We hope this guidance is useful to all members of the University, and have provided some suggestions of next practical steps that individuals can take depending on your role.
We would particularly welcome examples of effective use of content notes from any member of the University, student or staff: please get in touch.
Click to expand:
Please circulate this guidance and any Faculty/Department-specific policies to all members of staff and PhD students who have teaching responsibilities.
It may be helpful to identify one or more members of staff who can take the lead on supporting content note provision, and who can be a point of contact for students and staff seeking advice or support.
You might consider how existing Faculty/Department communication channels, such as websites, mailing lists and social media, can be utilised to promote and lend support to this guidance and to the provision of content notes more generally.
Whilst we do not have specific guidance for provision of content notes within a library context, this is an exciting possibility for developing the future use of content notes. Librarians who are interested in participating in future discussions and research should contact CCTL.
We hope that this guidance is helpful to you individually, but it can be even more useful if used to inform the development of policy and standard practice within Departments and Faculties. If you are able to do so - student representatives may be helpful sources of support - please consider bringing or suggesting this guidance as an item to your Faculty board, with a view to taking action and developing policy as a Faculty to embed content note provision into standard teaching and learning practice.
This guidance should help you with providing content notes for lectures, supervisions and reading lists. As outlined in How to present content notes, they can take many forms. Collaborating with more experience teaching staff within your Department may help to give an idea of existing protocol. Departmental administrators may also be aware if there is an established protocol within your Department.
When adding content notes to your material, important principles to remember are:
- Specificity - if content notes do not specify the nature of the content and the specific pieces of material to which it applies, the notes will be hard to make use of.
- We have provided a list of the types of material which require content notes in When to use content notes. This is not exhaustive but is a good reference point and place to start.
- Attempting to provide content notes is valuable even if the task seems daunting or you are unable to use them perfectly.
We recognise that using content notes may seem like a significant change to those who are very experienced in teaching. However, they provide immense benefits and so we strongly recommend adding them to your pre-existing teaching resources, as well as new ones. This includes reading lists, supervision material and lecture content.
When adding content notes to your material, important principles to remember are:
- Specificity - if content notes do not specify the nature of the content and the specific pieces of material to which it applies, the notes will be hard to make use of.
- We have provided a list of the types of material which require content notes in When to use content notes. This is not exhaustive but is a good reference point and place to start.
- Attempting to provide content notes is valuable even if the task seems daunting or you are unable to use them perfectly.
Please ensure that this guidance is circulated amongst staff and students who teach within your Department or Faculty. We would really appreciate any statement of support.
As mentioned under "All academic staff", an effective way of ensuring content note provision is embeddd into teaching and learning in your Faculty or Department is to bring this guidance as an item to the Faculty board, with a view to developing Faculty-wide practices and policy.
If there is a way that this guidance could be made more helpful within your specific Department or Faculty, please contact CCTL with any ideas or suggestions. We would like to add context-specific guidance to this resource, so it would be helpful to discuss your thoughts.
Providing positive feedback where staff have successfully used content notes may help to encourage their use. If you require content notes and they are not being provided, we would recommend discussing this with your Director of Studies, Tutor or any other staff member you feel comfortable talking to. The Disabled Students Campaign may be able to provide resources and shared experiences for engaging with members of staff who are reluctant to provide accommodations.
If you are a member of staff at the University and believe there is a way you can use content notes to support students, please do follow this guidance as far as it is useful. If you feel it would be useful to have more guidance specificially aimed at those in roles similar to yours, please contact CCTL and we will take this into account when developing this guidance further.