Dr Natalie Rowley

Dr Natalie Rowley is a Senior Lecturer, Director of Innovation in Teaching and Head of Quality Assurance in the School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham. She is a fervent believer in evidence-informed  educational enhancement and leads her School in piloting Technology-Enhanced Learning and innovative teaching methodologies.  To facilitate this she has been project lead on a number of projects in the areas of e-Learning and Enquiry-Based Learning, the latter of which led to her supervising the School's first MPhil student in Chemical Education research. She has also been joint project lead on a National HE STEM project on Science Communication and a University of Birmingham STEM Education Centre project conducting research into enhancing the student learning experience through lecture flipping. These have led to her piloting and then promoting the use of Technology-Enhanced Learning and innovative teaching methodologies such as Enquiry-Based Learning and flipped lectures (through Just-in-Time Teaching and Peer Instruction) in the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. Natalie has been recognised for her innovation in teaching by the award of a University Teaching Fellowship and a Head of School Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Impact of work Natalie works with final year BSc students on Chemistry Education research projects, having supervised 29 students to-date. Through these projects, project students conduct surveys with current students in different years of their degree programme to gain an understanding of the areas of the curriculum which the students themselves identify as being challenging. The project students then create innovative teaching resources to complement existing teaching delivery and gain feedback on their resources through questionnaires and focus groups. These projects give an invaluable insight into Scholarship of Teaching and Learning from a student perspective. Looking to the future: Natalie is a strong advocate of working in conjunction with students so one of her goals is to increase her work with students in producing teaching resources. As an example, she recently worked with 6 student interns for a week, working collaboratively through PeerWise, to produce questions for use in Peer Instruction, and she is currently evaluating the effectiveness of these questions through trialling their use in lectures.