ILE is pleased to announce this year's Early Researcher Award Scheme (ERAS) winners. The ERAS scheme is designed to actively identify, encourage and support early researchers.

This is the sixth year of the scheme and the University is proudly supporting twelve researchers, each with a range of budgets up to £5000. The researchers will project manage the funding and use it to support the completion of their individual research projects with the aim of generating publications, and advancing research.

This year's winners and their projects are:   

Name	School	Project Title
Dr Nii Ankrah	STECH	Psychological effects of accidents on construction workers and its implications for performance management
Dr Takis Athanasopoulos	SAS	Development of advanced vector systems for tailored/specific gene therapy and genetic vaccine applications
Dr Stuart Farquhar	UWBS	An examination of board effectiveness in the charitable sector of the UK
Dr Tom Mercer	SAS	What causes forgetting? Exploring the impact and causes of nonspecific retroactive interference.
Dr Irina Moore	LSSC	National Identity and Language Policy in Kazakhstan
Dr Hilary Paniagua	SHAW	The Communication Experience of GPs with Psychiatric Patients
Dr Saidunnabi Piyal	LSSC	Evaluation on National Mortgage Rescue Scheme
Dr Farjana Begam Rowther	SAS	Micro-RNA Expression Profiling to identify Novel Therapeutic targets in High-Grade Astrocytoma Cultures
Dr Della Sadler-Moore	SHAW	Care on the Cut: an exploratory, ethnographic study of the health and social care dimensions of being a residential or continuous cruising boater within the Birmingham and Black Country Canal Network (BCN)
Dr Daisy Jung Tan	UWBS	The Role of Social Media on Trust Formation in B2B Marketing – A comparison Study of the UK and Chinese Markets.
Dr Wendy Marina Walker	SHAW	Sudden death and bereavement in adult acute care settings: Exploring nursing interventions in person-centred care.
Dr Wen Wang	UWBS	Investigation Employee Commitment and family Business Sustainability.

On Wednesday 20 June, ILE hosted the Research Student Poster Exhibition & Competition as part of the New Researchers Conference 2012.

The event showcased 43 research posters from across all the schools in the university.

The winners from this competition will now go on to the Vitae Midlands Hub Postgraduate Research Exhibition and Poster Competition held at the Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry on Thursday 12 July.

The winners of the competition and their poster titles are:

The winners of the peer review prizes as voted for by the competition attendees are:

• Clarity of message - Hoda Kardooni
• Importance to Society - Arline Wilson
• Visual impact - Everlyn Alyangiro

The winners received £100 and the peer review winners £20 of Amazon vouchers.

Dr. Richard Hawkins of SLSSC’s Department of History, Politics and War received a £23,000 grant from the Higher Education Academy earlier this year to research student reflection on their history work placements. Harvey Woolf, who is an Associate of ILE, is the project’s consultant. 

The output of the project will be an online toolkit to assist students with their work placement reflection and related reflective writing. 

Hawkins and Woolf are also organising a related Higher Education Academy sponsored workshop on history work placements which will take place at the Wolverhampton Science Park on 9 May. The workshop has proved very popular. As many as 40 delegates from a wide variety of HEIs across England and Wales will participate in the workshop. The workshop will draw from the different perspectives of academics, placement providers as well as student and graduate experiences. The workshop reflects the important place given to graduate employability at HEIs across the UK.

For more information have a look at the programme of the workshop

In celebration of International Women’s Day we are pleased to announce The fourth Nightingale Lecture will be given by Professor Glynis Cousin, Director of the Institute for Learning Enhancement (ILE)

Why are women under represented as active researchers? Thursday 8 March 2012 1.30pm – 3.30pm, Room MC401, City Campus All staff and postgraduate students welcome

Glynis will base her talk on a critical evaluation of Dr Ginny Fisher's report on women and research at the University of Wolverhampton.  This report was commissioned by Professor Caroline Gipps and its recommendations included the establishment of the Women in Research Network.  She will include a description of her own endeavours to stay research active as a sociologist in a time poor context, picking up on Professor Judith Burnett's notion of ‘nocturnal sociology'. Finally, Glynis hopes to prompt discussion about how we might achieve an economy of effort between our teaching and our research.

This talk will be followed by a discussion with the Women in Research Network on research capacity building.

If you wish to attend, please email the Staff Development Unit at sdu@wlv.ac.uk to book your place.

Over the last few weeks ILE has welcomed and played host to a group of staff from Xiaogan University who teach on University of Wolverhampton Business and Language courses which are studied in China.

The visitors undertook a variety Learning and Teaching staff development sessions facilitated by staff in ILE and the International Centre.  They also met with members of staff from across the University and observed a number of teaching sessions.

At the end of the programme the staff from Xiaogan all received a certificate of participation.

Pictured below in left to right order: Zhang Hao, Helen Gale, Hu Zhengjun, Glynis Cousin, Megan Lawton, Feng Qian, Paul Towers and Qu Xiaojing.

The Learning to Teach Inclusively Online Module is now available to download and repurpose as an open educational resource.

The LTI module illustrates inclusive learning, teaching and assessment practice across a range of different subjects. The module features video interviews and extracts of teaching sessions which offer participants a chance to develop their teaching practice though peer review.

The module includes:

• 3 units  
• Content, activities, forum, assessment, links to other resources, etc.
• Over 100 video clips in a range of subjects.  All subtitled. Available from Open Jorum &/ selected clips in module
• Module developed using Xerte for accessibility
• Available via OU Labspace or via the University of Wolverhampton website.
• Download and repurposing guide with a video tutorial
• Currently embedded in University of Wolverhampton PG Cert

The Institute for Learning Enhancement invites you to the Learning to Teach Inclusively End of OER OMAC Project Conference

This all day event will be held on 20 September 2011 at Wolverhampton Science Park.

The Learning to Teach Inclusively Project is an Open Resource Project, funded by the Higher Education Authority and JISC, to provide an online module with resources to be used in the HE sector.

For full programme details please see www.wlv.ac.uk/teachinclusively/conference 

Are you confident with WOLF? Proficient with PebblePAD?

Why not book in for a 1-to-1 session to refresh your skills, find smart solutions and optimize your use of WOLF or PebblePad within learning & teaching?

Invest 30 minutes now and save hours in the future!

Have a look at our blended learning week programme of sessions from May 16-20. To book a slot please contact Elora Marston on 01902 518768 or email e.marston@wlv.ac.uk

For further information about support for WOLF, PebblePad and a range of other technologies visit the Blended Learning web pages.