sparqs and the Higher Education Academy (HEA) in Scotland will be running a series of events across Scotland in the new academic year, bringing together teaching staff and learners from Scotland’s schools, colleges and universities. These will provide an exciting new opportunity for staff and students across this transition to begin a dialogue on learning styles and expectations between those attending.
Combining HEA’s expertise in sharing best practice in first class teaching, and sparqs’ track record facilitating student engagement in learning and teaching, the events will have a unique appeal. By bringing together communities of practitioners across the different sectors and institutions, and providing a platform for them to interact with prospective students, we hope to create a supportive environment to share practice and ideas.
By focusing the events into subject clusters, we want to ensure the event is as close as possible to the actual experiences that future learners will have. By setting up the event to allow students across the different institutions to discuss and present on their experiences of learning and their ideas of what learning should be like, we also hope to lay the foundations for future collaboration between staff.
Previous events along similar lines have led to long running collaborations between staff from different sectors and institutions, and we hope the networks developed at these events will be equally fruitful. A barrier that can sometimes hinder prospective students from fulfilling their potential is that they won’t be able to adjust to the demands of teaching in further and higher education. It’s time to break down these barriers.
Student transitions and the learner journey are becoming an increasingly important area of work across Scotland and a focus for several developing areas of work for sparqs. We are currently working on developing materials to support the students at these events and building networks with staff and students in schools, colleges and universities who are interested in developing strategies across student transitions. If you are interested in getting involved in the networks please get in touch with Phil McGuinness, sparqs Development Advisor – phil.mcguinness@sparqs.ac.uk