Student Led Teaching Awards

So we're pretty much at the end of the year now and that means it was time for our annual Student Led Teaching Awards at the University of Abertay Dundee. 

The teaching awards are - for anyone who doesn't know - an event run by the Students' Association awarding University Staff for Excellence in several categories chosen by students. All students are capable of nominating lecturers and then it's down to a judging panel made up of the Executive Committee and others to narrow pick out the best testimonials and the subsequent winners of each award.

The Student Led Teaching Awards were a joint initiative between the National Union of Students and Higher Education Academy. Designed to give students a strong way to impact on the decisions made at University level by showing who the students feel are doing the job well and, of course, to motivate academic staff by showing that they work they do is appreciated.

With around 388 nominations for well over 150 lecturers, the SLTAs are a big event and should any lecturer stumble across this, being nominated is great and being short listed is outstanding, above and beyond winning. So our 4 award winners this year were: 

Outstanding Commitment to Student Welfare - Lynn Parker

Provided Best Platform for Employment - Helen Smith

Creative or Innovative Teaching - Ian Ferguson

Outstanding Ability to Teach - Adam Sampson

Watching the expression of each lecturer as they came up to collect their award really hammered home just how much these mean to staff, Lynn - the first one up and from talking to her since a very modest person - managed to get out "Wow..." before going speechless.

Whilst Adam at the end had a lot more to say his speech really summed up quite well, the nature of the University I suppose. Adam took the opportunity to thank the team he works with, genuinely noting that it's the collaboration fostered between students and between lecturers that results in the brilliant teaching at Abertay. Perhaps this collaborate teaching style is part of the reason why 2 lecturers from the Institute of Arts, Media and Computer Games took awards and 1 from the School of Computing and Engineering Systems, these are the schools that utilise open labs for teaching, practical sessions and just general work in the University.

So to round off, I'll (again) thank all students for taking the time to nominate lecturers they felt contributed to their experience at Abertay and the lecturers of the University for making it so hard to pick winners. However all winners and finalists here are absolute assets to the University and from personal experience in some occasions the University should look at how to spread the methods they use.

Feel the right people didn't win, or even that the award categories aren't quite right? Drop me a comment!