Our Exeter Education Incubator Café 's are based on the concept of a carousel-style discussion to showcase the work of projects in an informal way.

Incubator Fellows in their project teams will share their Education Incubator project process and outcomes to a small group of attendees, before inviting the opportunity for questions and discussion about their work. Presenting/sharing sessions last for 20 minutes. A bell with ring after this time and the attendees will move to the next table. Education Incubator Fellow teams will then repeat their talk to a new small group.

We hope that this style of event allows our Education Incubator Fellows to communicate their work, and network with colleagues in a collegiate, fun and inspiring approach. 

Our next Exeter Education Incubator Café will be held on the Monday 26th June 2 - 4.30pm, and is part of the EduExe Festival at the University of Exeter. 

The Incubator Café will be split into two 1 hour sessions. Each session will have up to 6 Inubcator Fellow teams sharing their funded activities, projects and outcomes.

You can learn more about our Incubator Fellows' and the projects they shared by reading our Exeter Education Incubator Café Session 1 Booklet June 2023 and Exeter Education Incubator Café Session 2 Booklet June 2023.

If you have any questions about the projects in the booklets please contact our Fellows, who have left their details for you to get in touch. 

Our 22-23 Incubator Discovery Grant enables educators to gather a diverse group of people to explore an educational challenge together using Design Thinking tools.

We've asked each Discovery Fellow to use two of three possible Design thinking templates:

• Empathy Map,
• Systems Map, 
• Prototype Evaluation.

These templates are tried and tested tools used widely in Design Thinking to explore problems and gather diverse experiences.

We are bringing some of our Discovery Fellows to participate in a panel Q+A styled event.

Our Panellists:

• Dr Leila Dawney
• Dr George Tarling
• Dr Martin Robson
• Dr Mark Carew
• Nicky Thomas
• Dr Alison Hill

Our Chair, Professor Sarah Dyer, will pose a series of questions about how the Design Thinking tools used have helped the fellows to explore their pedagogical/educational challenge, followed by an opportunity for audience Q&A. 

Sign up via our Eventbrite to attend our online Discovery Gathering Q+A and informal networking session afterwards. 

This event is part of the University of Exeter's EduExe Festival which is a month of events celebrating and showcasing all our educators at the University of Exeter.

Our Discovery Grants are our pledge to support small scale pedgagogical innovation and encourage an innovation mindset for all our educators. 

These grants are also our commitment to innovating the way in which we cultivate and invest in pedagogic innovation, creativity and collaboration.  

You can read more about our current (22-23) Discovery Fellows here: Incubator Discovery Grants

The Exeter Spectrum Project is held a virtual conference in July 2021, which is open to all who are interested in autism in HE, whether they are educators, researchers or students.

Contributions were made on the following topics:

• Supporting transitions, e.g. from school to university, or from university to workplace
• Inclusive course and assessment design and delivery 
• Understanding and embracing neurodiversity
• Communication strategies
• Socialising at university
• Creating community and belonging

This was our second online Café event and builds on the Café event held in 2020, offering more flexible sessions spread over two weeks to give attendees more opportunity to learn and discuss projects and network with like-minded peers and students.

The catalogue below reflects the incredible effort our project teams have all put in during this past year, which you can download by clicking here

To learn more about these projects or if you have any questions about future funding opportunities, please email us at educationincubator@exeter.ac.uk. 

The Kinder Exeter: Compassion Through Play project ran from June 14th-20th 2021.

Funded by the Education Incubator through the Erasmus+ CaST scheme, the project collaborated with students to produce a week-long festival of play, colour and kindness. As people re-emerged from lockdown, families, children and adults were all invited to play games, make music and have a lot of fun in the green spaces of our city centre. Supported by kindness ninjas roaming the streets, playful yoga in the park, origami, quizzes and a scavenger hunt, after months of being deserted, the city centre blossomed once again thanks to Kinder Exeter.

We invite you to join us for our inaugural Playful University Club - Monthly Meeting on the 26^th August from noon to 1:30pm on zoom.

These monthly meetings are open to whole University and will be informal meetings with invited speakers and guests with the aim to support a compassionate community using play.

We are incredibly excited to have Ian Gilbert as our first invited speaker. Since founding Independent Thinking in 1994, Ian has built a global reputation as an educational thinker, innovator, entrepreneur, speaker and award-winning editor and writer. He was listed by the IB magazine as one of their top 15 ‘educational visionaries’. Never happier than when he is making children’s brains hurt, he has a unique first-hand perspective on the world of education having lived and worked in schools and universities in the UK, the Middle East, South America and Asia. See here for his TED^x talk in 2012.

If you are interested, please email sign up for a free ticket here.

If you cannot make it – don’t worry you might be able to join the fun next month.

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CEMPS want to invite you to sign up to a one-day Digital Learning Writing Retreat that we are jointly running on 24^th August, 09:30 - 16:30.

The retreat will provide a dedicated space where attendees can discuss how we – as a community of academic and professional services staff – can best design, use, and evaluate ELE modules.  

The event will have four focused-work periods linked to different elements of designing and using ELE, as well as Digital learning Developers who will be able to provide 1:1 expert and troubleshooting support.

The primary outcome of the event will be that you will have set up one of your modules on ELE and have a much greater understanding of the ELE formatting process. 

If you can join us at the event, please claim your ticket here. If you have any questions, please do get in touch at the educationincubator@exeter.ac.uk or read the Joining Instructions here.

We invite you to take a break from it all and come along and spend some time playing games with us during our inaugural Playful University Game Night/morning on zoom. We will be hosting one session in the evening and one in the morning - playing short collaborative ice-breaker type games like ‘Just One’, ‘Ultimate Werewolf’ and ‘Drawful2’.

If you have any suggestions or requests, let us know by emailing Maarten Koeners.

Could you please signup for tickets below so we have an idea of the number of players? If you cannot make it – don’t worry you might be able to join the fun next month.

Game Night: 13^th August 19:00 – 20:30 (UK time)

Game Morning: 20^th August 10:00 – 11:30 (UK time)

This year, the first online Incubator Café took place between 6th-10th July 2020.

It was an extremely popular event with over 750 session attendees at 132 sessions, which allowed our Incubator Fellows to communicate their work, and network with colleagues and guests online using Microsoft Teams. 

In each of the 30-minute sessions, current and future fellows presented their Education Incubator projects, before inviting the opportunity for questions and discussion about their work. We were also lucky to be joined by staff from Academic Development and the Grand Challenges to present on their own work, signalling an area for development and growth in 2021.

To learn more about what projects featured at the Café, please click here.

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At he halfway point in the Education Incubator year we were delighted that this year’s fellows presented their work in a series of Work in Progress sessions. 

The project leads updated us on their work to date, and explained what they planned to do withh the remainder of the year. Afterwards, there was space for conversations about their projects, their plans, and potential for collaboration and increased impact.

Unfortunately, some of the Work in Progress sessions were unable to take place due to Covid-19 restrictions. Those that took place are listed below:

Weds 12th February

12:30-14:00

Forum Seminar 3

Layal Hakim – The Exeter Spectrum Project – read their blog for more information about this fascinating project which aimed to improve the experience of students with autism spectrum conditions.

Matt Finn – Using video content to enhance student learning – Matts project aimed to produce video content to support flipped learning in research design skills.

Matthew Rogers & Michael Leyshon presented a paper at the annual MeCCSA conference in Brighton. Designing for Inclusivity - Platforms of Protest and Participation 

Emma Taylor is presenting her APPLE form at the Advance HE Annual STEM conference 

Abstract:

The 'APPLE' form as a vehicle for the identification, development and articulation of student skills and attributes

Undergraduate students often find it difficult to extract transferable skills and attributes from their academic and extra-curricular activities or, conversely, to articulate these effectively for the graduate job market. We have developed the APPLE (Academic, Personal and Professional Learning Evaluation) form to address this issue, with students completing an ongoing reflection upon the most commonly-required employability skills and providing their current best evidence for each. This informs discussion with their tutor, who can use the form to signpost the student to development opportunities or mentor the student to evidence their skills more effectively, offering a more equitable tutor experience.