By Ian Turner (Associate Professor in Learning and Teaching)
I am very lucky in my role! I get to watch others delivering lectures, seminars, tutorials and whole host of other activities to students. My background is biology and I take great pleasure in seeing how staff from engineering, arts, history as well as professional service areas interact with learners. When watching sessions where I know nothing about the subject I can truly absorb the pedagogy and see the different practices employed. For example I have recently experienced the coaching questions used by the Career and Employability Service which will be really useful for personal academic tutoring.
Reflecting on these expectations has had a powerful impact on my role in the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) and my teaching. When CELT was asked to look at the observation of teaching policy, it was this very principle, of learning from others that we wanted to be at the heart of it. The result was DELTA: Peer that an approach that ‘flips’ TO and focuses on individuals learning from others. Some of its key points of DELTA: Peer are:
- It is for all academic, management and professional service staff.
- It encourages transdisciplinary learning through observing colleagues across the University.
- It is focused on individual reflection, followed by team discussion.
More information on DELTA: Peer can be found on the CELT SharePoint site.