MHS Teaching and Learning

It has been a while and probably too long between posts on the blog. My only excuse, if it can be put forward, is that I have been running round like an idiot trying to keep up with my jobs.  You may be wondering about the title of this post, it is based on lyrics from Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd from “The Wall” album.  This marked the decline of one of my favourite groups of the 1970s.  The song starts with

“Hello.
Is there anybody in there? 
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone home”?

For those old Floyd fans, who want to turn the clock back, here is a link to a live version

So why the “Comfortably numb” theme. I think that this is because the change that we want to achieve is going rather slowly and we are “probably in a phase of reflection and we have been incredibly busy with the start of the new academic year”.  I certainly hope that now our new students have settled in we can continue to make progress improving our undergraduate experience and we can stop being comfortable.  

As you may know the Faculty is taking part in a bid to become an Academic Health Science Centre and the Department of Health has just published some guidelines on the metrics that are likely to be used in the selection process.  One of these is the quality of the undergraduate education that we provide, as reflected in the National Student Survey results.  This is the first time that teaching has featured in any of the criteria for the establishment of a major centre and this certainly increases the importance of providing excellent teaching and learning in our Faculty.  So bearing this in mind, I have decided that we are going to carry out a review of the teaching and learning in our Schools.  This is an essential part of the implementation of the undergraduate review because we need to establish what we do already, what we need to do to improve and what we need to stop doing.  

This review will have these aims:

1     To identify the structures supporting the delivery of the curricula

2     To critically analyse the curriculum of each School

3     To identify the culture of the Schools with respect to undergraduate teaching and learning

We decided that each School will be reviewed by a small team of me and a member of staff of the teaching and learning support office with the following people being allocated to each School.

• Iain Mackie                 MMS
• Geraldine Main          Dentistry
• Christine Rogers        Pharmacy
• Paul O’Neill                Nursing
• Leon Aarons               SPS