coordinator at Edinburgh University Students’ Association. This post is part of the May-June Hot Topic: Students’ Association Teaching Awards 2022.
This year, the 2022 Teaching Awards Ceremony was aired throughout the day on our on our students’ association’s Facebook page. For the past two years, our only option has been to host the Teaching Awards ceremony online, as it was not safe to gather together. Thankfully, our circumstances now are very different, and we have far more freedom in how celebrate events together. This meant that we, once again, had the option to mark the Teaching Awards with a formal evening event, as we had done before the pandemic. This was always a lovely event, and a highlight in the students’ association calendar, but we were also limited by space and comparatively fewer nominees could share in the experience. By contrast, the 2021 online award ceremony received a combination of 20,000 impressions across different social media. This may not mean that the same number of people sat down to watch each announcement from start to finish, but it indicates that we were able to reach far more people, from our own community in Edinburgh and beyond, and that there was a bigger appetite for this than we might have thought!
This year, we decided that to continue sharing the ceremony online, while also having a more intimate in-person Drinks Reception the following week. This will be an opportunity to bring together all the shortlisted nominees, category winners, and the students who nominated them. We often frame conversations around ‘online vs in-person’ events (and teaching) as a tension between accessibility and the depth of experience. It may be more useful to think about it less as a tension and more as an opportunity to reach as many people as possible, while also providing those meaningful experiences that are harder to fully capture online.
When you consider we received over 2600 nominations for over 1300 staff members this year, it’s vital that we do not limit celebration to one evening or one video. Instead, we can use it as a source of achievement and learning throughout the year. In that spirit, we really welcome ideas from across the community on how we can do even more to create these moments of appreciation and solidarity between staff and students, and we would love to hear from you any time.
This year’s Teaching Awards ceremony followed the same format as last year, where the award categories were announced by our entire Sabbatical Team throughout the day.
The schedule for the day was as follows:
10AM – OPENING REMARKS
11AM – PERSONAL TUTOR OF THE YEAR
11.30AM – TEACHER OF THE YEAR (CSE)
12PM – OUTSTANDING INNOVATION IN DIGITAL TEACHING
1PM – SUPPORT STAFF OF THE YEAR
1:30PM - TEACHER OF THE YEAR (CMVM)
2PM – SUPERVISOR OF THE YEAR
2.30PM - TEACHER OF THE YEAR (CAHSS)
3PM - OUTSTANDING COURSE
3.30PM - OUTSTANDING COMMITMENT TO SOCIAL JUSTICE & SUSTAINABLILTY & CLOSING REMARKS
You can also find out more about the categories, shortlisted nominees and check out our Roll of Honour on our students’ association webpage.
Stuart Lamont
Stuart Lamont (he/him) is the Academic Policy Coordinator at Edinburgh University Students’ Association. He is the staff support for the Vice President of Education, and supports student representatives to engage with academic policy and quality processes. Stuart also leads on postgraduate engagement and data analysis for the Representation & Democracy Team.
