Academics from the University are taking Nottingham’s excellence in pedagogy onto the national stage, making eight presentations at the Higher Education Academy annual conference.

The conference, which takes place Tuesday 3 July – Thursday 5 July 2018 in Birmingham, is aimed at all Higher Education professionals. Its theme this year is ‘Teaching in the spotlight: Learning from global communities’ – the conference will focus on teaching in a global context, in particular how to learn from global communities to ensure top levels of student experience for all.

The UoN speakers and presentations are:

Arts and Humanities strand

• Klaus Mundt, University of Nottingham, presenting ‘Teaching cultural translation: Transcending the allegedly impossible’.
  This talk introduces a pedagogy for cultural translation that is rooted in the Pedagogical Imperative and combines Mediated Learning Experience, Positive Psychology and the New Confucian notion of confluence as driving force. The approach proposed is collaborative, supportive and heuristic, with the aim of providing transferable tools to trainee translators that they can apply in academic and professional settings. Primary data will be presented to illustrate how trainee translators develop the ability to overcome significant challenges, and to argue that cultural translation is not at all impossible and can indeed be learned and taught.

Strategy and Sector Priorities strand

• Jackie Cawkwell, University of Nottingham and James Walker, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, presenting ‘The UKPSF: Enabling engagement with academic CPD and the scholarship of teaching and learning amongst international staff’.
  Effective engagement of staff with the UKPSF remains a key focus for internal recognition schemes to ensure successful demonstration of professional practice. The diverse backgrounds of staff add a further challenge to engaging and continuing with professional development and scholarship of teaching and learning beyond recognition. This session will share outcomes from a small-scale qualitative research study exploring international staff experience of claiming fellowship of the HEA. Initial findings indicate different levels of understanding of the context and objectives of the UKHE sector, the UKPSF, and associated CPD activities, suggesting changes in institutional responses in preparing staff for teaching recognition.

Social Sciences strand

• Dr Peter Bibby, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, presenting ‘Cross-cultural differences in attitudes to learning’.
  In 2015-16 students from China constituted more than 50% of new, non-EU, student enrolments in UK institutions of higher education. It has been argued that Chinese students have a different set of cultural attitudes toward education. The current research reports the results of a survey of British and Chinese students responding to questions with regard to the purpose of learning, what effects their learning behaviour, hào xué xīn, parental attitudes and their learning behaviours. The results indicate systematic differences between British and Chinese in their attitudes to learning that impact on their learning behaviours.
• Gabriella Buttarazzi, University of Nottingham, Ningbo China Campus, presenting ‘Meditative Inquiry for Global Futures: Towards an integration of meditation in HE pedagogy’.
  This conference paper firstly emphasises the place that meditation and other contemplative practices have in Higher Education Pedagogy by drawing briefly upon previous education research findings across disciplines, cultures and higher education institutions. It then details the progress, development and student experiences of the credit-bearing university module ‘Mind-work’, a module integrates two main meditative practices for the purposes of preparing students for a global future that is largely uncertain, unpredictable and unknown to us all.
• Dr Peter Lamb, University of Nottingham, Ningbo China Campus, presenting ‘Exploring the translation of knowledge in China’.
  This session presents an overview of a pedagogic innovation, ‘Pedagogy as Translation’ (PaT), which is grounded in the critique of the relevance of Western management knowledge in the Chinese context by academics, educators, Chinese and international students. The presentation will demonstrate how PaT enables students to translate Western management knowledge for the Chinese context, and beyond. It will also outline the development of a visual metaphor learning tool for knowledge translation across cultures and will report on the efficacy of the pedagogy from both the educator and student perspective.
• Dr Duncan Watson, University of East Anglia, Professor Steve Cook, Swansea University and Dr Rob Webb, University of Nottingham, presenting ‘War is ninety percent information’: A call to arms on enhancing information literacy’.
  Is higher education delivering on information literacy? A national study would suggest not and that graduates are only marginally more likely to pursue an evidence-based position. Contrary to expectation this does not automatically imply that higher education needs to increase generic learning support. Rather, the speakers demonstrate that an aggregated approach is problematic. Comparing the study results with an analysis of freshers with no prior data synthesis training, the speakers reveal how students have already acquired the skill of sifting through online data. Only being confronted with less familiar international analysis can positively challenge student search methods and augment their information literacy skills

STEM strand

• Dr Lorna Treanor, Nottingham University Business School, presenting ‘YES! The commercialisation game that builds entrepreneurial competences in STEM early career researchers’.
  STEM research breakthroughs address societal challenges when commercialised. YES (Young Entrepreneurs Scheme) is an experiential-learning intervention aiming to address the deficit of STEM ECRs engaging in commercialisation by facilitating their development of entrepreneurial competences (Rasmussen and Wright, 2015). In its 22nd year, YES evaluations after 10, 15 and 25 years show it positively impacts upon participants’ entrepreneurial competences and activities. This presentation outlines: the YES pedagogy; participant outcomes, and, the need to mainstream provision and encourage faculty support for entrepreneurship interventions.
• Dr Mike Clifford, University of Nottingham and Dr Subarna Sivapalan, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, presenting ‘Education for Sustainable Development: A global perspective on a global issue’.
  In this presentation, the speakers explore the sustainable literacy of engineering (and other) undergraduate students in Malaysia and in the UK and take a broader look at how accrediting bodies such as the Engineering Accreditation Council (Malaysia) and the Engineering Council (UK) consider and address sustainability issues. The research highlights gaps in knowledge, understanding and education in both case study sites. Lessons are drawn and recommendations made as to how to integrate and embed education for sustainable development into undergraduate curricula within the broader context of the student learning experience.

Find out more about the conference and book your place at https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/training-events/events/annual-conference-2018.