Placement showcase: Rachel Glover

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Nadja Guggi

Subscribers of this blog will have followed the adventures of our placement student, the fabulous Rachel Glover, who has been working with us since June on the student employability aspects of the Digitally Ready project.

Rachel has now started her final year studying Politics & International Relations, but will continue to work with us throughout the Autumn term for one day a week to complete her research into ‘Digital literacies for student employability’, focusing on the University’s extra- and in-curricular placement schemes. Continue reading →

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Digital literacies for student employability: Spotlight on work placements

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Nadja Guggi

Rachel and I were invited to speak at the Teaching & Learning Showcase on ‘Assessing work placements’ here at Reading yesterday. The showcase events are a series of informal lunchtime gatherings which provide an opportunity for colleagues to share T & L practices and ideas. The format is three speakers talking about a common topical issue for ten minutes each, with time for questions and discussion at the end. Continue reading →

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Placement showcase: Carrie Philp

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Rachel Glover

With UROP student Carrie Philp

Continuing my placement showcase series, I interviewed Carrie Philp about her experiences during her UROP placement and how she used social media to recruit students for her project.

A third year Psychology student, Carrie, who only heard about the opportunity at the last minute, says she has learnt a lot over the 8 weeks on placement:

“I have been conducting a piece of research in collaboration with the Careers, Placement and Experience Centre, located on the University Campus. The aim of the research is to investigate the views and opinions of students who have and haven’t used the careers services, and to investigate how they could be improved to meet the needs of the students.” Continue reading →

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Developing students’ digital skills through placements – Maximising student engagement

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Rachel Glover

Rachel presenting at the RAISE conference, University of Southampton

I have previously blogged about my trip to ALT-C in Manchester. In the same week I went to the RAISE Conference in Southampton. The Researching, Advancing & Inspiring Student Engagement day was my first opportunity to speak about some of the findings of our research so far.

At the last minute, my supervisor Nadja Guggi had to take sick leave, but I felt confident enough to talk about our research and step up to the challenge of delivering our presentation on ‘Developing students’ digital skills through placements’ on my own. Continue reading →

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Placement showcase: Chelsea Zahra

Posted on September 26, 2012 by patparslow

Over the summer, we have been in the fortunate position to be able to employ a number of students on Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme placements.  You may have seen a number of posts from Rachel Glover, who has been working directly with Nadja Guggi on the employability aspects of the Digitally Ready project.

In the School of Systems Engineering (SSE), Professor Rachel McCrindle made a significiant contribution to the Digitally Ready project by committing both funds and her own time to running a total of 5 UROP placements.  We had students designing serious games for mobile devices, and implementing them, building their skills as they did so, and providing us with a richer knowledge of the issues and opportunities involved. Continue reading →

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ALT-Conference: The Digital Literacies perspective

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Rachel Glover

Rachel and Kerr Gardiner from the University of Glasgow

Last week was very hectic as I travelled up and down the country to attend two conferences. The first was the Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C) in Manchester. The conference’s objective was to understand how technology can best be used to make learning and technology more effective and more efficient.

It was a brilliant opportunity for me to attend an international conference and see how so many different people from various institutions, sponsors and vendors come together to share experiences. Continue reading →

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Placement Showcase: Harriet Taylor

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Rachel Glover

SEED placement student Harriet Taylor

I have been asking some of my fellow placement students to share their experiences and talk about what impact their work has had on the projects they’ve been working on.

Harriet Taylor, a third-year History student, has spent 10 weeks interning in the Knowledge Transfer Centre. She has recently finished her SEED placement but has been asked to return to the office for a half day each week to develop their marketing and advertising strategy. Continue reading →

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Digital deception

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Alastair Culham

We all receive spam email from time to time and have probably all been asked to send our bank account details so that millions of dollars/pounds/euros can be deposited in our accounts. If you have a spam filter that gets rid of all of these I’d like to hear.  However digital deception goes much further than that.  Continue reading →

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Placement showcase: Hannah Little

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Rachel Glover

In my previous blog post I spoke about the common themes that have occurred in my research. One of these predominant themes was that students really value a palpable output for their placement work. By that I mean that they are able to produce something tangible to show for the work that they have done. These outputs, which could be in the form of a blog post, banner, video or report, help the student understand how their input has shaped the research or project. Continue reading →

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E-books and students: an uneasy relationship?

Posted on September 6, 2012 by Erika Delbecque

As the Liaison Librarian for Pharmacy, I am keen to ensure that the library collection meets the needs of our Pharmacy students. However, these are large cohorts, and it is not possible to provide a copy for each student. To meet the demand for core textbooks, we have therefore invested in significantly expanding our Pharmacy e-book collection over the past few years. We have acquired an electronic version for each book on the students’ reading lists for which there is one available. Continue reading →

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