CoP Network by Learning & Teaching
Introduction
The network of Communities of Practice (CoPs) was formed following a University wide conversation to discuss how best to promote and develop the university’s learning and teaching strategy.
Our university strongly believes in a vibrant culture of learning and teaching (L and T) collaboration to foster creativity, innovation for enhanced learner experience and to be an important contribution to staff professional development. We have successfully achieved “excellence” through embedding a network of Communities of Practice to enable our academics to engage in inter-subject, school and cross-institutional learning and teaching conversation.
These Communities were formed for staff to collaborate in ten key areas. Please see the Communities of Practice Diagram which illustrates the ten areas and the CoPs which sit under them.
The L and T office is responsible for scheduling CoP, managing the CoP calendar, processing new applications through a formal procedure, and capturing outcomes and disseminating good practice.
Please see the CoP schedule for the upcoming academic year. Please note this is updated regularly as sessions are organised. Further information and Zoom details can be found linked to each session title.
2024/25 Schedule
April 2024
Structured Writing COP - Different Types of Research Outputs
Tuesday 29th April - 12-1PM - SSA022
Dr Erin Pritchard
In this final session of the academic year, Dr Erin Pritchard will share some of her own experiences of writing a variety of research outputs. This will be an important opportunity to consider some of the alternative writing contributions that reach audiences beyond higher education.
May 2024
Sustainable & Environmentally Aware Approaches to Learning and Teaching in The Creative Arts COP - Session 3
Thursday 1st May - 4PM - Cornerstone Building - COR008B
Dr. Kathryn Cox and Dr. Kris Darby
This community of practice aims to foreground emerging concepts and practices connected to the environment and sustainability and how these may be retooled for creative arts education. We will reexamine existing learning and teaching approaches with a view to integrating more environmentally-conscious practices into our work, and to facilitate further awareness of how we can adapt our practice to reflect the concerns of the climate crisis.
In this third session, Dr. Kris Darby will discuss their work with sound art and anthropomorphism, which gives voice to the non-human to meaningfully address how emphasising with landscape can make us more-than-human. We will discuss how this links to research-led teaching.
Doctoral Supervision COP - The CoP’s Suggestions on how to Improve PGR Culture at Hope
Tuesday 6th May - 12PM - Eden043 - Zoom Link
Dr. Roberto Catello
The CoP on Doctoral Supervision is a community where staff and students come together to discuss ways to foster a more positive, collaborative, and transparent culture of doctoral research and supervision at Hope. The goal of the CoP is to serve as a space where we (supervisors, doctoral students, and everyone involved with PGR admin and research) can come together and openly and honestly talk about issues affecting doctoral supervision and the doctoral student experience more broadly. The CoP aims to be a genuine community where topics for discussion emerge spontaneously from the interests of its members. The next CoP will be devoted to producing a list of suggestions on how to improve PGR culture at Hope.
If you are interested in attending the CoP and wish to add items for discussion to the agenda, please feel free to email Dr Catello at catellr@hope.ac.uk (the sessions are hybrid, so you can join us both in person or via Zoom).
Decolonising The University COP - Towards Decolonised Musuems: Exploring Intervention
Tuesday 13th May - 2-3pm - Online - Zoom Link
Dr Carly Bagelman
Speaker: Alexis Stones (UCL)
“There are many people who dare not participate in a strike or other political actions. Why? they have cops in their heads. They have internalized their oppressions.” (Boal, 1979: 35)
Alexis draws on links between peace studies, historical trauma, critical harmony, art history and drama as an emancipatory practice to present reflections and provocations through vignettes of teaching in museums.
Museums have an important role to play as places of public learning through a perceived ‘canon’ and where formal and informal education coincides. As educators, the museum offers rich territory for decolonising history, the present, art and pedagogy itself. The process of decolonising the museum is conceived as collective and community-driven, and seeks to ultimately open up ways to imagine and transform through healing and agency rather than external or policy-led problem solving.
The nature of this work is grounded in collaborations with teachers and young people, many of whom are from diasporic communities affected by colonial legacies. In this session, we will consider the possibilities that intervention, disruption and protest present for human and more-than-human experiences, and decolonised museum spaces as places of praxis.
Biography
Alexis Stones is a senior teaching fellow and lecturer at UCL where she leads the PGCE for Religious Education. She works as a museum educator and consultant for galleries and museums. She recently developed and leads a workshop for secondary schools on sacred art for the Wallace Collection that draws on approaches that will be explored in this session. Her areas of research and publication include science and religion in the curriculum, lived citizenship in relation to religion and worldview, knowledge in the curriculum, peace education, education for sustainable development and sacred art.
Students as Partners COP
Monday 19th May 2025 - 1pm - 2PM - I3B215 - Zoom Link
Emilee Morrallis
This session is intended to discuss issues outlined in the previous meeting, including accessibility requirements, Learning Support Plans, a hub of resources, and a review of existing mechanisms which facilitate student involvement in decision making within the university. The SU will outline the ways in which they provide feedback and the group will review any findings related to students as partners from within each faculty.
Teaching Real World Issues In Different Disciplines COP - Evaluating our Interventions
Monday 19th May 2025 - 1pm - 3pm - HCA107 Zoom Link
Dr. Rosie Germain and Dr. Konstanze Spohrer
In this session we will share our findings from our teaching interventions in our sessions.
The general focus of the CoP this year will be about implementing a new technique that is perhaps more common in (though not exclusive to) a different discipline in our teaching sessions, and then evaluating its impact.
The technique may be inspired from the technique of a particular discipline that emerged in our discussions last year, or it could just be a chance to try a new technique that is shared by/more common in a different discipline, and to discuss it in a supportive environment.
We are aiming to build mutual support and sharing when it comes to pedagogy, and to continue developing bridges between, and drawing
inspiration from, different disciplines.
Meeting ID: 862 0015 6933
Password: 536056
July 2024
Inclusive Practice COP - Learning and Teaching for a Variety of Students
Wednesday 2nd July - 11am - 12pm - Zoom Link
Dr. Irene Rose
This session for the Inclusive Practice CoP presents pedagogic approaches and techniques that work to support a variety of students to access learning. We invite staff across the university to join us to consider key pedagogic approaches in their fields and to share disciplinary specific L&T techniques that support access to the curriculum for a variety of students. This will be a hybrid session.
