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This document provides a transcript of a JISC Business and Community Engagement (BCE) video
that highlights ongoing BCE work in and around the Newcastle University. The video provides
views from Sue Robson (Head of School of Education, Communication & Language Sciences) and Zoë
Bright (School Manager). The video can be found via the JISC BCE YouTube Channel.
Sue Robson: We’re predominantly a graduate school so we’re offering professional development
programmes for people working either in the health sciences or educational related programmes.
Engagement is a very strong part of what we do here.
Zoë Bright: The university itself has recognised the importance of engagement and it’s been
going on for years in pockets all around the university but we’ve now got a Pro-Vice
Chancellor for engagement who is pulling together all of the engagement activities to recognise
the value of that and then drive it forward strategically.
Sue Robson: One of our researcher associates in this school is now wading through about
four hundred case studies of different kinds of engagement activity across the institution.
So there’s masses going on but it wasn’t kind of profiled before. We’re now keeping
track of all of that by trying to keep a regular web based database of all the different activity
that’s going on. So I don’t think we’re doing more but I think we know better what
we are doing and it’s joining up in a more effective way across the institution.
The fact that we work in education to widen participation I think is very important in
the region. This school’s got a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) in Bedlington and
we’re encouraging young people to become researchers in their own school. But behind
that there’s a bigger motive which is to, you know, this regions got very low uptake
of university, so we’re working with kids to encourage them to aspire towards a university
career themselves. I think we’re already doing a very good
job locally. What we’re doing more is developing our international links. So for example I
work with one of our doctoral graduates who runs a teacher training programme for Burmese
teachers in northern Thailand. You can’t run the programme in Burma because the military
regime won’t allow him to so he works in the border areas. So I advise that project.
Professor Sugata Mitra who’s our Professor of educational technology was the inspiration
behind the film Slumdog Millionaire and his work with putting computers into remote areas
of India, China, Africa is very high profile now but actually what we’re doing behind
that work of putting the technology in place is to try and look at the pedagogy and what
we can do to develop good learning through that interface.
Zoë Bright: We do so much engagement that’s value added that’s so very very important.
What Sue and I are trying to do is get the importance of what we do in our school recognised.
We’re really working hard to lead the way for the future.