Success! The Digitally Ready showcase

Posted on March 11, 2013 by samholton

As you have picked up from the title, the Digitally Ready showcase event was a success!

I was excited to find out more about other projects around the university that Digitally Ready had funded and share my workings and what I had achieved on my project.

The projects discussed ranged from a longitudinal survey of students using technology to the modification of blackboard to include an E-learning support tab. There was very little similarity between any of the projects. However, it was clear that every project had the same aim in mind: to increase digital opportunities and on the whole enhance the teaching and learning experience for our staff and students. To find out more about this eventful day and a chance to see me on camera, see the Digitally Ready blog for a summary. Continue reading →

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You log in, you create and Waoh!

Posted on February 25, 2013 by samholton

I am pleased to blog that I will be presenting my work so far during my placement at the Digitally Ready showcase event on 1st March. Interestingly, I will be the only student presenting on that day.

The synopsis is as follows:

‘Undergraduate student Sam Holton has been working with academic staff in the School of Biological Sciences to develop the Existing and Emerging Biotechnologies (EEB) Framework, initially as a placement student under the University’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme and now funded by Digitally Ready’

Continue reading →

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Lessons learnt the hard way last forever

Posted on February 21, 2013 by katerinalazidou

Hello, I am Katerina Lazidou, a research student working on a small project funded by the Digitally Ready team. This small project is being conducted for the School of Biological Sciences, with Dr Teeroumanee Nadan and Dr Kimberly Watson.

This project is part of a larger HEA funded initiative. This initiative has, at its heart, the student experience in all its definitions and particularly focuses on improving global employability skills of our students. Continue reading →

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My start in the world of publication and interviewing

Posted on February 8, 2013 by samholton

My step into academic writing started last week when Tee informed me that we are going ahead with publishing my summer work and further work on the Existing and Emerging Biotechnology framework in an appropriate journal.

Obviously, Tee could have just gone ahead and given me instructions to start the write up but, instead she pointed me to some relevant journal links and started explaining about Journal Impact Factor, author guidelines, journal scope, Google Scholar and, the importance of publication, citations and Research Excellence Framework, things that I never imagined before. Suddenly, academic writing became more clear to me and I developed much appreciation for all the authors who successfully published before. Continue reading →

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Challenges to Internationalisation

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Tee Nadan

End of last month Simon Sweeney, Higher Education Academy (HEA) Associate, visited us at Reading in his capacity as advisor for the Internationalisation Change Programme initiative. The visit started with a 2-hour meeting with members of the ICP team followed by a lunch time presentation by Simon to university staff. Following Simon’s presentation, several Internationalisation practitioners remained for a further 1.5-hour discussion to help identify the strengths and weaknesses of our ICP here at Reading.

The lunch time event was well received, with 35 participants attending Simon Sweeney’s talk on the Bologna Process and Internationalisation challenges, particularly in supporting Internationalisation initiatives at home and abroad. Many participants at the workshop remarked that it was the first time they had seen so many practitioners of Internationalisation in the same room!

Although Simon talked mostly about the Bologna process, the main highlights of his talk were the challenges faced by HEIs to deliver a sustainable Internationalisation agenda. Continue reading →

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The use of technologies among like-minded people

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Tee Nadan

It was early January, even before the term started, when I met with Dr Geoff Taggart (Lecturer/Co-Director BA CDL, Institute of Education) and Enza Siciliano Verruccio (Italian Language Coordinator, Modern Languages and European Studies) with regards to future directions and possible collaboration on flexible learning.

The meeting very quickly developed into an interest in each others’ work, with Dr Taggart’s use of Mediasite at the IoE, and Enza’s use of Wimba Create (a component that can be embedded in Blackboard and allows easy conversion of a Word document into a web-like interface). And from our end, our use of Articulate Storyline and Articulate Quizmaker created much interest. This led to a second get together, which was more of a show and tell meeting down at London campus. Continue reading →

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Preparing a 1 hour session is hard work

Posted on January 25, 2013 by samholton

This week we had the Internationalisation Change Programme lunchtime session. The first thing I have learnt is that organising even just a ‘simple’ lunch is no easy task! An hour before everyone arrived I was busy setting up the room for the session including food, seating and handouts. Continue reading →

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A hard working snowy day

Posted on January 17, 2013 by samholton

This Thursday I started more work experience at 9am sharp. In the morning I had a meeting with Dr. Kim Watson, we were discussing her lecture on ‘Structure based Drug Design’ and the progress I have made breaking it down and restructuring it for the new flexible learning framework. She helped me understand some of the concepts I had difficulty with, ones that I have yet to be taught, such as very specific computational approaches to drug design, e.g. knowledge based methods. Continue reading →

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Back to work! Continuing the development of the EEB blended framework and the Internationalisation Project

Posted on January 7, 2013 by samholton

Christmas and New Year are over, being the ambitious student I am, I think it’s about time  to get back to work! Due to the success of my UROP placement, I have been invited back part time to develop the module ‘An Integrated Systems Approach’. I will also be working on the Internationalisation Project alongside Katerina Lazidou. Both projects are to be funded by Digitally Ready Team.

Continue reading →

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Study Advice Session for the Spring Term

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Tee Nadan

Today we had a successful meeting with Matt Daley (International Support Adviser) and Dr Michelle Reid (Study Adviser) for the delivery of sessions to start in the Spring Term (Jan-Apr 2003).

Following our initial discussions with these study advisors (check our previous post), we have decided to pilot the following sessions:

Year 1, across all degree programmes:

  • Session 1 –  Working smarter not harder – by Michelle and Matt
  • Session 2 – Plagiarism & Referencing – by Michelle

Continue reading →

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