ED505T: APPROACHES TO TEACHING, LEARNING, AND ASSESSMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION (2024-2025)

This course is offered online and is available across both Aberdeen and Qatar campuses, for University of Aberdeen staff currently employed in a significant role in higher education teaching or learning support. The course is a core component of the Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Teaching & Learning programme, which is delivered by the Centre for Academic Development. It is designed as a professional development option for educators keen to enhance their existing knowledge base and skills in teaching, learning, and assessment. The course provides an opportunity for participants to reflect critically on their educational practice through engaging with the pedagogic literature. By drawing on educational theory, individuals’ teaching experiences, and participants’ peer observations of practice, the course examines the following topics: planning and designing courses, learning environments, approaches to teaching, academic integrity and generative AI, assessment design & feedback, and evaluating and reflecting upon one’s own teaching practice. A fundamental component of this course is to support individuals to examine critically the theories and practical issues associated with designing, delivering, and evaluating teaching and assessment in contemporary learning environments.

 The course is fully aligned with the Professional Standards Framework  for Teaching and Supporting Learning in Higher Education (PSF, 2023). Eight online sessions are underpinned by four formative assessments and two summative assessments. MyAberdeen, the University’s virtual learning environment, is used for the delivery of online sessions, course materials (including pre-session learning activities), and assessment and feedback.

The course assessments require participants to reflect on their own disciplinary context, as well as their enhanced understanding gained from the literature and their learning from the synchronous sessions and wider course material. The formative peer observation of teaching is a critical and compulsory element of this course, as it both provides participants with the opportunity to have their teaching appraised by a course peer and the opportunity to appraise the practice of others. Other formative assessments are designed to help participants to prepare for the course summative assessments, providing constructive feedback and feedforward goals. The Professional Profile encourages them to reflect upon their own identity as pedagogic practitioners. The summative assessment tasks involve participants engaging in a critical self-evaluation of their practice (in relation to emerging innovative, published pedagogies), mapped alongside the PSF 2023. The other summative is a 15-minute video recording on their assessment and feedback practice. A range of feedback and feedforward mechanisms are implemented throughout the course (peer, written, group, and oral) to help individuals progress and develop.

Successful completion of both PGCert in Higher Education Teaching & Learning courses leads to professional recognition at Descriptor 2 of the PSF (2023), Advance HE (Fellow).