**18th May - Heather Morgan: Work based placements: fostering the development of graduate attributes at Masters level?** ----------------------------------------------------------- It is increasingly an expectation – of students, academics and potential employers – that University education will encourage and support the development of ‘graduate attributes’. Graduate attributes are designed to enhance preparedness for further study, future employment and citizenship post-graduation. While they are becoming recognised internationally, graduate attributes vary between institutions. However, one common approach to fostering their development, and an improved student experience, is through work based placements. We introduced work based placements with health and development sector organisations for MSc Global Health and Management students at the University of Aberdeen in 2013. This session will explore the role of placements in the development of graduate attributes at Masters level. Slides available [here][1]. **16th March - Emily Nordmann: note-taking on laptops vs. longhand** ----------------------------------------------------------- In 2014 Mueller and Oppenheimer published findings showing that taking notes on a laptop resulted in poorer performance than taking notes by hand. They concluded that this was due to the tendency to take notes verbatim whilst typing, rather than summarising and engaging in deep processing of the material. On the basis of this research, lecturers around the world started banning laptops from lectures. This talk will discuss the problems with this research and present data showing a failure to replicate these results. Finally, we will discuss how future research may be able to address this question with a better research design as part of a proposed Many Labs project. Slides available [here][2]. **16th February - Aletta Boerkoel: Internal student transitions** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Much has been written about the transition to and from university, however, there has been a reduced focus on internal transitions within the degree process (e.g., moving from 2nd to 3rd year). This LTEP funded project used mixed-methods to identify difficulties encountered during internal transition points and to provide support resources based upon student narratives of these transition experiences. This session will detail the results (so far) of thematic analyses used to explore themes relating to transition, with sub-group analyses for each year of study as well as mature students, international, and joint-honours, in addition to quantitative analysis on self-reported ratings of transition success. Slides available [here][3]. **24th November - Gabi Lipan: Employer, academic and student perspectives of graduate attributes** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The presentation will go over the existing literature on graduate attributes, providing a historical overview of their implementation in universities across the world. The focus will then shift on our efforts to boil down graduate attributes from universities across the UK into a set of core graduate attributes. Finally, details about our upcoming qualitative interview study on employer, academic and student perspectives of graduate attributes will be presented. Slides available [here][4]. **27th October - Emily Nordmann - Integrating open science into undergraduate teaching** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Open science practices such as pre-registration, registered reports, and open data, code, and materials are becoming increasingly common in psychology and other sciences. Efforts to teach such practices have largely focused upon early career researchers and postgraduate students, however, I believe it is essential that we begin to embed the principles of open science in our undergraduate teaching. I will talk about some ideas of how to integrate open science into our current undergraduate psychology degree and assessments. I will also present the design of a study aiming to evaluate the impact of one such practice, pre-registration, on student learning and achievement and I would be grateful for feedback and potential collaborators (both within and outwith psychology). Slides available [here][5]. **September 29th - Mirjam Brady-Van Den Bos: Flipped classrooms and feedback** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The article presents the the results of the first Flipped Classroom study that Darren Comber and I did two years ago. These results directly influenced how I changed the FC last year – and again we carried out a qualitative investigation of student perceptions, to see if the changes had made a difference. This time, we found that students perceived that both they themselves and the university (as a system, and also individual lecturers) are reponsible for students’ learning. Students said they learn best when their initial motivation is matched by a learning environment that encourages curiosity and asking questions, and in doing so maintains or enhances motivation. This learning environment obviously consists of physical aspects such as people and the teaching rooms, but also to a large extent non-physical aspects such as the class atmosphere, lecturer’s attitude, peer motivation, perception of the role of lecturer and student, and for some students the non-compulsory nature of the session. This begs the question: how much of this is unique to the FC? I will also outline my plans for a new line of research looking at how students interpret feedback. [1]: https://osf.io/892jq/ [2]: https://osf.io/kshfu/ [3]: https://osf.io/qf9mw/ [4]: https://osf.io/68gky/ [5]: https://osf.io/786d2/