A photo of Dr Matthew Hopkinson and Dr Cristina Navarro Reguero

CHEMmunicate: an ice breaking chemistry game for enhancing communication skills and building a learning community

Dr Cristina Navarro Reguero explains how she and colleague Dr Matthew Hopkinson designed the CHEMmunicate game, a fun, interactive activity for teams of students to draw chemical structures by asking yes/no questions, with the aim of building students’ communications skills alongside fundamental knowledge of organic chemistry content. The game has been showcased at national and international conferences as well as in a paper published in the Journal of Chemical Education.

A photograph of John Holton

Developing diverse skill-sets, student engagement, and self-evaluation in a poster assessment

Dr John Holton, Senior Lecturer in Ancient History, describes designing a poster assignment for his stage 2 module that builds and tests diverse skill-sets, promotes student engagement by enabling students to self-select and then personally research their choice of topic, resulting in students showing an increased assessment confidence and unusually high engagement with the task.

Examining Different Learners’ Development of Critical Learning Skills in Postgraduate Taught Programmes: A Comparative Study in Accounting and Finance and in Applied Linguistics and TESOL

Lana Liu, Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Finance in NUBS and Mei Lin, Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistic in ECLS describe how they developed a critical learning skills (CLS) framework, which identifies critical moments in students’ learning journey and pedagogical strategies focusing on knowledge application and critical evaluations and helps inform critical thinking (CT) in curriculum design.

A photo of Benjamin Bader

The Magic of Scratch Cards for Immediate Feedback

Benjamin Bader, Senior Lecturer in International Human Resource Management in NUBS, combined the critical tenets of active learning and formative assessment by incorporating the active learning method of Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique (IFAT) scratch cards into the BUS3021 module, moving students away from the passive intake of information to a more engaged, dynamic learning process where they could apply their understanding to solve problems, think critically, while making learning enjoyable and stimulating.

A photograph of Jytte Nielsen

Using experiments to teach economics

Jytte Seested Nielsen (Reader in Economics) from Newcastle University Business School developed decision-making experiments for her students to participate in, promote engagement in the module and encourage active learning to consolidate their understanding and prepare them for assessment.

Data Ethics: Are there globally accepted ethical principles around data?

Lee Fawcett, Senior Lecturer in Maths, Stats and Physics, discusses how he collaborated with the University of Florida to develop a short virtual exchange course around the use/misuse of data – enabling students to collaborate with overseas students, while also addressing inequalities relating to physical mobility opportunities and embedding intercultural awareness into the undergraduate curriculum.

Image of the cover design for the Get Sust! Sustainable Development Goals Board Game. It has 4 logos from the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals: clean water and sanitation; life on land; affordable and clean energy and life below water.

Get Sust! Working in partnership with students to co-develop a board game for raising student awareness of sustainable development

Tracy Scurry, Professor of Work and Employment and Sarah Carnegie, Senior Lecturer in HRM from Newcastle University Business School, discuss the Get Sust! project, working in partnership with students to develop a game-based learning approach to engage Business School students with sustainable development, to facilitate a social and developmental learning experience, and support the personal development of students by enhancing their teamworking skills and global and cultural awareness.

Students as Creative Designers and Developers of Relevant Learning Analytics: A First-Hand Experience Approach

Dr Raghda Zahran, Programme and Project Manager from the Project Management Office worked with colleagues from the School of Computing to engage postgraduate students taking an Innovation Project, offering students a unique opportunity to apply their Data Science skills meaningfully, alongside developing an understanding of Learning Analytics from Newcastle University students’ perspectives, to inform the development of practical tools and strategies.

Critical intercultural incidents

Alina Schartner, Lecturer in Applied Linguistics collaborated with Nathan Rousseau, from Indiana University-Purdue University, Columbus (IUPUC) on a 4-week curriculum-embedded virtual exchange activity entitled ‘critical intercultural incidents’, involving MA Cross-Cultural Communication students at Newcastle University and undergraduate sociology students at (IUPUC).