Dr Simon Hunt, Emeritus Lecturer in Immunology, has been awarded a Diploma in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, with Distinction at a conferral ceremony on 25 February.
His diploma success was based on the outstanding quality of his 15000-word portfolio on: “Teaching critical appraisal of primary biomedical scientific literature”. He is now a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Simon says: “After 38 years on the job, I thought it was high time to learn how to teach properly. I’m most grateful to the University for affording me the chance to study for the Diploma. Reading research critically should become the most highly-prized and instinctive habit of mind in every student we teach here. For the final decade of my career, I became especially interested in helping 3rd year medical and biomedical students to learn to become good critics and then in assessing them summatively in Finals. My portfolio investigated the educational context and justification for this kind of teaching.”
An outcome of the award has led Simon to being invited to help run a workshop at the “First International Summer Institute of Learning and Teaching for Bioscience Researchers”, organised by the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, in August this year.
Simon joins two other Dunn School academic staff who previously gained their DipLTHE at the Learning Institute of Oxford University. In 2001, Prof William James gained a Distinction for his portfolio, which included “Assessing Potential: The development of procedures that fairly identify the strongest candidates for the Oxford medical course”. This led to the greatly improved Admissions procedure for selecting medical undergraduates that is now in place. Dr. Paul Fairchild gained his DipLTHE in 2008 writing about the proposed changes in assessment on the MSc in Integrated Immunology, and on workshops on outreach to schools.
The one-year part-time DipLTHE course at Oxford University is available to any member of academic staff with teaching responsibilities who has taught for more than three years. Recruitment for 2014-2015 is open now:
www.learning.ox.ac.uk/support/teaching/programmes/diploma/