[2003]	The Learning, Teaching and Assessment Newsletter of the Faculty of Science, LJMU
Ab	stract #1.5	28^th April 2017
1849	… to be no more than 372 words.
LJMU Strategic Catalyst Funding Funding is expected to be available for supporting groups of academic staff, primarily being used to employ research assistants to develop innovations in practice that enhance the student learning experience. This year’s funding will be focused on developing and delivering ‘collaborative learning’ and the total funding available is £100K, perhaps spread over “four or five projects” agreed following a ‘town-hall’ type meeting that considers all received proposals. Full details of this initiative should be announced next week.

Learning technology items
>	A reminder that Office 365 is now available for both staff and students and provides the only institutionally-approved drop-box facility.
>	The Faculty has 20 Nexus pads available for booking through the third floor helpdesk for in-class use only e.g. completing surveys. During January-April (NSS/PTES) they will be already connected to WiFi. Outside of these times, student users may have to connect using their own log-in credentials.

Things to look out for in 2017/18

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Over the summer, programme teams will be invited to develop content for inclusion within bound planners (‘homework diaries’), that will be provided to all Level 3 and 4 students in September. After a successful pilot in PBS lead by Amanda Reid, the intention is to provide this ‘transitional’ resource, partly as a medium for encouraging students to explore electronic planning tools at higher levels.

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Skills@LJMU is the new brand for our mainstream skills support that now operates exclusively from within Library Services. A new member of library staff, Dr Casey Beaumont, is the newly-appointed Academic Achievement Manager and will liaise with programmes over developing academic skills support across LJMU.

>	The University’s personal tutoring policy was agreed in June 2016 and can be found here.

Classroom refurbishments

As part of teaching observation reporting, observers note issues with rooms and these are passed on to Estate Services each year.

The following rooms will be refurbished over the summer: HC/123, HC/161, and BS/506.

The following rooms are to be surveyed by Estate Services in advance of potential refurbishment: BS/103, BS/243, PJULT, JPLLT, JPULT, HC/116, HCMLT, and Marybone.

Phil Denton, Faculty of Science Associate Dean (Education)

Maintained by SCSADE@ljmu.ac.uk. Last Update: 30/06/2017.