Introduction to Supporting Student Learning (Stage 1 FLTHE)

Anyone is welcome to attend any of the sessions for Stage 1. It is aimed at PhD students, post-docs, professional services staff and technicians who are new to any role supporting student learning or who are interested in teaching in general at the University of Liverpool. Please also see our PGCAP and ULTRA programmes if you have a substantive teaching role in HE, or have been teaching for more than 3 years.

Stage 1 of FLTHE is a short introductory programme to supporting student learning in higher education. Your department may require you to engage with some pedagogic development if you are going to support student learning in the next academic year. This might be as a demonstrator, seminar lead or tutor/ advisor. The PGR code of practice requires PhD students who teach to have some professional development prior to working with students, and Stage 1 of FLTHE fulfils this need. The programme aims to build confidence and provide underpinning theory and methodologies for working with students. The Stage 1 workshops include introductory classes on theory of teaching and learning, classroom management and inclusion, assessment and feedback, and then an opportunity to put these into practice in a microteaching session. If you complete all components, we update the CoreHR profile to reflect you have completed Stage 1 (if you are a staff member) and will send you an official email to show your completion. We do not provide certificates of completion or attendance.

Although there is no formal assessment for Stage 1, you need to attend all sessions and submit a short reflection on your learning to successfully complete this part of the programme. Completion of Stage 1 is a pre-requisite for enrolment on Stage 2.

We do not record the webinars: since they involve student participation and group discussion we protect our participant anonymity and create a safe space for learning. However, slides for the sessions will be uploaded to Canvas for you to look through in your own time and there is additional post-class reading for each topic. If you would like to discuss anything with the tutor, you can arrange an online meeting via Teams.

In order to complete the programme, you need to attend all sessions and submit a short reflection on learning. Once the cohort you have registered has completed, you will receive an email confirming what you have attended and completed in Stage 1 of FLTHE. You may wish to have this as a record of what you have completed.

We have built flexibility into the design of the programme where if you cannot attend something due to illness or clashes with your timetable, then if you wish to fully complete Stage 1, you are welcome to attend any session that you have missed on one of the scheduled future cohorts. To do this, you can complete this transfer request form.

No, once you have attended a session, we will register you as having completed this session on our records. If you transfer, you do not have to repeat attending a session unless you wish to do so - you can just attend the session you have been unable to attend. However, we reserve the right to change the programme in future academic years which may impact what is on offer.

If you wish to proceed to complete Stage 2 of FLTHE as a route to Associate Fellowship, you must be working to support student learning in a way that aligns with Descriptor 1 of PSF (this is explained during the teaching sessions for Stage 1), and have attended and engaged with all of Stage 1. This is because the programme is accredited by Advance HE to run in sequence from Stage 1 to Stage 2, and Stage 2 relies on you having engaged with the different components of Stage 1 to put them into practice in your own teaching so you can reflect upon this as part of your assessment for Stage 2. To complete any components you have missed in Stage 1, please complete this form.