New Academic Issue 1.2 – 1992

This issue contains articles on:

Ants, Small Mammals and Enthusiastic Students
Kate Exley (University of Nottingham) shares her experience of innovative teaching and learning methods.

Quality Enhancement and Academic Professionalism
Professor Lewis Elton has long campaigned and worked to improve the quality of teaching in higher education. In this article he uses change theory to argue the need for a Higher Education Development Centre to support staff in further enhancing quality.

What Do Students Really Think They Have Let Themselves in For?
How can we help students new to higher education settle in more easily? Geoff Moore and Wendy Stewart-David (Newcastle-upon-Tyne Polytechnic) use ‘The Expectations Approach’ with their freshers and have received encouraging results.

Students Helping Students to Learn
Jenni Wallace (Kingston Polytechnic) is supporting an American peer-learning programme called Supplemental Instruction. Here she gives an insight as to what it involves.

Developments in Science Teaching
Articles:

• Creativity Applied – Ivan Moore, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Ulster
• Chemistry Labs and Transferable Skills – Bob Murray, Jeff Richards and Ray Wallace, Department of Chemistry and Physics, University of Nottingham
• Environmental Health and the Media – David Ruddick, Department of Applied Physical Sciences, and Harold Harvey, Department of Building, University of Ulster
• Enterprise in Rural Business Development – Martin F Seabrook, Department of Agriculture and Horticulture, University of Nottingham
• Inquiry on the Retreat – Peter McGregor and Francis Gilbert, Department of Life Science, University of Nottingham.

Raising the Numeracy of Higher Education Students
Competency with numbers is essential in most walks of life. Yet few who find numbers baffling willingly admit to difficulties and seek help. In this article Michael Cornelius, Numeracy Fellow at the University Durham, describes the help which he has given to students.

Down With Essays!
There may be something to be said for the essays of Bacon and Montesquieu, but not for the student essay – a literary genre whose main goal, according to Graham Gibbs (Oxford Centre for Staff Development), is to obscure ignorance.

How Was It For You?
A practicable suggestion for formative evaluation from John Cowan and Judith George (The Open University in Scotland).