Hello everyone! My name is Rachel Glover. I am happy to have now started my long-awaited placement working in the Centre for the Development of Teaching and Learning on the project, Digitally Ready. I will be looking into how work placements aid students in developing their digital literacies. And in week two I have already got stuck into a lot of interesting tasks!
I am a second year undergraduate studying Politics and International Relations. The project appealed to me for a number of reasons. I have an interest in social and digital media and the impact that this is having on our day-to-day lives. It has become such an inherent part of our society and is inextricably linked to so many things, including politics and education. My dissertation that I have recently started is going to explore how social media has revolutionised the way in which American Presidential candidates campaign.
My first two weeks have been spent arranging interviews with a number of previous UROP placement supervisors. These research placements would have taken place last summer which means that (hopefully!) the supervisors will have had time to reflect on their experiences. These interviews will aim to gain an understanding about what their role entails, the experiences they had during their role as a supervisor and the expectations of the students’ usage of digital skills before and throughout their placement.
Hi Rachel, you might talk to Justin Groves who is currently on a UROP placement writing the Whiteknights Biodiversity blog and making a lot of campus biodiversity data available digitally. Justin is developing work started last year by Rachel Harris. The blog is at http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/whiteknightsbiodiversity/.