Teaching and Learning Initiatives
Teaching and Learning Initiatives at Manchester
Research into teaching and learning is an important and valued aspect of what we do at Manchester. Staff have a high success rate for gaining external funds to develop their teaching (see the projects below). As a result, our courses are constantly updated and we offer an exciting learning environment for students.
CEEBL: The place of finding. Enquiry-based learning in archaeology
The act of discovery underpins the excavation of every find, whether it emerges from the soil, is discovered in an archive or recorded through oral history. Yet this excitement can be hard to capture in a lecture room! This project, funded by a grant from the CETL Centre for Excellence in Enquiry Based Learning, has re-embedded the excitement of discovery into the Archaeology degree, through innovative teaching methods which place the student at the heart of the learning experience. Initiatives include a multi-media 'CSI' style murder mystery on 'The Ice Man', live 'pop-quiz' events using innovative technologies, a Public Enquiry debate involving improvised role-play, fieldtrips to experience 'Life in the Iron Age' at Castel Henllys, Wales, as well as a creative archaeological workshop at the Blackden Trust: home of the internationally important author, Alan Garner. Students have enjoyed the excitement of taking responsibility for their own learning, and staff have relished the challenges of new ways of teaching in diverse environments.
Mash-up Archaeology
Mash-up Archaeology aggregates web content on museum archaeology and archaeological heritage. It takes advantage of web feeds and basic mash-up technology to aggregate automatically web content on these topics and is part of a larger University of Manchester project that aims to explore its use in postgraduate and third year undergraduate teaching and learning. A primary objective is to familiarise students with Web 2.0 applications (such as blogs, social bookmarking etc) and develop transferrable skills in filtering and assessing the value and relevance of diverse web content to their own study.
The project has been funded by the Higher Education Academy, Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology. Dr Kostas Arvanitis and Dr Siân Jones (Archaeology, University of Manchester) are the investigators of the project.
The CONTACT Project: Lithics and Material Culture
Directed by Elizabeth Healey, the CONTACT Project has produced a set of online learning resources complemented by a reference collection of lithic artefacts held in The Manchester Museum that enable the student learners to:
- Become competent in identifying techno-typological characteristics of postglacial lithic assemblages. This is done through instruction from a lithic specialist coupled with independent reflexive learning by the student.
- Become familiar with the methodologies commonly used and the practicalities of applying them.
- Develop a critical understanding of the wider issues surrounding the acquisition of raw materials, the manufacture and the use of lithic artefacts as part of material culture.