Newcastle Library Service, Research and Impact

NUDLL welcomed another Guest Speaker this month, Luke Burton, Service Manager, Community Hubs and Libraries at Newcastle City Council (NCC) gave us an overview of the collaborative research the Council and in particular the Library Service, have done, and continue to do with us here at Northumbria and wider afield. Our REF 2021 Impact Case Study included much of the outreach work done by NCC and Your Homes Newcastle (YHN) in support of digital citizenship. Luke talked about how it is possible to grow something as impactful and sustainable as this long term initiative from a relatively modest, successful collaborative funding bid. He also encouraged us to keep sharing ideas and reaching out with our emerging research ideas as they are very receptive to innovation and research in general.

“Fascinating to hear about the extended role of the library and library staff”

Writing your first publication

Today Joe Shimwell from our NUSTEM team (www.nustem.uk) gave us a fascinating insight into his experience producing his first academic journal publication: Shimwell, J., DeWitt, J., Davenport, C., Padwick, A., Sanderson, J. and Strachan, R., 2021. Scientist of the week: evaluating effects of a teacher-led STEM intervention to reduce stereotypical views of scientists in young children. Research in Science & Technological Education, pp.1-21 .

It was a very honest and reflective account and generated a lot of questions and discussion among the group, including further tips and guidance for those starting out.

“This is the most refreshing talk I’ve been to in forever!!”

This has been one of the most useful sessions I’ve been to regarding getting started with research”

Open Access, Re-imagining Information Literacy and Decolonisation of Reading Lists.

This month we had three very interesting but different speakers at our research group. Ellen Cole, Research and Quality Manager provided an interesting session on Open Research at Northumbria and the latest thinking and developments in this area. Later in the month, Dr Geoff Walton, Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and formerly at Northumbria University revisited us to give us an insightful talk on Re-imagining information literacy: A new perspective from research. Geoff shared with us the video he has recently been working on around information discernment and used this to prompt debate and discussion during the session. And at our final session for the month, Dr Biddy Casselden gave us an update on her project on decolonising reading lists in the department, an important consideration as we move forward with our equality, diversity and inclusion agenda.

Best Paper Award for Attracting, Engaging and Retaining Human Talent to Engineering: IEEE Educon 2021

Congratulations to Dr Opeyemi Dele-Ajayi, Emma Anderson and Professor Becky Strachan for their paper on Widening Young People’ Aspirations for STEM and Digital Careers: A Case Study of the DIGISTEM Project. It won the Best Paper Award at the IEEE Educon 2021 conference for ‘Attracting, Engaging and Retaining Human Talent to Engineering’. Co-authors included Victor Ayodele, Femi Alufa, Akachukwu Okoli and Kemi Fasae. Full paper is available here.

Dr Opeyemi Dele-Ajayi also presented a second paper at the conference: B. Tijani, N. Madu, T. Falade and O. Dele-Ajayi, "Teacher Training during Covid-19: A Case Study of the Virtual STEM Project in Africa," 2021 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 2021, pp. 226-234.

Digital Fluency: The Skills for Today - a TEDx Talk by Dr Itoro Emembolu

Our very own Dr Itoro Emembolu recently recorded a TEDx talk on Digital Fluency: The Skills for Today. Available here, this talk highlights how the world is changing and the need for people to become digitally fluent. It was great to listen to Itoro drawing on her experience from her PhD and work with Northumbria but also her experience from the Nigerian context. Well done Itoro!!

IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference - October 2020

This year the IEEE Frontiers in Education conference was due to be held in Sweden but due to Covid-19, the conference had to move online. The Digital Learning Lab with colleagues had three papers being presented at the conference

  1. Overcoming the Challenges of Teaching Cybersecurity in UK Computer Science Degree Programmes, T. Crick, J. H. Davenport, P. Hanna, A. Irons and T. Prickett. Available here, this paper investigates the diversity of challenges relating to the teaching of cybersecurity in UK higher education degree programmes. Using a lens of national policy, it provides a set of recommendations for pedagogy and practice.

  2. Tackling Gender Stereotypes in STEM Educational Resources, O. Dele-Ajayi, J. Bradnum, T.. Prickett, R. Strachan, F. Alufa, V. Ayodele. Available here. This study highlights that Nigerian school textbooks in science, technology and mathematics often reinforce stereotypical views of scientists and engineers. It concludes that there is an urgent need to provide more inclusive educational resources so young people can realise STEM careers and subjects are for ‘people like them’.

  3. Tackling the digital and engineering skills shortage: Understanding young people and their career aspirations, A. Padwick, C. Davenport, R. Strachan, J. Shimwell and M. Horan. Available here. The aim of this research was to explore the factors that influence younger children’s job aspirations, particularly those in STEM. Very few children aspired to engineering and digital careers, with a gender difference evident. The findings demonstrate an urgent need to adapt education to tackle this situation.

The conference itself used a virtual conferencing environment and authors pre-recorded their presentations with time for questions and answers in each schedule session. Although it was not the same as meeting face to face, there was the opportunity for discussion and debate, and the programme itself extended over a longer daily period to accommodate different time zones. For full details of the conference programme, see https://www.fie2020.org/.

Resilience Among First Year Undergraduate Computer Science Students

This years ACM Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE) ran virtually- from 17th - 18th June 2020. Proceedings are available online. Dr Tom Prickett and Julie Walters from Northumbria had the pleasure of presenting their Paper  "Resilience and Effective Learning in First-Year Undergraduate Computer Science" . Over the two days of the conference there were over 400 attendees. The paper was presented live to over 100 attendees.  Dr Tom Prickett also presented his poster "Assessing the Value of Professional Body Accreditation of Computer Science Degree Programmes: A UK Case Study". Elsewhere at the conference was a fascinating presentation related to Cyber Security - Infusing Principles and Practices for Secure Computing Throughout an Undergraduate Computer Science Curriculum (Jean R. S. Blair, Christa M. Chewar, Rajendra K. Raj, and Edward Sobiesk) .

British Council Creative Sparks - Visit to Ukraine

In early March, myself, Alison Pickard, Tanya Vlasova and Alfredo Moscardini visited our partner Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev in Ukraine to continue our work on our Creative Sparks project funded by the British Council. The aim is to create a National Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship for Ukraine hosted by the team at Taras Shevchenko. We used the week’s visit to meet with the team and discuss plans but also run a series of workshops on creative thinking, leadership, evaluation and soft skills with the staff. I also gave a guest lecture on inclusive leadership to an audience of staff and students. We had a great week and it was interesting to discuss our ideas and approach with the team in Ukraine and how this could be used with students going forward. We are looking forward to continuing to work with them - next stage is to for the staff there to deliver the workshops to students and to support student teams in getting ready for the Big Ideas Competition - a challenge led by British Council across all the countries involved in the Creative Sparks Programme.

Repositioning degree accreditation with the British Computer Society

Dr Tom Prickett has been working with colleagues from across the UK (Professor Tom Crick, Swansea University, Professor James H Davenport, University of Bath, Professor Paul Hanna, Ulster University and Professor Alastair Irons, University of Sunderland) to explore the value of accreditation by the British Computer Society and how it can be enhanced. Seven key dimensions have been identified: raising output standards; promoting internationally-agreed standards; ensuring curricula relevance; disseminating good practice; industry relevance; independent peer review; and accrediting work experience.

They presented a case study of this at the ACM Computing Education Practice Conference held in Durham on 9th January 2020 and discussed it in a blog on the British Computer Society website later that month