LTEA conference at Whiteknights Campus-Day One!

(The LTEA conference is taking place on the 'Whiteknights' campus of the University of Reading, which put me in mind of The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle - who's much more famous for Sherlock Holmes)

I just got home from day one of the LTEA conference, where I gave a presentation about my oral history project, 'Teaching the Talk', in collaboration with Adam Smith. Really, Adam gave about 90% of the presentation. I introduced the project, but he talked about being an oral history interviewer, as an undergraduate student - a story that begins with him nearly signing up to the project as a first-year, and ends with him managing an oral history project at St. Catherine's School in Sheffield.

Here's a few highlights from the day:

Ursula McGowan gave an eye-opening presentation about citation, plagiarism, and following the Boyer Commission's much-quoted (and less often followed) recommendation that undergraduates should be treated as 'apprentice researchers'.

Ursula's key point was that, in her words, 'whenever we ask students to cite sources, we are asking them to be researchers,' but that rather than saying 'you're now part of a community of practice, and one of our conventions is that we cite sources, for the following reasons...' we just say 'you've got to cite your sources, or else it's plagiarism, which is unforgivable' (I'm embellishing - her description was more measured). She's designed an excellent audio-narrated powerpoint presentation about plagiarism and academic writing, which puts it in the context of the core functions of academia.

Joanna John talked about an undergraduate survey that's been conducted on the impact of UROPs (Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programmes) across the UK. There's a PDF from another UROP powerpoint presentation (this one by Joanna's collaborator, John Ceighton) here. Very interesting stuff about research skills, understandings of what research entailed, and whether or not people wanted to pursue research careers before and after taking part in a UROP. Joanna's based at the 'Applied Undergraduate Research Skills' CETL at Reading (CETL-AURS). Their UROP page is here.

And one more paper: Rhi Smith's talk on the great stuff she's doing with undergraduates at the Museum of English Rural Life.