The Provost’s Teaching Awards and UCLU Student Choice Teaching Awards 2014

Written by Luke Davis, Communications Manager (Education)

On a balmy Monday evening (9 June), all 22 winners of UCL’s two teaching award schemes headed to the UCL Institute of Child Health on Guilford Street to receive their well-earned teaching prizes.

The ceremony, which drew an audience of more than 200, gave colleagues, family and friends a welcome opportunity to hear more about the winners’ work and why they had impressed the judges.

UCLU Education & Campaigns Officer Keir Gallagher took to the stage to introduce the Student Choice winners, while UCL Vice-Provost (Education) Anthony Smith was on hand to review the achievements of the Provost’s Teaching Award winners.

The summaries painted a vivid picture of the scope and scale of work underway across the university, with several themes beginning to emerge.

The use of new technology certainly featured heavily in the winners’ achievements, as did efforts to boost student engagement, empower learners and bring teaching to life.

Highlights included the work of Dr Matt Skinner, UCL Archaeology, who had used object-based learning in his teaching, and Dr Riita-Liisa Valijarvi’s clever use of online tools such as Quizlet, Hot Potatoes and Memrise.

Meanwhile, professional services staff from Estates had worked with colleagues in the UCL Faculty of Engineering to give students a real hands-on experience of improving buildings – in this case, getting their hands dirty in the bowels of the UCL estate.

UCL President & Provost Michael Arthur was keen to congratulate all the winners and thank them for their hard work. And after handing out the awards, he told the audience that the profile of teaching at UCL was growing.

With more nights like this, that seems certain to continue.

Links:

A full list of the winners

Here are the highlights of the ceremony, as tweeted by the Teaching and Learning Portal account, @UCL_teaching, and members of the audience: