Results of 2011 National Student Survey

August 2011: Keele Physical Geography has done outstandingly well in the 2011 National Student Survey, and we want to thank all our students for their support and appreciation! In response to the survey question about students' overall satisfaction with the course we scored a fantastic 97%, which put us in joint 4th place nationally amongst Physical Geography courses! The national average response for student satisfaction (across all university courses) was 83%, so our score of 97% seems to show that Keele Physical Geography students are an unusually happy bunch!
 

Redevelopment of  modules

Summer 2011: We are always trying to keep our teaching up-to-date with what students want and need, and you will notice some changes to the 2nd-year modules this year. In particular you will notice that we have grouped some topics together so that we can explore the links between them in more detail. For example, Geomorphology & Meteorology will be linked, and we will also link Hydrology and Oceanography. We've also created a whole new block on "Representing the World", and those of you that do the 3rd-year Glaciers module will be pleased to see Richard Waller leading a few more of the sessions in that course. Also for the 3rd-years we hope to be able to involve artist Miriam Burke in our "Inspirational Landscapes" module again. You will also see that we have revised the Programme Specification, introduced a new Code of Conduct, and added extra information to the Course Handbook. As always we will be pleased to hear what you think of these changes and to take on board your ideas for any new developments.
 

New staff member in Physical Geography

A new staff member has joined Physical Geography at Keele for the start of the new year. Dr Alix Cage will be involved in teaching in Physical Geography as well as in areas of Environmental Science. She has a background in Oceanography and Environmental Reconstruction, and her expertise dovetails nicely with some of our existing research interests in those areas, as well as with our core teaching directions. Alix will enable us to strengthen and diversify our range of teaching and project supervision whilst building on the coherent framework that we have established at the heart of the discipline over recent years. Welcome on board, Alix!
 

Learning and Teaching Award

Dr Katie Szkornik has won a Keele University Award for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. Congratulations to Katie. This is a fantastic achievement.  As well as being a great achievement for Katie, this award marks a milestone for Physical Geography that is probably unprecedented: Physical Geography won the Team Award for Excellence in Learning and Teaching in 2006, and Individual Awards were made to Peter Knight in 2007, Zoe Robinson in 2008, Richard Waller in 2009 and now Katie in 2010. This means that the team as a whole and every member of the team individually has been recognised in this way. This really is an outstanding achievement and reflects very positively on the work that we do. These awards are based partly on student nominations, so thank you to all our students who have supported us so well.
 

Follow Physical Geography onTwitter

Now you can follow Physical Geography at Keele on Twitter. We will be tweeting study tips, news and announcements for current students You can find us at: http://twitter.com/KeelePhysGeog
 

Teaching Innovation Award

The University has awarded us a £3,000 Teaching Innovation Grant to develop new 1st-yr and 2nd-yr assessments that  will help prepare students for the  kind of assessment opportunities we have started to offer at 3rd-year. In future, the idea of doing a film or a scrapbook or a gallery exhibit as an assessment in "Inspirational Landscapes" shouldn't come as so much of a shock because we will have introduced a wider range of assessments at lower levels!