Awards and fellowships

Awards for Excellence in Previous Years

Below are some of the Goldsmiths staff who have previously been recognised with Awards for Excellence (see the general Awards and Fellowships page for descriptions of the aims of the scheme and the associated procedures). Winners for 2011 are here.

Sarah Barnsley (Director, External Programme in English, 2008)
Neil Bradley (Registry / Open Book, 2009)
Marc Calvini-Lefebvre (Politics, 2005)
Stephen Cottrell (Music, 2005)
Adam Cresswell (GLEU, 2008)
Tim Crook (Media and Communications, 2009)
Deborah Custance (Psychology, 2006)
Marianne Franklin (Media and Communications, 2009)
Monica Greco (Sociology, 2006)
Mick Grierson and Marco Gillies (Computing, 2009)
Sonja Grussendorf (CELT, 2006)
Yasmin Gunaratnam (Sociology, 2010)
Mary Claire Halvorson (Director of Professional Development, 2008)
Casey High (Anthropology, 2008)
Rebekah Lee (History, 2010)
Tom Perchard (Music, 2010)
Jane Stobart (Media and Communications, 2008)
Mira Vogel (CELT, 2006)

Sarah Barnsley (Director, External Programme in English, 2008)
Sarah Barnsley has developed a series of innovative ‘e-seminars’ for students studying through the External System, and an exemplary Virtual Learning Environment.

Neil Bradley (Registry / Open Book, 2009)
Neil worked for three years as a volunteer staff member on the Open Book project, developing initiatives such as the Open Gallery and Open Stage. His application demonstrated a reflective approach and the breadth of his personal development while working with Open Book.

Marc Calvini-Lefebvre (Politics, 2005)
Marc is a doctoral candidate who teaches in Politics. He believes that "a demanding seminar agenda helps learners achieve the outcomes of a course", and that "learners are more likely to adhere to such an agenda if they are given clear guidance material and detailed feedback".
Marc is particularly concerned with seminar presentations. He initially gave his students oral suggestions of what was expected, and then one-to-one feedback afterwards. He notes that "this did not prove satisfactory: learners had not understood my guidelines and had not been given any incentive to follow them." He then drafted a document - "Advice on Presentations" - accompanied by a mark sheet that indicated how he would 'score' them and give feedback. He emailed this out, also outlining the philosophy of his approach, and the student feedback was highly positive.

His other main area of innovation was with learn.gold. He aimed to group all information in one place, and offer additional guidance (he provided not only the "Advice on Presentations" handout but also an "Advice on Essay Writing" document). He also wanted to involve first year students in the learning process. As he noted, '"this is a technologically savvy generation that is likely to respond well to electronic forms of engagement" - two students set up their own Wiki page for all students to use as a resource for posting notes and starting discussions. A link to this page was provided from learn.gold. Marc also provided a glossary to which learners were invited to contribute, and posted links to articles inviting learners to comment on them. Both were received with enthusiasm and attracted interesting contributions. Students' representatives requested more such VLE sites for courses, and this has informed the departmental learning and teaching strategy.

Stephen Cottrell (Music, 2005)
Stephen's experience prior to teaching was as a freelance musician for nearly two decades, and this "industry" experience informs his approach:
"I feel able to communicate to students not only the importance of the university procedures and protocols, and the reasons why these are important to retain academic standards, but also to ground such procedures in the practical demands of musical performance, and the rigour and self discipline inherent in successful music performance."

His schools teaching experience also helps him understand young musicians' difficulties with new teachers, environments and collaborators, and offer clear guidance and support.

He has substantially overhauled several of his courses, including:

• new formative assessment tasks for L1 Practical Music Studies
• a new collaborative assessment task in the Spring term, involving a chamber music concert - "a difficult assignment, which puts great emphasis on creative and team working skills." Each ensemble has their own forum on learn.gold to discuss programmes, meetings, rehearsals etc. Each student produces a reflective journal. "Although only in its third year, this appears to be a popular - if arduous - assignment, a small number of ensembles have continued to play together this year."
• much clearer instructions have been provided on final performance assessment, and seminars introduced to help students prepare.

The postgraduate course on History of Performance Music now includes trips to the Horniman Museum and the British Library Sound Archive; "students are introduced to these external institutions, meet some of the staff who work there, and understand how these key musical resources work." Stephen has also begun to use learn.gold for concert reviews. Each concert within the department has a forum so students can upload reviews of the concert and read those uploaded by others. 'This develops the critical listening skills of the reviewer, as well as giving some public feedback."

Adam Cresswell  (GLEU, 2008)
Adam Cresswell coordinates the Goldsmiths 3D Graduate Scheme, creating material to support both students and tutors.
He co-organises the Goldsmiths Administrators Forum, helping bridge the gap between academic and administrative cultures

Tim Crook (Media and Communications, 2009)
Tim developed exceptional materials related to Media Law and Ethics. Tim's approach is to foster a culture of "multi-media immersion" through resources held on learn.gold.

Deborah Custance (Psychology, 2006)
As an existentialist, Deborah believes "humans can only find true meaning and satisfaction by deeply and authentically reflecting upon their core beliefs", but acknowledges that mechanical memorising and regurgitation are more prevalent styles of learning. She also sees students wanting "to be told 'the answer'." She sees her role as "a facilitator who supports and encourages students to develop the confidence to break away from mechanical crutches and take genuine intellectual risks."

She has been attempting this through:

• modifications to the lecture format and to handouts to encourage students to consider and record their own opinions
• posing open-ended questions to stimulate debate
• using PDP to encourage student reflection

Her superb student feedback has indicated that these strategies are having the desired effect.

Within the Psychology department, she has:

• worked with a colleague to produce multiple-choice assessment for first year courses - initially sceptical, she has found it encourages students to review entire course content and thus develop a solid grounding, particularly if they have not taken the subject at A-level. External examiners have remarked on the standard of the questions, and the high performance of the students
• organized lectures to introduce all first year lectures to the web-based support for their courses.
• negotiated a textbook deal for students
• established a second-year timed essay practice, to give exam-condition practice and feedback on work written in these conditions
• mentored a new member of staff

Dr Marianne Franklin (Media and Communications, 2009)
Marianne worked on "The Trans-Atlantic Classroom", an innovative trans-national communication project to engage students in active learning through participating in international video-conferencing.

Monica Greco (Sociology, 2006)
Monica's practice is informed by the idea that "education should provide tools for opening the possibilities of thought" - not only for students, but in a two-way process for teachers also. She believes it is "through the encounter with specific ideas and specific problems that possibilities emerge", and that her role "is to facilitate such encounters". Student minds are not merely receptive, but "alive and creative".

She notes that "any course-specific material is best assimilated, in my view, when it is made to make a difference to a student's perception of themselves and their relation to the world."

Some of her best experiences of teaching have been collaborative, having co-designed, convened and taught modules with colleagues in the Department. In two cases, this grew out of previous research collaboration. The experience of collaborative teaching has involved mutual learning from colleagues, not only in terms of pedagogic skills but also in terms of academic expertise.

Monica took a leading role in the departmental revision of the second-year undergraduate curriculum, and through her convenorship, extended it to a wider reflexive exercise, culminating in a departmental teaching away-day in March 2006.


Mick Grierson and Marco Gillies (Computing, 2009)
Mick and Marco developed the Creative Computing Programme. Their imaginative and innovative approach has a positive impact on undergraduate teaching and inspires wider curriculum review within the department.

Sonja Grussendorf (CELT, 2006)
Sonja regards her contact with a wide variety of academic staff as an opportunity to challenge preconceptions about teaching in Higher Education. She believes she is actively contributing to the college community, through a series of linked steps: Sonja helps staff feel more confident and efficient in their use of technologies, they in turn are more confident and resourceful in their teaching, this contributes to their critical re-thinking of their own modes of delivery, and students then benefit from their teachers exploring more flexible and accessible material.

She aims to foster critical thinking about the use of technology in teaching. She adds: "It cannot be my role to promote an unquestioning enthusiasm for all things technological, but rather to consider how and when, if at all, acquiring technological skills may benefit an individual's learning, and/or improve teaching, and/or alleviate their administrative burden. It is often as important to say 'no' to unsuitable innovations as it is to say 'yes' to inventive solutions." She argues that Goldsmith's diversity precludes a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to technology, which would "elicit suspicion and result in resistance".

Her interactions with staff must involve a focussed attention on their thinking about technology and their level of skills. "I believe that my success with individual staff here is a matter of persuasive performance; in this I take my cue from academic staff as much as from my colleagues; in working with them I hope to learn as much from them as they learn from me."

Some of the many exciting projects she has supported in the last 4 years have made use of technologies to complement the textual with the visual and aural, for example:

• animations to illustrate theoretical concepts in Flash
• aural exercises for first year music students using Sibelius
• virtual museum tours for history students using QuickTime VR
• short performance videos to enhance presentations in Theatre and Performance using Final Cut Pro and PowerPoint

such learning objects can be reused in different contexts, and shared across disciplines. They give students different access to material, supplementing ubiquitous textual representations. They also "elicit a sense of achievement, pride and continuing interest" in the creators. These projects have mostly been achieved through fellowship programmes, which Sonja feels is the most successful way of instilling good practice in staff; regular meetings allow her to develop a dialogue within which she can help ideas develop, while the staff member maintains ownership of the project. Sonja also devises and conducts CELT workshops, in person and online, including a collaborative workshop with Queen Mary.

Yasmin Gunaratnam (Sociology, 2010)
Yasmin describes her approach as ‘sociology as pedagogy’ (Halasz and Kaufman, 2008): employing sociological understanding of social process and practices to improve her own teaching and learning.

Many of her activities fall into three categories of practice, which she describes as follows:

• Scaffolding: the development of transitional, supportive materials that help students bridge the gap between existing skills and knowledge and the skills and knowledge that are required to achieve learning outcomes
• Spiralling: the development of new and complex sociological knowledge through a frequent return to fundamental ideas and concepts
• Simulation: creating opportunities for students to apply abstract sociological and methodological knowledge to imagined or real-world situations.

One minor example of her innovations: Yasmin collects Top Tips about each course she convenes from students at the end of the academic year, and uses them to help orientate new students at the start of the following year to the specific demands of the course (and to stimulate thinking about what they can do to meet those demands).

Mary Claire Halvorson (Director of Professional Development, 2008)
Mary Claire Halvorson has designed and delivered the Goldsmiths PG Certificate in the Management of Learning and Teaching (accredited by the Higher Education Academy in 2008). She supports and promotes internationalism among staff and students through the ERASMUS scheme, and other initiatives.

Casey High (Anthropology, 2008)
Casy High organised an extensive extra-curricular seminar series in human rights, and in Latin American Anthropology. His role-play activities to illustrate human rights debates were particularly successful.

Rebekah Lee (Sociology, 2010)
Responding to student needs, Rebekah has implemented and managed a new personal tutorial system in History. Personal tutors now regularly meet their tutees and tackle a range of academic issues including academic progress, course choices for the following year, and career and personal development. Academic support and personal development has thus become much more central to the personal tutor system, where previously the system was mainly geared towards attendance monitoring and crisis management.

Rebekah has also initiated the automation of all summative coursework feedback; students submit, tutors mark, and students access marks, all via the VLE. Previous to this, students wanting summative feedback needed to submit a written request for it; now, they can all view detailed feedback at the click of a mouse and discuss it with their personal tutors.

Joint honours students have traditionally been disadvantaged by a lack of an overarching cross-departmental structure. Rebekah has set up systems to counter this: a third year dissertation VLE, which has been of particular use to joint honours students, and  a ‘joint honours handbook’, so students do not have to juggle bulky and conflicting sources of information.

Tom Perchard (Music, 2010)
Tom radically overhauled a first-year course to bring together a diverse student body, the cohort split between those studying popular music, classical music, and music computing.

The course was planned from the assessment up. Assessment tasks were supported by a 30 minute class on ‘the questions behind the questions’ – the intellectual and organisational demands implicit in each assignment title. This built upon a 3 week, non-compulsory First-term study skills course. These study skill sessions are being considered for adoption across the department, as a compulsory omponent of level 1.

The feedback/marksheets Tom uses have been adopted department-wide for academic written work.

He has made extensive use of the learn.gold forum, setting up threads for discussion, music recommendation, links to research materials.

He has also sought out and incorporated student suggestions to improve the subsequent year of the course.

Jane Stobart (Media and Communications, 2008)
Jane Stobart designs courses on practical elements including animation and illustration, impressively incorporating new digital technologies into her teaching.

Mira Vogel (CELT, 2006)
In many teachers' attitudes, Mira recognises a "resistance to the tyranny of technology for its own sake". However, technology is a growing presence in our lives, and brings with it rifts between those who incorporate technological advances into their practice, and those who don't.

"One is the difference between the expectations of learners and those of teachers. Another is the danger of digital exclusion - which increasingly foreshadows social exclusion - from the benefits of technology through lack of awareness or means of participating."

Mira sees her role as helping staff to grasp new tools with "imagination and discretion, keeping their learners as their central consideration."

Much of Mira's work takes place in the context of the CELT Fellowships, working towards goals identified with teachers an early stage of the collaboration. Mira aims "to create a climate for vision and experimentation with the technologies, and this requires a safe environment in which ideas can be free ranging, and which includes the safety-net of contingency plans, and the assurance of timely practical support."

She notes that part of her role is to "keep colleagues buoyant in the face of pit-falls", identifying reasons for these and making people aware of safeguards. She feels that influence and inspiration are reciprocal between the people she works with and herself:

"my exchanges with teachers across disciplines are crucial to my understanding of how different academic communities define relevant knowledge in their domains, and how this relates to the approaches they use in teaching."

Working on learn.gold (the College Virtual Learning Environment), Mira encourages a sense of community in course area authors. During her recently completed external project on Design for Learning (funded by JISC) she found that online course areas often lack the "explicit relationships, context and activities without which they are little more than e-information". Consequently, she places particular emphasis on the explicit integration of learning both online and offline. Mira also makes teachers aware of how learn.gold can improve accessibility for students with particular needs or impairments.

Mira encourages staff to record the stages of developing online learning for future reference, which allows expertise and resources to be shared if that person leaves. Mira helps with the CELT workshops series including, for 2007, uses of blogging in Higher Education and the changing World Wide Web. She has authored a growing collection of guides and peer-reviewed publications. Her future goals include raising awareness of the potential of different technologies in learning and teaching, and working towards a virtuous circle in which learners can and do participate in online activities, which in turn supports and inspires teachers in their creation.

 

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