Innovation's the word as staff come together for Education Day 2017

This year's event explored innovation in learning and teaching and how it can be sustained in a higher education environment.

Yesterday’s event brought together College staff and student representatives from Imperial College Union to discuss these thought provoking issues.

This year’s Education Day took place during the final stages of the development of the College’s new Learning and Teaching Strategy, which is focused on how Imperial can innovate its learning and teaching and take an evidence-based approach to education.

Professor Simone Buitendijk

Opening the event, Professor Simone Buitendijk said: “It’s easy to think of research first and education second in an institution such as this. We’re so keen to be evidence-based and aware of what’s changing around the world that we change and adapt our research to take note. Being evidence based is in our DNA and we need to apply that same approach to our teaching.

“Universities everywhere have a key role to play in the world. Their highest impact comes from their education – the fact that they’re training the next generation of thinkers to solve the global problems of tomorrow.”

Imperial College Union Deputy President (Education) Luke McCrone presented some of the research that Imperial College Union had been undertaking, offering a range of student perspectives on innovation and education both at the College and beyond. This follows on from the work already undertaken by Imperial College Union in the annual Student Experience Survey Response.

Professor Dilly Fung

Educationalists from across the college were joined by keynote speaker, Professor Dilly Fung, Academic Director of UCL’s Arena Centre for Research-based Education and a leading theorist in education and curriculum design who shared her experiences on education in research-rich universities and talked in detail about the Connected Curriculum project she leads at UCL.

 Professor Fung said: “For me the idea of good education is a philosophical one. It’s around values and it’s around what we think education and learning is.

“We need to revisit the idea of what education fundamentally is. With Connected Curriculum we’ve been developing new modes of pedagogy in a research based environment.”

Exploring Education

The day included a number of break out workshops which allowed attendees to discuss key issues in more depth.

Breakout workshop at Education Day

The workshops were:

• Evaluating educational innovation: going beyond the measurable – Jo Horsburgh and Dr Martyn Kingsbury, Educational Development Unit.

• Gameification: leveraging elements of game design in education – Dr James Moss, National Heart and Lung Institute

• Leave and learn: designing escape experiences for education - Giskin Day, Centre for Languages, Culture and Communication.

• From chrysalis to butterfly: using longitudinal learning to support the transformation from student to apprentice – Dr Sonia Kumar, Dr Andrew McKeown, Dr Ravi Parekh and Dr Shivani Tanna, Primary Care and Public Health

• Creating innovative online degree programmes through pedagogy, design and delivery – Dr David Lefevre, Imperial College Business School

• Is the lecture really dead? A critical discussion about the drive for innovation – Dr Anita Hall, Department of Life Sciences.

This year’s Education Day ended with a teaching showcase where a number of staff showcased innovative teaching practices before opening the discussion to the floor and answering questions from attendees.