Inspire - a Teaching Fellows' newsletter

Promoting excellence in Learning and Teaching, driven by Middlesex Senior Fellows of HEA with contributions welcomed from all Middlesex staff.

Tuesday 24 March 2015

April 2015 Newsletter



INSPIRE – excellence in learning & teaching at Middlesex

Middlesex University Teaching Fellows                                                                         Apr 2015

Welcome to the 6th issue of Inspire. It will be coming to you three times per year.
Feel free to comment on any of the individual items. [Download PDF version]
Research and Teaching or Research or Teaching?
The link between research and teaching (or teaching-research nexus) has been a topic of increasing interest over several years. Despite the growth in literature on this topic, the nature of the links between teaching and research appear to becoming increasingly blurred. 
UTF Research Interests
The last edition saw the launch of The Centre for Education Research and Scholarship (CERS). This centre  oversees the training supervision and ethical clearance of all education-related research degrees at Middlesex University.  Several UTFs contribute to CERS and also pursue their own disciplinary research – a few share their work for this edition.    
Inspired or Confused? Too Many Hats
The role of the insider-researcher is well documented, and confirms the challenges of undertaking research within one’s own area of work. This challenge becomes part of daily life for those students such as me under-taking a professional doctorate around a topic in their own work area.  

App-date
PaperShip is an app designed to give you access to two popular reference libraries – Zotero  and Mendeley  on your mobile device (Apple devices only at the moment). To take advantage of the features of PaperShip you need to have a Mendeley or Zotero account. 

Top Tips for Researchers
Four of the University's Teaching Fellows share their thoughts and advice for researchers. The contributor's messages all cover similar ground - emphasising in particular the value of talking and sharing, in all their various guises.  

Time efficient and easy: research reference management
Keeping track of references and other sources for research writing can be challenging and time consuming. University teachers and students often develop strategies to keep track of research sources, but these too can involve time-intensive manual data entry.  

Conferences
A regular listing of conferences with a learning and teaching theme (including this year's Annual Learning and Teaching Conference on 9 July), plus links to other sites listing similar events.