School holds virtual Away Day

The School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering held its end of year away day on the 5th August 2021. This year, due to the pandemic, the workshop was held remotely using Teams. Thirty people from the school attended an interactive afternoon session that focused on teaching and learning. Dr Iestyn Pierce (Head of School) welcomed everyone to the event and introduced new members of staff.  Dr Dave Perkins (Director of Teaching and Learning) chaired the day.

Dr Perkins said “It was great to have an away day and meet some of the new members of the teaching team. Everyone engaged with the material and people enjoyed the experience. The day focused on teaching and learning, and successes of teaching during a pandemic. The pandemic has disrupted the traditional model of education for all universities, but we are in a once in a lifetime situation where we can really think about how we teach and where and how the students get real value from our teaching. But it has meant that we had to think how we were teaching our content, and we have had made many successful changes that have actually benefited students and their learning experience.” Dave went on to say “the day enabled us to discuss and capture our successes”.

Members of the School discussing and exchanging successes of the previous year.

The event was split into four parts: (1) introduction and general discussion, (2) reflection on last year’s teaching, (3) good practices, first in inclusion (led by Wendy Owen) and then teaching using the Backboard online learning platform (by Daniel Roberts), and (4) encouraging authentic learning and actions to take forward.

Professor Jonathan Roberts (Professor in Visualisation) said “It was a great day, I really enjoyed using Miroboard shared whiteboard software to share our success stories of teaching and learning in the pandemic. Miro allows you to create and share post-it notes, images and so on in an online virtual board.  You can see other people creating notes and comments. It is a collaborative way of working and another example of what we have learnt during the past year of online learning and working. Dave split us into smaller break-out rooms, where we could discuss our successes and any challenges of teaching during the pandemic. It was great to see other people’s ideas and success stories, and great to see some action points from this activity.”

Peredur Williams said “With the Product Design course only recently having officially moved to the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering it is an exciting time for myself and colleague Aled Williams. We are slowly getting to know all staff in the school and are looking forward to collaborating in the coming months and years. The away day was both enjoyable and informative, it was a great opportunity to learn about best practices from colleagues which will impact and strengthen the experiences our students have during their time with us”.

Dr Iestyn Pierce (Head of School) concluded the day by thanking everyone for attending and said “The academics have performed excellently in what was a very difficult situation for many. There are many good practices that have come from teaching during a pandemic, and it was great to share them and discuss them in the school away day. Going forward we have many exciting changes to the school, with Product Design now part of the school, expansion of our courses such as the Games Computing degree, new degree apprentice courses, and so on. I can see that 2021/22 will be another exciting year, and I look forward to reflecting on more successes at the away day next year.”

Publication date: 16 August 2021