By Louise Greener
Head of Pre-sessional Programmes
This summer saw a record number of students (851) joining our pre-sessional programmes. It takes a village to run a pre-sessional, and as well as the management team and the administration team, quite a few members of DCAD supported the programme in various ways (thanks Lesley Kendall, Steve Kirk and Alex Gooch for undertaking many teacher observations and for everyone who helped at student inductions and the graduation ceremony). We always work closely with the team at Josephine Butler College, and once again, they offered our students the full collegiate experience (complete with formals, trips, social events and local mentors) and excellent pastoral support.
We brought in 63 temporary teachers from all over the world and 2 temporary administrative assistants (who are Durham Undergraduates during the year) to support the programme. Our classrooms were scattered around the University, and possibly our favourite innovation of 2019 was the pre-sessional van used to transport boxes of assessments papers, course books, teaching supplies, fans and occasionally members of staff.
This increase in numbers of students and temporary teachers, combined with some significant developments to the curriculum and assessments made for an intense programme. The changes to the curriculum were generally well-received and we were particularly pleased with our new ‘introduction to criticality’ module. This new approach to teaching criticality across the programme had a positive impact on student work and was mentioned frequently in student feedback. Alex Gooch led the project and it is something we will continue to develop in 2020.
Overall, we were very pleased with quality of work produced by our students and the efforts of our teaching staff to ensure their success. Staff and student feedback has been overwhelmingly positive (over 90% satisfaction) and we are hoping to expand even further next year and are ready for the challenge of 1000+ students!
Our admin assistant Orla and our Pre-sessional Van
