PGCert Portfolio Prize

Rea Duxbury

Rea is Learning Development Officer at Worcester College.  

Rea’s exceptional portfolio was powerfully written. Throughout the portfolio, Rea centred student voices, not just to evaluate her teaching, but to inform her course design. Rea paid close attention to inclusivity, and how to support a diversity of learners in teaching. The module Rea designed, ‘Contemporary movements to decolonise in the UK’, brought together her work on academic literacies and decolonisation. Her design decisions were underpinned by educational evidence, and an astute understanding of how assessment and feedback shape learning. In one formative assessment, Rea planned for students to annotate the rhetorical moves of the writing they were submitting, prompting reflection on the writing process.   

Find out more about Rea here. 

Dr Eleanor Hogg

Eleanor Hogg is Academic Junior Doctor at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Medical Education Researcher at OxSTaR, and Tutor in Neuroscience and Clinical Medicine at Magdalen College.  

Eleanor’s portfolio was impressively scholarly and thought-provoking. She used the PGCert as an opportunity to explore the evidence base for different teaching approaches, making excellent use of educational evidence to inform her teaching decisions. Eleanor’s portfolio also cogently analysed different approaches to evaluating teaching to judge which would be best placed to develop her teaching. For her course design, Eleanor created a Special Study Module in Clinical Genetics. This innovative module distilled concepts and skills authentic to a clinical genetics career into an intensive block for final year medical students, drawing on virtual reality to build communication skills. The module was inclusively designed, and thoughtful about how to use assessment to motivate and reward students’ learning.  

Find out more about Eleanor here.  

Dr Mark Hirons

Mark is Departmental Lecturer and Director of the MSc/MPhil in Environmental Change and Management at the Environmental Change Institute.

Mark’s portfolio was impressive and powerfully written. Mark is was particularly effective in balancing self-reflection, critical engagement with scholarship and consideration of the interdisciplinary context of teaching sustainability studies. The portfolio is notable in that it reflects in depth on some significant and challenging educational concepts – for example, what it means to be truly ‘inclusive’, how to best use learning technologies to support pedagogy and the process of improving as a teacher. Mark grappled with these concepts and, importantly, demonstrated his ideas in practice in the design of his module, ‘Environment and Society – Power and politics’.

Find out more about Mark.

Dr Chris Horton

Chris is Lecturer in Geriatric Medicine at the Oxford Medical School.

Chris' portfolio was outstanding in both its academic rigour and depth of reflection. His portfolio offered some particularly thoughtful discussions on discipline-specific tensions and challenges within education provision, such as the ‘disconnect’ between a content-heavy syllabus and the need to support learning through a focus on skills. The portfolio outlined important issues, for example, how to make most effective use of learning technologies to teach subjects that have traditionally taken place in clinical settings. An exceptional portfolio and most worthy of the Portfolio Prize for 2020-21.

Find out more about Chris.

Dr Rose Sawyer

Rose is Stipendiary Lecturer in Old and Middle English at the Faculty of English.

There were many strengths to Rose’s portfolio, one of which was Rose’s ability to use world events to give students new ways to approach material in Old and Middle English. Rose foregrounds student voices, situating them alongside her own experiences and evidence from educational literature to develop a truly inclusive approach that supports diverse learners. Rose takes a highly analytical, and meticulously detailed, approach to all areas of course design, including evaluation and assessment and feedback. Overall, an impressive portfolio!

Find out more about Rose. 

Dr Katy Clough

Katy's portfolio was an outstanding piece of reflective, scholarly writing in which she critically evaluated teaching practices at Oxford. In particular, the course review and course design elements of the portfolio showed an exemplary level of understanding of effective educational practice.

Katy’s research focuses on numerical solutions to Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, in cosmological and astrophysical contexts. She teaches General Relativity to undergraduate physics students and gives graduate lectures on Numerical Relativity. She is passionate about helping students develop physical intuition in this counterintuitive topic, and making the link to current research applications.

Dr Sally Anne Shiels

Sally's portfolio submission, which included Panopto recordings, was an outstanding piece of work in which Sally presented detailed, scholarly analyses of various developments in medical education. In particular, the focus on articulating inclusive teaching practice in support of student diversity was exemplary.

Sally is an Education Fellow at OxSTaR (Oxford Simulation Teaching and Research) in NDCN and Anaesthetic Registrar at OUH. Her areas of teaching focus on the use of virtual reality simulation in medical decision-making for medical students, multi-professional team training on airway emergencies and the use of appreciative inquiry in patient and staff safety.

Dr Emily X. X. Tan

Emily's portfolio was an outstanding submission and showed how an in-depth understanding of interpersonal dimensions of teaching have enabled Emily to adopt successful innovations in teaching practices to benefit students' learning.

Emily is currently a lecturer in music at Magdalen and Queen’s. She teaches analysis, nineteenth- and twentieth-century history topics, and critical issues in the discipline to undergraduate students.

Dr Lisa Mullen

Dr Lisa Mullen is a Teaching Associate in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Film, and a Bye Fellow and Director of Studies at Downing College, Cambridge. She was a Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford while undertaking her PGCert.

You can find out more about Dr Mullen's work on her website. 

The PGCert was a wonderful opportunity to develop my teaching philosophy, and a valuable chance to share good practice across disciplinary boundaries. Understanding current research in teaching and learning has helped me to refine my skills and to think about how my work and my values can inform my pedagogy - especially important in these uncertain times.

Dr Vicky Neale

Dr Vicky Neale is the Whitehead Lecturer at Oxford's Mathematical Institute and Supernumerary Fellow at Balliol College.

You can find out more about Dr Neale's work on her website.

I'm really glad I had the opportunity to do the PGCert programme. I enjoyed the chance to exchange ideas during the workshops with colleagues from other subjects, and it has given me a welcome opportunity to reflect on my own teaching practice, and to think about how best I can support the learning of students in the Maths Institute and at Balliol. 

Dr Gemma Tidman

Dr Gemma Tidman is a Supernumerary Teaching Fellow in French at St John's College.

You can find out more about Dr Tidman's work on her website. 

The PGCert course offered me the chance to reflect on my teaching practices, to learn from others, and to engage with the latest research on teaching in higher education. I’m already using many of the tools and techniques that I discovered. I’d thoroughly recommend the course to anyone looking for a space to think, collectively and critically, about what we do in our classrooms and why.