Adding value beyond credit - HEAR, awards and innovative learning at the University of Edinburgh

Dr Sue Rigby, Vice Principal, Learning and Teaching, University of Edinburgh

Thursday 22 May 2014
Read Lecture Theatre
Level 5, Sherfield Building
South Kensington campus

As employers increasingly look beyond the formal degree award when evaluating job applicants, universities face the challenge of encouraging and facilitating student activities outside the formal curriculum. Tools that can help academics meet this challenge include the HEAR, with its section on non-credit activities, and the development of an Award that delivers parallel recognition for learning beyond the classroom. Both of these run the risk of becoming mechanistic and looking at a minimum level of graduate attribute, which may lack fitness for the careers to which our students aspire. In this lecture, Sue Rigby offered a case study based on the University of Edinburgh's experience with HEAR and Awards and reflected on their immediate potential and on the much more radical opportunities they offer for the future.

Watch a video of Sue's talk.

Sue Rigby was educated at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where she was also a Junior Fellow of Emmanuel College. After a brief spell lecturing at the University of Leicester, she moved to Edinburgh in 1995, where her current role is Vice Principal, Learning and Teaching. She was previously Head of Department in the Grant Institute of Geology, and Assistant Principal for Taught Postgraduate Programmes. She is particularly interested in masters level study, and is the grant holder for Making the Most of Masters, a consortium project funded by the Scottish Funding Council. She is also interested in data provision by Universities, and sits on the Higher Education Public Information Steering Group, where she Chairs the sub-committee on postgraduate information needs. Her academic background is in palaeontology and she retains academic links to the School of Geosciences, where she also teaches.