Education Lab

To ensure that this evolution of teaching is an ongoing, continuous and permanent fixture of academic life at Durham and to develop a leading role for Durham in this area, we refine our vision and fully develop our vision for the Education Lab to utilise and contribute to the latest scholarship and research in education.

 The Education Lab provides a hub for four key areas that encompass broadly critical elements of teaching and learning in higher education, namely:

• Active Pedagogies: Active pedagogies define mechanisms for teaching which are interactive and dynamic and where student learning is actively constructed through the process.
• Authentic Assessment: Authentic assessments are challenges which enrich student learning by being worthwhile, significant and engaging.
• Inclusive Curriculum: Inclusive learning recognises all students' right to an educational experience that respects diversity, enables participation and removes barriers to learning for all.
• Digital Learning: Learning enhanced by the use of ever-evolving technology to aid individual and collaborative work is called digital learning.

This is achieved by developing prototype approaches and evaluating these innovative research-informed solutions to enhance teaching and learning across the University and disseminating our results broadly within Durham and across the sector, creating collaborative networks and developing an international hub of best practice in innovative teaching and learning.

Through its location in DCAD, the Education Lab provides the kick start to realising a translational approach to education, where the latest ideas can be innovated on and evaluated, then passed over to the rest of DCAD, where staff training and development can occur and these approaches can be quickly translated from the Education Lab and embedded into the Durham University classroom.

The Education Lab has a number of key projects for academic year 22/23 including:

• Over £200k annually in internal grant funding to support innovation in teaching and learning.
• Fellowships for staff wishing to develop a new idea and spent one day/week working in the Lab
• Special Interest Groups around key emergent ideas in pedagogy.
• A Scholarship Forum where staff can share their experiences of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
• A Education Incubator Course for Staff Developing Educational Enhancement Projects
• Yearly Awards to Recognise Excellence in Teaching and Learning

The Lab allows staff to develop prototype approaches and evaluate these innovative research-informed solutions to enhance teaching and learning across the University. Staff can then disseminate their results broadly within Durham and across the sector, creating collaborative networks and developing a hub of best practice in innovative teaching and learning.

Examples of our work include:

• The funding of a number of projects with highly innovative approaches to teaching, including the use of physical memory in learning; combining ballet with learning French; the development of innovative approaches to digital storytelling; ways to make numerical notation more accessible; virtual field trips and the use of narrative in education.
• The development of research groups in playful learning and immersive realities.
• Our national leadership of the emergent area of the use of virtual reality in Higher Education through coordination of a national network of VR users in HE.
• For more information visit our internal Sharepoint Site (for current staff and students)