Dr Zoe Handley, to receive VC’s Teaching Award
Posted on 7 May 2014
Dr Handley, who has expertise in language education and research methods, teaches on both the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and also supervises PhD students. She was recently asked to take on the role of Director of Taught Masters' Programmes, overseeing Admissions and Assessment for a full time taught MA cohort of over 190 students, and around 100 research degree students.
Professor Judith Bennett said, “Dr Handley has consistently demonstrated excellence in all areas of her work. She is a modest and assuming professional who tends to see herself as ‘just doing her job’ when colleagues comment on her many excellent contributions to the work of the Department. She is also a creative professional, known for her approachability and her determination to bring learning to life.”
Since Dr Handley joined the Department in September 2011 from the University of Oxford, she has re-formulated the Planning and communicating research module for MA students, including developing an attractive and valuable VLE site, ensuring that the various elements of the module are understood and provide the platform for high level work by students.
Working effectively with the e-learning development team, IT services and examinations office, she has completed two years of trialling to run in 2014 a successful, innovative summative e-assessment of one of her modules.
Dr Handley co-ordinated the re-design of the Centre for Language Learning Research (CLLR) web site, which is widely agreed to have been very successful. She also made contributions to the CLLR strand of the department’s 50th anniversary conference and the British Association of Applied Linguistics Teacher-Researcher workshop in 2014.
Dr Handley said, “I would like to thank the Head of Department for the opportunities that I have been given. All of the initiatives that I have been involved in have been team efforts and I am really grateful to the advice and support of colleagues in the Department as well as the support from central services, in particular the e-learning team and IT-services. I would also like to thank the students for their patience and understanding, and hope they will continue to provide feedback on recent initiatives so we can continue to improve.”