Anglia Ruskin University: National awards for ARU’s excellent teaching
Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) has been twice recognised for its excellent teaching in the 2022 Teaching Excellence Awards, organised by Advance HE.
ARU’s` Health, Education, Medicine and Social Care (HEMS) team have won a Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence. Professor Claire Pike, Deputy Dean (Education) in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, and Professor of Education Enhancement and Leadership, is to receive a National Teaching Fellowship (NTF).
The Collaborative Award, recognises and rewards collaborative work that has had a demonstrable impact on teaching and learning. Introduced in 2016, the scheme highlights the key role of teamwork in higher education.
The National Teaching Fellowship showcases “the outstanding impact of individuals who teach or support learning in UK higher education, recognising their success and providing a platform to share the learning from their practice.”
The Innovative Placements and Capacity Expansion (IPCE) team from HEMS won their Collaborative Award by developing innovative and different approaches and models for student placement provision across health and social care settings. Working closely and collaboratively with external stakeholders across the NHS and private, independent and voluntary sector in the East of England, the knowledge, skills and values of the team enabled them to respond to national and local challenges in a rapidly changing placement landscape caused by Covid.
Their innovative approaches and models for placement provision included developing a menu of short ‘spoke’ placements, reviewing alternative models for calculating placement capacity, expanding placements in the private, independent and voluntary organisations and developing virtual placements. It was imperative to the team to enhance the quality of educational experience for our healthcare students, whilst safeguarding and protecting the public and securing a future workforce.
In response to receiving the CATE award, Dr Mary Edmonds, Deputy Dean for Practice Learning and Simulation within the Faculty of Health, Education, Medicine and Social Care at ARU, said:
“We are delighted that our innovative partnership working has enabled the growth of a diverse range of high-quality placements for students to meet their professional body requirements. Our set of shared values and collective resilience in difficult times, shaped our identity and success in enhancing the students’ educational experiences. We are pleased that this work has been recognised at a national level.”
Professor Pike’s National Teaching Fellowship Award recognises her leadership of curriculum development, academic quality, student achievement and the student experience across a wide range of Science and Engineering courses and disciplines, and her contributions at an institutional level to ARU’s educational strategy, mission and equality, diversity and inclusion work.
Professor Pike said:
“I am honoured to have been selected for a National Teaching Fellowship. ARU’s widening-participation agenda and responsiveness to local-global educational need first attracted me to working with the institution; I am delighted that my contributions to this mission – together with my work with the Royal Society of Biology, and the Heads of University Centres of Biomedical Sciences – have been recognised in this way.”
The awards build on the achievements of Anglia Learning and Teaching’s Anglia Professional Recognition Scheme (APRS), which is one of the most successful in the sector.
Since it began in 2013, Anglia Learning and Teaching have recognised 805 HEA fellows. In 2021-22, over 80% of ARU’s academic staff had some form of fellowship compared with an average of just over 40% across UK universities.