Forth Valley College lecturing staff gathered at the Stirling Campus recently (Wednesday 16 August) for a creative Dragon’s Den event.
The Big Idea: Dragons’ Den event was developed through a collaboration of the Curriculum and Quality, Learning and Teaching Team led by Fiona Brown, FVC Associate Principal and Executive Director, and supported by the Human Resources Department.
Around 230 lecturers met in the refectory area to generate ideas in teams. The top Five groups were chosen to present their ideas to a Dragon’s Den style panel consisting of FVC Principal Dr Ken Thomson, Forth Valley Student Association President Alan Buchan, Karen Corbett from HMI Inspector of Education at Education Scotland, Steven Drost, CSO from Codebase Scotland and Lauren McEwan, Head of Human Resources at Dog.fish Mobile and a former FVC student.
The ideas pitched to the Dragons were:
The Moodle Bar (Dragon’s choice winner): a friendly walk in space for staff and students to play and learn about the potential of Moodle.
FVC Entrepreneurial Incubator (People’s choice winner): outlining a support hub to promote and engage FVC students and staff with a wealth of opportunities through industry engagement.
Learning Bugs: an early years facility combining childcare and experiential learning opportunities.
Setting Students up for Success from Day One: an integrated and cohesive five-day induction process.
Digital Assessment Centre: a futureproof process separating teaching from assessment.
The two teams who had their ideas chosen were then invited to develop their proposals further at a special creative away day.
Introduced hosted by Creative Industries lecturer Fiona Milligan Rennie the full day workshop aimed to evolve and develop the existing working relationships across college departments in an engaging way, and generate a whole new raft of ideas to be taken forward over the coming months by both staff and students.
Fiona Brown FVC Associate Principal and Executive Director - Learning and Teaching, said: “This has been a great event and there have been some excellent ideas generated. The day was very worthwhile and a good opportunity for lecturers to work in smaller groups and develop ideas and initiatives that could potentially work very well within the college.”
Steven Still, FVC’s Head of HR, said: “The Dragons Den theme worked really well and created an excellent atmosphere and end to the day. It was great to see the staff generating some fabulous ideas”
