Best First Year Lecturer Award

The objective of this award is to acknowledge the first year lecturer in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences that most inspires and motivates the students. It also serves as an encouragement for the lecturers as the award will recognise that the extra effort that they put into their teaching and learning activities is indeed appreciated by the students.

Nominations

The students will nominate the lecturer that they feel is deserving of this award. The lecturer must teach a first year module (year of teaching to be stated within the nomination). This lecturer will need to fulfil the basic criteria, as outlined below, as a minimum requirement. Only undergraduate students who are at least in their second year of study may nominate a lecturer. The submission must include:  the name of the lecturer, the module code for which they teach and year and a motivation of 250 to 500 words and must be sent to [email protected]. The student(s) will need to provide their student number, their degree programme and their year of study with their nomination. We propose that the nominations be opened for a month (30 days).

Criteria for the nominations

These are the minimum requirements for a lecturer to be nominated:

• The lecturer motivates, and inspires the students to do better.

• The lecturer is on time for lectures.

• The lecturer is approachable.

• The lecturer is well prepared and organised.

• The lecturer knows how to use ClickUP appropriately, and makes use of the “announcements” function.

• Lecturer replies to emails timeously.

  These are some bonus attributes for the lecturer that goes the extra mile (any one of the following)

  • The lecturer posts useful resources.

  • The quality of the lecture notes ( good referencing to the textbook and/or study guide)

  • The lecturer has a revision session.

  • The lecturer makes use of collaborate and/or other forms of virtual facilities i.e. e-tutor

Criteria for NATHouse for final decision

We will be working on a scale of 100 votes per lecturer. This will be applied in the first year of this award and will be adjusted accordingly for courses where the enrolment is lower than 100 students in the future after the award has been established.If the votes are to go over 100, we will look at

• The number of students in the class and convert it to a ratio

• Student performance will be taken into account.

Voting

The voting period is suggested to be for two weeks. Students will vote on the NATHouse Facebook and Instagram accounts. Their votes will be a like or a heart on the nominated lecturer’s photograph. Each nomination will have a short description of the lecturer and a summary of the motivations.

ClickUP was suggested to be a voting platform as well.

Written permission from the nominated lecturers will be required to distribute their photographs on these platforms.

The first year students will not be able to vote in their first year but will be allowed to vote in the following year.

Students that are allowed to vote are students in 2^nd year and higher.

Prize

There will be a floating trophy that will be branded by NATHouse.. The winner will receive a certificate and a gift from NATHouse. The gift suggestions are a diary, voucher, wine, laser pointer and a tablet. Ideally, the gift should assist the lecturer with teaching and learning activities.

Finer details

We would need to design two posters that will be placed around campus where BSc students are commonly found. Posters will be placed on the NATHouse social media pages as well.

The first poster will be used to encourage students to nominate the lecturer they think is the best first year lecturer. The second poster will be used to encourage the students to vote for the candidates on the social media pages.

The lecturer may not be eligible for nomination and thus receiving the award for a period of two years. (The 2016 winner will only be eligible again for the award in 2019)

The possible dates for the handing of this award are the following:

28 July at Faculty Day – this is a suggestion for future years

At Prestige Evening (Date TBC)

Dean’s Breakfast (end of the year)