It has been necessary to amend some of the forthcoming Mini CoP details.  Student Empowerment and Marketing and Communications will once again join forces (due to overlapping themes).  This meeting will be held on Monday the 2nd November from 12.30-1.30pm.  Therefore the meeting on Wednesday the 4th November will now be cancelled.

Over the last few months MF have been working with colleague across the University, to develop some of the GCU internal examples of practice more fully into case studies. Some of these are now complete and can be accessed on the website, under the examples of practice tab. Many thanks must go to all the members of staff who worked patiently with Julie to develope the case studies. More detailed information and further case studies, will be posted in the near future. If you are having trouble accessing the documents, please contact any member of the team or Julie directly at Julie.Brown@gcal.ac.uk

The next set of meeting dates have now been arranged and are displayed below.  Further information relating to the content/themes for the next meetings will be issued to the Community of Pratice by the end of August.

1. LTA&F                                                                    Wednesday 21^st October, 12.30-1.30pm                M201
2. Prep and Induction                                      Monday 5^th October, 12.30-1.30pm                         W727
3. Peer Support and Mentoring                 Monday 26^th October, 12.30-1.30pm                     M401
4. Liaison with Schools and Colleges    Wednesday 28^th October, 12.30-1.30pm              W727
5. Marketing and Communications      Monday 2^nd November, 12.30-1.30pm                 MS109
6. Student Empowerment                            Wednesday 4^th November, 12.30-1.30pm             B024

Over the summer period we are currently coordinating the next set of Mini CoP meeting dates and will communicate them to the relevant groups as soon as they become available.

The Liaison with Schools and Colleges Mini CoP had their latest meeting on Wednesday the 17th June.  The theme for this meeting was - ’identifying ways of improving communication between the sectors and mapping of existing communication skills’.  Andrew Comrie from ELRAH  (Edinburgh, Fife, Lothians and Borders Regional Articulation Hub at Napier University) gave an interesting presentation on how staff development in universities, colleges and schools can improve the communication between the sectors.  Andrew’s presentation is now available on our website and can be accessed at the following link – ‘Seeing is Believing’.pdf

Was the topic for the second meeting of the Learning, Teaching, Assessment and Feedback Mini CoP held on 16/06/09.  Isobel Falconer from the Caledonian Academy provided an excellent presentation and following discussion surrounding the topic.  Isobel’s presentation can be viewed by clicking on the link below.

http://www.academy.gcal.ac.uk/movingforward/documents/IndependentLearner.pdf

The next set of dates, room numbers and themes for the mini CoP meetings can be found in the table below.  If you would like to come along to any of the group meetings, please contact Julie.Brown@gcal.ac.uk or Karla.Benske@gcal.ac.uk

Julie and Karla recently attended and presented at the European First Year Experience Conference in Groningen in the Netherlands.  We presented a  paper entitled ‘Moving Forward and Beyond:  Enhancing Progression through Partnership.  A University-wide initiative to enhance the First Year Experience and to Develop Independent Lifelong Learners.’  Over 200 colleagues from across Europe and beyond attended the conference.  This is the link for the conference website http://www.efye.eu/ and it is hoped the papers presented will appear here shortly.  Our presentation can be found on our website http://www.academy.gcal.ac.uk/movingforward/pdocs.html

5 out of the 6 mini CoPs have now met.  The attendance and discussions relating to possible developments and sharing of practice in all areas have been encouraging and positive so far.   An email has now been sent to our wider Community of Practice, in order to keep them up to date with all developments and detailing possible topics/themes/issues to be explored or developed at further meetings.  An email will be sent to all of the groups over the next two weeks with the details of the next set of meetings. 

If you would like to join one of the groups please contact Julie.Brown@gcal.ac.uk

The Moving Forward team are currently in the process of building a MF Blackboard module.  We will be attaching our mini CoP members in order that there is another route for communication.