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Magazine Publishing was shortlisted for the ‘Best Taught Module’ category of the Oxford Brookes Students’ Union Teaching Awards 2013. Here is one of the comments from students which supported this nomination:

1.     “Teaching an MA standard module on the magazine industry in 12 weeks is nigh on impossible for anyone but Leander Reeves. This has, hands-down, been the most interesting, informative, useful and well executed module in the entire Publishing MA. We've had a mix of lectures from Leander, talks from industry professionals and interactive seminars, all delivered into a supportive class atmosphere that is totally unique to this course. The MA is, overall, highly demanding with an intense workload, which, combined with a class of 80 ambitious students, has resulted in quite a fraught and stressful climate. Somehow, Leander has managed to pull our magazine class into a team that can openly discuss, critique and advise on each others' projects. This module is not only a positive learning experience in itself, but the less stressful, collaborative learning environment has also impacted positively on my approach to other modules in semester 2.”

2.     “Because Leander is amazing. Having taken a chance on me as an independent study student she has made me feel fully integrated into the module. There are great, industry leading guest lecturers. Leander provokes great discussion and creates a safe and supportive atmosphere so everyone feels encouraged to express themselves. The content of the module is excellent, both engaging and inspiring. Leander makes it accessible rather than daunting so we feel more confident as students when taking on assignments and prepared for when we eventually take on the real world industry. She also bakes.”

Module leader: Leander Reeves, Department of Publishing

Quantitative Techniques in Economics and Finance II was shortlisted for the ‘Best Taught Module’ category of the Oxford Brookes Students’ Union Teaching Awards. Here is one of the comments from students which supported this nomination:

“The combination of coursework and exam in combination with the seminars is very effective. It allows for flexibility in the courseload and ensures that a maximum amount of students pass the module. The content is tough but the students are prepared well and effectively for their exams so that they can feel confident.”

Module leader: Scott McDonald, Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics

Lecturers by and large make use of PowerPoint to give presentations. A typical approach would require the presenters to consider their audience, identify the presentation objectives and develop the presentation contents. Generally speaking, PowerPoint presentation is easy to prepare as it gives a fixed structure to explain issues according to the sequence of slides. Presenters can insert pictures and videos to give extra visual information and impact to the presentation. However, the delivery is largely restricted by the chronological sequence of slides. The visual aid for explaining complex idea or relationship is largely restricted. There are ways to make the presentations less linear such as the use of hyperlinks but it is constrained very much by individual skills and also the slide based structure of PowerPoint.

Every PowerPoint slide in the presentation generally serves for two and sometimes, three purposes. First, it acts as a reminder for the lecturer on what they are going to talk about. As a consequence, there is a tendency for the presenter to over-emphasise on words in the presentation. Second, it reinforces the spoken words. Apparently, if too many words are put in a slide, it is problematic as evidence shows that trying to have spoken and written words can easily overload the verbal channel (pictures and images appears to use a different channel). Third, the presentation file is often used as a notes to students which is fine for supplementary purpose. It is however not ideal especially if it is used as the only reference for revision as the structure and contents of the presentation is governed by the style of the presentation and time availability, and is not necessarily sufficient to facilitate learning of a subject.

Prezi is a cloud based presentation tool that is very intuitive to use. It is literally a zoomable canvas. Instead of putting contents as individual slides in PowerPoint, everything needed to be included in a presentation such as points, pictures and videos is put on a single canvas in Prezi. The presenter can then compose a presentation based on the use of a combination of the zoom in and out, and pan functions.

An extra benefit of a cloud based tool is its ease for sharing. There is no need to download anything. Students can easily read the presentation anywhere through a web-browser in any device. To create Prezi presentations, there are student and teacher licences which allow 500MB storage and the user can choose who to share their presentation with.

Franco Cheung, Department of Real Estate and Construction

Examples

Presentation for the Departmental PETAL project on Attendance and Engagement

Presentation for a class on Business Case in P33520 Opportunity and Risk Management

Resources

In the module Statistical Methods in Medical Research and Epidemiology, students are asked to review a paper from a medical statistics journal, summarise it and evaluate it for design of the study, statistical analysis and inference. This helps students to learn how to critically evaluate a case in medical statistics and to propose alternative approaches. 

An integrative assessment has been introduced to the eBusiness MSc based on the needs of a real client. The assessment integrated the technical side of web development (taught in P00803) with eMarketing concepts (taught in P00809) to create an eMarketing strategy using social media and a website to realise that strategy. This was done for a real client and the design chosen by the client was also used as the scenario in parts of the Semester 2 modules. Feedback from students showed that they appreciated the chance to work on a real world project and to see how the material taught on the different modules came together.