Learning & Teaching Research
The Faculty of Business and Economics is constantly engaged in research in learning and teaching to inform and develop teaching practice in the Faculty. Two key initiatives are the Learning and Teaching Research Group and the LEAD Projects which together provide the support and resources to enable the successful completion and publication of learning and teaching research.
The Learning and Teaching Research Group meets eight times a year, usually to listen to a group member reading a piece of their research (work-in-progress or complete paper) in some area of learning and teaching. We try to offer constructive feedback and encourage the process towards publication. Sometimes we just have someone leading a discussion around an interesting topic.
Anyone is welcome to attend our meetings. Just come along. Or if you want to join the group and be put on the mailing list, get in touch with Susan Hoadley.
LEAD Projects
LEAD stands for “Learning Excellence and Development”. The LEAD group is a team of researchers in the Faculty where each member or project team works on an individual research project in some area of learning and teaching, but in a collaborative context. A typical LEAD project would be a piece of “action research” where a lecturer systematically monitors an innovation in their teaching in order to assess its pedagogical effectiveness.
Each project receives a small amount of seed funding, to be used for attending a conference, employing a research assistant, or some other research-related purpose. Applications to join the next eighteen-month LEAD cycle will be invited in mid-year to run through to the end of 2011. Any FBE teaching or general staff member is eligible to apply.
LEAD members meet monthly to report on their progress and to discuss problems they’ve had with their projects. The idea is for members to help each other – in particular, for more experienced researchers to pass on their knowledge and experience on to relative newcomers to research. The meetings help members to pace each other through the various stages of research and to complete their projects within the 18-month cycle.
The LEAD group aims to get its projects written up by the end of the LEAD cycle and to get them published in a peer-reviewed journal. At the end of the cycle there is a LEAD symposium, usually as part of the university’s Learning and Teaching Week, where finished work is presented and discussed.
- 2010-2011 Projects
- 2009-2010 Projects
View the group paper via The International Journal of Educational Management.