The Communication and English teaching team have been very busy since September 2012 and below is a snapshot of the great work we are currently involved in.
The team are committed to improving the service of delivery and in vocational areas such as HN Legal Services and HN Events Management a few changes to summative assessments have been incorporated. In the case of Legal Services we met with vocational lecturers to improve both the meeting and report writing assessments. It was felt that learners would benefit from choosing a research area from a range of contemporary topics, such as drinking age increase / reduction, chastisement of children and changes to abortion laws.
In the case of the Events Management students, it was felt that the analysis document used in the previous years (on the Summer Olympics) needed to be refreshed and this was replaced with a 2014 Homecoming Scotland report which the students enjoyed critiquing.
We were timetabled to teach HN Travel and Tourism students a different unit this year (Analysing and Presenting Complex Communication) and lecturers have been busy working with lecturers from the home team to assemble vocationally relevant instruments of assessment that learners will enjoy working on. Reports on the Summer Olympics from a European Tour Operator perspective have been utilised, where students examine the (financial) benefits of a large sporting event. The report that students will ultimately produce will be linked to another Unit that they are studying, namely 'Applying Marketing Principles in Travel and Tourism' and will be on a case study for the Madisson Hotel.
HN Retail Management has been another vocational area that has been further developed where the lecturer has formulated excellent formative and summative materials from Guardian articles, journals and industry reports on topics such as the sexualisation of children's clothing, use of planograms in the Dunkin' Donuts retails chain and the issue of children and consumerism has been explored in considerable depth too.
Programmes such as Entry to Education, Preparation for Work and College Preparation Courses enable members of the teaching team to really develop the learner's skills as we don't formally assess students until semester two. In addition to skills such as literacy, working with others, speaking, listening and researching, the theme of Scottishness and national identity has been at the forefront of our teaching this year. A project concerning the subject of 'The Greatest Scot' was put together and has been adapted by lecturers to suit the needs of their respective teaching groups. The content matter of the project is so flexible that students can learn many different skills, including research, reading, understanding, opinion forming, presenting, writing and voting. The results have been really interesting and Scots in the frame have included Fleming, Robert the Bruce, Rabbie Burns, Charles Rennie MacKintosh, Sir Sean Connery and Sir Chris Hoy. Who the greatest Scot actually is of course is not an easy choice!
The team have forged positive links with the Science section in recent years due to the advent of the SusSol project (Sustainable Solutions), a project designed to bring students, staff, learning institutions and countries within the EU together. This year's project is entitled 'Good Food, Good Mood' and Science students have been working on presentations and reports around this subject. The types of projects they self selected are on a wide range of topics, such as: the effects of obesity on the NHS, processed food vs organic food, whether genetically modified food is good for you and can hunger cure? It is likely that one of the members of the lecturing team will be travelling to Rome with some students to deliver a contextual presentation on the benefits of a collegiate and thematically linked project. Learners from across partner organisations within the EU will be given the opportunity to present their findings and engage in a cultural exchange, provisionally pencilled in for 6th February.
The HN Electrical Engineering cohort was a new group of students taught by a member of the teaching team last year with excellent results. The main reason for this was that we were able to integrate work studied within their home team. Regrettably, no such integrative opportunities were available in semester one due to staff shortages in the home team so new assessments had to be devised for the students. The lecturer met with representatives from Electrical Engineering with a proposal for a new brief on the subject of 'renewable energy' that will be linked across two outcomes and students have engaged really well with this subject, demonstrating a keen awareness of the subject.
Students continue to enjoy contributing to yearbooks, magazines, blogs and projects and this continues in the 2012-13 academic session.
Staff are involved in commercial activity too and have recently been awarded a Public Speaking contract for Thomas Cook staff, in addition to the regular Meeting Skills seminars run for employees of both Edinburgh University and the City of Edinburgh Council.
D2L use has stepped up within the team and innovative use has been made across many cohorts within the college. This is an extremely time consuming exercise but the students engage well with this platform. Colleagues are clear that use of the D2L is NOT a substitute for face to face learning.
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