EUSA launches student teaching award

Edinburgh University Students’ Association (EUSA) officially launched their Teaching Awards Scheme last week.

The new initiative aims to recognise and reward good teaching within the university and by doing so hopes to address the imbalance of incentives between research and teaching.

Coming soon after the poor results in the 2008 National Students Survey (NSS) the scheme hopes to address the discontent expressed by Edinburgh students by giving them the opportunity to show just how important good quality teaching is to students.

Robert Jenkin, EUSA Teaching and Learning Convener told The Journal, “One aim is to show the university, and Scottish Government, that students do appreciate the hard work and diligence of teachers.

"Although there are currently some small-scale projects ongoing we think that there needs to be a systematic change so that teaching is given equal parity to research in terms of recognition and reward for staff.

"We don't believe teaching and research are mutually exclusive activities; we do feel that they can work well together to the benefit of Edinburgh's students so that when they leave here they have the most up-to-date knowledge and information from their subjects.”

Voting using an online system, students can nominate lecturers, tutors and dissertation supervisors for awards covering a range of teaching areas. There are ten categories which range from those that apply to individual lecturers, such as overall high performer, and detailed useful feedback, to whole schools.

The voting process will close at the end of semester two, allowing all staff who have taught during the academic year to be eligible for nomination.

The nominees will be judged by a panel of students which will include the EUSA vice president (academic affairs), the teaching and learning convener and one school representative from each of the three Colleges: Humanities and Social Science, Science and Engineering, and Medicine and Veterinary Medicine.

The scheme has been welcomed by academics at the university, a number of whom attended the launch to show their support.