MHS Teaching and Learning

Why the strange title for the blog?  I was out at a party and as my wife is a teacher, the party was full of teachers (this can be my worst nightmare….).  One of the teachers’ partners asked me if I taught and I said “No, I work for the University”…..Then I stopped, thought and realised what I had said.  I do not need a psychologist to tell me that this was a fairly deep subliminal thought that had surfaced. Yes….I do have thoughts occasionally!  But does this viewpoint reflect the majority of staff?  If anyone would like to make a comment, please do so and I will publish them on the Blog.  As I have said before, it is essential that we make changes to the way that we teach and relate to students and there are two components to this, one is the easily corrected structural way and the other is the more deeply seated cultural change that is much more difficult.

One indication of culture is the National Student Survey.  This is run every year by HEFCE and is designed to replace some aspects of Subject Review.  The final year students for every programme are asked to complete a questionnaire in late April or June.  Details of this are provided on the unistats  website. www.unistats.com  If you have a good look at this you will see that each School performance is broken down in detail and it gives a fairly accurate picture of how our students feel about us.

How did we do?

The results for the University and our Faculty were not good, with two exceptions, and there are important implications for this performance. The first is that these figures are fed into all the League tables and this will place us in low positions.  This is important because there is no doubt that students look at the tables and the Unistats website when they are making choices.  Also I do not want us to appear in the bottom part of any league table, we are supposed to be a world leading university and Faculty and yet we are not doing well.

I mentioned two exceptions in our Faculty and these were the Schools of Dentistry and Pharmacy.  When we look at these two Schools, Pharmacy have been consistent over the last few years but the Dental School was the worst rated Dental School in the country last year.  But they turned it round and now they are the most highly rated with an overall satisfaction rating of 97%,  So how did they do this. I have asked them to prepare a brief one  page report on the steps that they took and I have included it below.

National Student Satisfaction Survey Sept 08 School of Dentistry

The School of Dentistry was bottom of the league table for the NSS in September 2007. We were also performing poorly in the Unit Questionnaires.

Prof Mackie produced a Report in October 2007 on the possible reasons for our poor performances and an action plan was proposed.

The thrust of the action plan was to make the students realise how good we actually were. It was to make them realise all the good things and make them aware of these so that they over came the odd negative, poor thing. It was clear that the students tended to dwell on, and remember the negative aspects and problems, instead of remembering all the positive and good things.

So what did we do?

• Head of School, Dr Grey took hands on approach with high student visibility.

• Concentrated on being positive and pushing the good things.
• Improved communication. The students received the Head of School weekly update.
• Started a BLOG.
• We had an excellent student year rep with whom we worked. She knew that she could approach any of us and we would listen to her and help.
• Staff / student meeting. We made a point of listening to the students and acting on their concerns. There had been a tendency to “brush issues” aside in recent years.
• Let the students know how we had responded to their concerns and requests. Extra lectures, extra clinics. There was transparency.
• One member of staff/tutor met with a group of 10 – 12 students for an hour every week. This was the personalised contact between the group and the tutor. We tended to let the group set the agenda. If the group had nothing to fill the time we had prepared material to go through with them. That member of staff made sure that the session occupied the hour.
• The tutors met 3 times, with their students individually to go through their log book/ portfolios and give feedback, advise etc.
• The tutors made sure that the students realised that they were receiving feedback. We changed the heading on the sheets to read – feedback
• Each group of student had a rep that would speak on behalf of the group, for the group. These reps also met with the year coordinator.
• The tutors also met with the year coordinator to feedback issues. These were quickly addressed and actions reported back to the students.
• The year coordinator was supported by a full time administrator/secretary. They both had open door policies. The students appreciated this.
• The Head of School had 1 to 1 emails – he invited questions from the students, to which he responded personally.
• More staff student interactions/events.

Basically, we listened to the students, responded to requests and let them know what we had done or not done (in a few cases).                                         ICM/NG 23 09 08.

I have asked Nick Grey and Iain Mackie to provide a seminar to Heads of School and Undergraduate directors on how they did this and I hope that we can all learn from their experiences.

They put in an incredible amount of work into something that they felt was important and I would like to congratulate them on the change that they have achieved.  The staff and students all went out and had a picture taken last week to celebrate (dentists know how to have a wild time).  But seriously, how many schools could just put an email round and get 500 people to turn up for a photograph, this also shows how collegial the School has become.. Let’s see if they can do it next year!

 The best teaching dental school in the country

So what are we going to do now, in addition to implement the review of teaching and learning.  The first step is that I am going to be carrying out a review of all the Schools with respect to their undergraduate management structure, staffing and student opinions.  I have already met with our student reps and they are organising meetings with me so that we can discuss the issues that concern them.  I will hopefully be able to have reports completed by Christmas and these will inform me and everyone involved in learning and teaching on the way forward for our Faculty. 

We will improve……