NTFS Individual 2010
Guidelines for Personal Profiles and Photographs
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NTFS Individual 2010 Guidelines for Personal Profiles and Photographs
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Personal profiles and photographs must be received by the Higher Education Academy (the Academy) by noon on Wednesday 3 March 2010.
Please note that personal profiles will not be assessed as part of the application but are a required component for a complete submission to the NTFS. See section 21 and 26 in the ‘NTFS Individual 2010 Awards Guidelines’ for more information.
All nominees will be informed of the outcome of their application via email on Wednesday 26 May 2010 (see section 27, 29 and 32 of the ‘NTFS Individual 2010 Awards Guidelines’). Attached to the confirmation email sent to successful nominees will be an electronic copy of their edited personal profile for approval. Any amendments must be returned to the Academy by noon on Wednesday 2 June 2010.
The National Teaching Fellowship Scheme individual strand is a high profile initiative that regularly attracts media attention and coverage, particularly around the time that the winners are announced (see personal profile examples below). The press office of the Academy coordinates this activity, in conjunction with the press offices at the institutions of the winning nominees. This press coverage is of benefit to the winners, in terms of career profile and raising awareness of their pedagogic work, and also gives the winners’ institutions a good deal of positive publicity. We are seeking to clarify this process for the benefit of everyone involved, and are therefore asking for your help.
In all of our communications about National Teaching Fellows it is our primary concern that we accurately and effectively reflect their work and in particular their approach to learning and teaching. Clearly nominees know their work better than anyone else, and we are therefore asking you to write a short personal profile which can be used in external communications by the Academy press office and the press offices of the relevant institutions. The Academy will find this useful in responding to media enquiries and also in approaching the press for coverage, for use of the Academy website, and for use in the NTFS brochure which is produced for the awards ceremony. Institutional press offices may have other uses for the profiles; you may wish to check details with them.
We appreciate that you may not be accustomed to writing in this style and we have therefore compiled the guidelines below to help you. We enclose examples of profiles from previous years written by the Academy press office and edited by the winners involved (with the kind permission of Dr Jo Fox and Professor Andrew Booth.) We will also be advising HEI press offices that this is a requirement of NTFS submission and that they may therefore be called upon for guidance. Please also contact the Academy (pressoffice@heacademy.ac.uk), 01904 717500 with any queries.
We trust that this process may assist you in reflecting on and refining the core content of your submission to the Scheme – to consider what makes you and your work distinctive, and to reflect on relevant achievements.
The personal profiles should be no longer than 350 words.
As you can see from the personal profile examples below, the style and order of the content may vary, but they must all contain:
Name of nominee
Job title
Department
Institution
The main body of the text should give brief highlights of your teaching career with examples of your teaching practice and/or pedagogic achievements. It is impossible to summarise an entire teaching career in 350 words and it is not appropriate for the purposes of the profile. Nominees should therefore be selective.
Statements backed up by examples or quotes make the text lively and clarify what you are
trying to say. For example:
“Jo is particularly imaginative in her use of resources and new technologies. [For example..] With her encouragement, students have started a ‘propaganda’ page on Facebook. She is developing a project to explore why and how students are choosing to learn with Facebook and how the academic community should respond.”
“One of [Andrew Booth’s] biochemistry students commented: “Andrew Booth’s lectures are the best that I have attended. He brings the subject to life. I couldn’t understand membrane fluidity until he made us go down to the front of the lecture theatre and do the ‘membrane lipid dance’.”
When considering who you are writing for, remember that although the readership will be largely from an academic or academic-related background, they will mostly have different discipline backgrounds to you and so you should avoid jargon and unnecessary acronyms.
Plans for future teaching innovations can also be an interesting part of the profile.
Nominees are required to provide a minimum of three high quality photographs to accompany the personal profiles for press and publicity purposes, as described in section 4 and 5 of these guidelines.
The photographs should be high resolution (300dpi) colour images. Ideally, these would be a selection of portraits (with you facing camera) and images of you in your teaching environment (with and without students/colleagues).
Please see the sample NTFS photographs below for an indication of the types of photographs required. If you have any queries regarding the photographs please contact ntfsindividual@heacademy.ac.uk.
As the nominee, you are responsible for sending in your profile and photographs to the Academy on a CD or data-stick clearly marked with your full name and institution, by noon on Wednesday 03 March 2009 and addressed to: Project Officer (NTFS Individual), The Higher Education Academy, Innovation Way, York Science Park, Heslington, York, YO10 5BR.
Andrew Booth was educated at the University of Leeds and has spent much of his career there. Now Professor of Online Learning in the Faculty of Biological Sciences, his pioneering work on VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments) put Leeds at the forefront of blended learning in the mid- 1990s when he led the team that developed the Bodington VLE. He is a keen proponent of the development of open-source learning systems. Where he led, others now follow; and the importance of Bodington was recognised in the University of Leeds’ last Institutional Audit by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). He is currently working on the development of inter-institutional learning environments.
He has pioneered innovative approaches to teaching not only in his own subjects of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics, but also in non-science subjects such as English and Medieval Studies. He has led national teaching projects with external funding totalling over £1.8 million. One of his Biochemistry students commented: “Andrew Booth’s lectures are the best that I have attended. He brings the subject to life. I couldn’t understand membrane fluidity until he made us go down to the front of the lecture theatre and do the ‘membrane lipid dance’.”
Andrew says that the simulation of techniques considered too time-consuming, expensive, dangerous or ‘difficult’ has been a continuing interest. He estimates that his simulation teaching programs are now in use in 284 institutions in 39 countries worldwide. His simulations were awarded the IBM Prize in 1989 and a European Academic Software Award in 2002. He has recently been awarded Faculty funding for a project entitled ‘Embedding Research in the Curriculum’. The project aims to identify topics that are difficult to teach practically because they require expensive specialised equipment or are too time-consuming to carry out in the teaching laboratories. Starting with the topics of mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance, Andrew will develop simulations informed by researchers who are subject leaders in these areas.
Andrew has always been aware that his work had implications in developing countries, where the practical teaching of modern molecular biology can be difficult. He spent two years working at the University of the West Indies with responsibilities for developing IT-based distance teaching.
Andrew has recently been awarded a University Teaching Fellowship and funding for a project that will address a problem with the screen readers used by visually impaired students, which often perform badly with scientific term
‘Jo Fox is the Rolls Royce Phantom V of the history department. She is the lecturer that Harrods would sell.’ (History student 2006.)
Dr Jo Fox is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Durham University. In her relatively short time at Durham, she has had a major impact on many aspects of her discipline and Department, from instigating change through her work on the Honours Degree in History, to introducing exciting new technologies which have benefited both staff and students.
Perhaps best known for her modules on the history of propaganda, Jo teaches on the principle that students should be empowered to become researchers in their own right. She also believes that History is about understanding complexity rather than searching for concrete answers. To deliver both of these aims she exposes students to a wide variety of sources, including Chaplin films; original manuscripts of BBC bulletins complete with censors’ marks; and children’s games.
Jo is particularly imaginative in her use of resources and new technologies. She has worked with student radio on an Elvis retrospective where she integrated historical perspectives on the cultural history of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 1950s America. Reciprocally, she has listened and learnt from her own students. When they were inspired to start a ‘propaganda’ page on Facebook, it led her to develop, in conjunction with Learning Technologists at Durham, a project which explores why and how students are choosing to learn with Facebook and how the academic community should respond.
Jo is keen to support diverse learning needs. She teaches in a way that promotes cross-cultural and interdisciplinary understanding, as she showed when inviting a student who had grown up under Ceausescu to chair a seminar on life behind the Iron Curtain. She believes strongly that History should not be confined to scholars, although it should be scholarly.
Jo is in great demand, both within her own institution, where she helps others to explore new learning technologies by running university-wide workshops, and nationally, for example presenting a case study of her seminars to the National Blackboard Conference, chaired by Lord Dearing, as well as giving presentations to colleagues across the UK both at regional and national events.
Jo had intended to pursue a career in heritage but changed her mind when an access student at the University of Kent told her, “You have been an inspiration to all of us! You should be teaching!” Twelve years later she still is.
NTFS
PHOTOS High
resolution (300dpi) colour images are required for publicity and
press use. Ideally, these would be a selection of portraits (with
you facing camera) and images of you in your teaching environment
(with and without students/colleagues). Please provide on disc,
clearly stating who should be credited for each photograph.
NTFS
Individual 2010 – Guidelines for Personal Profiles &
Photographs Page