TEF Gold for University of Plymouth and The Plymouth Student Scientist e-journal

I'm pleased to share that the University of Plymouth has been awarded TEF Gold, a remarkable achievement and fantastic news for everyone involved. Basically, we are a top inistitution compared with other univerisities in the UK when it comes to teaching, in every respect. For those interested in the finer details, you can obtain the summary document from the Office for Students here.

Additionally, I was also excited to discover that The Plymouth Student Scientist e-journal (tpss.plymouth.ac.uk) played a small but significant role in this accomplishment, a journal I run to showcase and publish excellent undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics research. I have to say a big thank you to all the fantastic students and supervisors who contribute to the journal each year! Apparently the Office for Students recognised it as an outstanding contributor/component to student learning and research (Office for Students, 2023). 

Office for Students (2023) Provider's outcome summary - Teaching Excellence Framework: University of Plymouth summary TEF 2023 panel statement document. Available at:  https://tef2023.officeforstudents.org.uk/open-ancillary/?id=f6e163d1-5089ee11-be36-0022481b538a&finaloutcome=29a4f83e-9d53-ee11-be6f-0022481b5c73 (Accessed: 29/9/2023).

The Plymouth Student Scientist (e-Journal)

Really please to have accepted to be Editor for The Plymouth Student Scientist (e-journal). The journal has reach 10 years of successful publications! This was originally set up by Dr Karen Gresty (Associate Dean for the Faculty of Science and Engineering) and co-run with Andrew Edwards-Jones. The journal provides an opportunity to allow final year STEM undergraduates the opportunity to publish their research.

Looking forward to taking on the reigns! 

This journal currently uses the Open Journal System software. However, to reduce hosting costs I am considering an integration into the University's own systems, as this is currently hosted externally.

Hydrographic Academy at HE STEM Workforce Development & Employability in the South West Conference

I attended a presentation for the Hydrographic Academy with HE STEM today. It was chaired by Prof Jim Griffiths (Head of the School of Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Plymouth) and presented by Dr Richard Thain (soon to be Director, The Hydrographic Academy) His slides are available from the HE STEM site in PowerPoint format.

The rest of the team 'in attendance' were placed on a panel at the front for 20mins to an audience of some 80 persons to help answer any burning questions. It included: Tony Jenks, Luke Denner, Jon Scott and myself. We had a range of questions from student tutoring, support and choice of interface. I think we all did a very good job at answering everything successfully, after all, we know it inside out. We were warmly welcomed by Ruth Waring (HE STEM) thank you Ruth, and delighted at all the positive feedback from others. The Hydrographic Academy has indeed been a lot of hard work from a great team of people and it shows!  


Alison Austin (Placements Officer) and Carolyn Deeming (Schools Liaison Officer) set up the Plymouth University stand with all the Faculty of Science and Technology information and kindly looked after the Hydrographic Academy banner, thank you to them! They chose not to be in the picture... I did try!

The event was situated at Sandy Park grounds in Exeter, this is what it looked like outside the venue!  The team even had the opportunity to briefly sit in the padded executive chairs at the top shown in the right of the picture (below) during lunch, just a shame there was no game at the time ;-)





A big thank to all the other presenters and everyone involved in making this a very enjoyable event.  I think this was a superb and fitting finally to our work with HE STEM (South West) region and we were all very pleased to share our knowledge and experiences.  


P.S....not quite finished with HE STEM...the Academy will also be presenting in the final HE STEM conference in Birmingham later this year.

South West HE STEM project presentation by the Hydrographic Academy

I attended a Hydrographic Academy (HA) presentation today with the HA (Plymouth team) of learning technologists and content developers. It's a show and tell of Plymouth University HE STEM awards. Dr Richard Thain showed other Plymouth University academic staff, managers and also

Ruth Waring Development Officer for Higher Skills (SW Region) what we had been up too so far. It's a very busy time, I have to confess that the team has been working at full speed for quite some time and we are in the process of finalising the 'offline' bespoke user interface, it's been a bug testing experience but the learning technologist team has been working fantastically to ensure the end user is happy with the final product. The presentation also included some fun animations created by Luke Denner showing the needs of those persons in the Hydrographic industries to learn on the job. There were glimpses of the various elements of the interface the students will see, we were all very pleased with the positive feedback. Thank you to Prof Jim Griffiths (Head of School of Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences/Associate Dean, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (Faculty of Science and Technology)) for introducing the sessions and Donella Bone for organising the meeting so well!