Engaging Students Engaging Industry Engaging Enterprise

A reflective piece on how a small team of students and academics gained more awareness of their own sense of enterprise and creativity. The case study examines the phases and crisis points of the whole event process and identifies some of the key learning outcomes for all involved

Engaging Students Subtly

Edith Green Professor Ron Mills on the art of teaching

Engaging families, engaging fathers: Domestic abuse and safeguarding children

Safeguarding children affected by domestic abuse is a key priority, but there are practice challenges in achieving this. The MAZE project based at WomenCentre in Calderdale is an innovative specialist domestic abuse project that undertakes intensive work with women affected by domestic abuse and their partners. MAZE was established in response to an identified need to support women affected by domestic abuse who were wishing to remain with their partner, and uniquely offers a service to both women and their male partners, with a particular focus on ‘hard to reach’ clients. This paper will describe the MAZE project and present findings from the small evaluation undertaken in 2011 which involved case analysis, interviews with service users, other professionals and project workers. Key findings included high levels of engaging clients and provision of practical and emotional support, challenges and successes of undertaking work with male perpetrators, and positive outcomes in relation to the safety and welfare of children and women. Of key importance to the MAZE model of working is the central focus on the safety of women and children, and understanding, assessing and addressing the risks and responsibilities of the domestic violence behaviours. Importantly these understandings were communicated in individual work with clients and as part of MAZE involvement in multi-agency child protection work. The MAZE project is an example of innovation in service user led organisations and demonstrates new directions for working with high risk families; some of the learning is currently being developed in further project work

Engaging blended learning students: an evolving approach to engaging students through the VLE

Students taking part-time, distance or blended learning units who are also in employment face high commitment demands of work, life and family in addition to their study. They do not have time to face the additional challenge of making sense of difficult to access learning materials. These students are also often highly discerning, and will talk with their feet ââ¬â failing to complete units that donââ¬â¢t engage. At Southampton Solent University, we recognise the need to make online or blended units accessible and supportive. In order to engage students on these, we have developed a set of institutional standards for online course development that aim to make materials intuitive, easy access, clearly introduced and well signposted. The standards also identify levels of support and collaboration in order for students to feel both engaged in and to gain maximum benefit from the learning processes. At the same time we have established a Flexible Delivery Development and Support Team which collaborates with academic staff in course planning, writing and delivery. This team works with tutors to achieve the standards while aligning learning outcomes and assessment with online and blended learning activity. This workshop explores the stages that led to establishing our institutional standards for online course development and the scope of activities for the FDDST. We shall explore ways in which the activities of the team have been responsive and adaptive to student experiences, and illustrate some of the impact of these developments on both actual an anticipated student engagement, achievement and retention

Beyond Relativism? Re-engaging Wittgenstein

Relativism is the view that there are as many worlds as there are ways of thinking and expressing the worlds that are expressed. That is to say, things are related to the ways in which we express them. Thus philosophers assert that the way we express our thoughts in language even affects the way we perceive the world. Relativism is a reaction against the view that there is one and only one way of describing the world. Therefore, relativists argue that the different conceptual abilities and habits are liable to result in different ways of seeing the world