Broadcast: News items

Dawn and Hataya

The first informal “Lunch and Learn” staff development sessions ran in June. Dawn Howard (Tutorial Fellow in Organisational Behaviour, Department of Business and Management) very kindly offered to organise a session on facilitating group work in seminars and we had a good turn-out of over a dozen staff.

Dr Hataya Sibunruang (Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour, Department of Business and Management) said: “The activities and discussion mainly revolved around challenges involved in getting students to participate in group works and ways in which the effectiveness of group works can be enhanced.

"Dawn introduced us to various techniques of enhancing group work learning and got us to critically analyse the effectiveness of these techniques. The two-hour seminar was full of highly interactive and engaging activities that not only enabled us to learn from one another but also to get to know different people within the School.

"At the end of the workshop, we all took with us some useful take-away points to reflect upon so that they can be used to improve our teaching and, most importantly, the learning experience of our students here at the University of Sussex.”

Dawn showed everyone how to use techniques such as roundtables, jigsaw classrooms and peer editing, and gave us imaginative ideas on how to break seminars into smaller groups.

• Read more about Group Work ideas workshops.

Further sessions

More of these informal sessions will be organised for the autumn term and will aim to cover issues like teaching large groups, interactive teaching, marking and feedback, and more.

If you have an idea for a useful session or would like to facilitate a session, please contact Julie Litchfield (Director of Teaching and Learning): J.A.Litchfield@sussex.ac.uk.