College Staff Celebrate Innovation

Fife College staff were recognised for their innovative work at a special awards event held this week, the first of its kind to be held by the College to celebrate new ways of working, outstanding support and delivery and best practice across the College.

Over 100 staff members attended the awards ceremony which was held at the College’s Carnegie Conference Centre this week.

Staff individuals and teams picked up nine awards in total over eight categories for projects and activities that are making a real difference to student experience and College performance.

Iain Hawker, Assistant Principal for Quality and Academic Partnerships, warmly welcomed staff from campuses across Fife as well as those staff who work in Prison Learning Centres across Scotland.

Marc Fleming, Innovation Lead from Fife College spoke at the event about the importance of innovation while guest speaker Scott McGibbon, Research Associate at Heriot-Watt University, gave a further insight into examples of innovation within education.

The award winning projects were wide ranging and the event proved the ideal opportunity for staff to hear more about innovative work taking place across the College.

Staff from the Prison Service did particularly well picking up three of the nine awards, one of which was won by the Education team at HMP Castle Huntly for their Independent living course which is helping long term prisoners relearn forgotten skills.

Fife College’s Students’ Association (FCSA) also did well collecting an award for their innovative Reppin’ Player One campaign which they use to reward class rep participation.

Gail Pallin, from the Technical Theatre Team was delighted to pick up an award for the introduction of a new software system, Call Q, used during theatre performances which is enhancing the learning of students.

Larger projects, which involve external partners, were also recognised - Yvonne Bayne picked up an award for her inspiring work to create and develop the School for Health, Science and Technology at St John’s Hospital in Livingston – in partnership with NHS Lothian and The University of Edinburgh.

Iain, who was also a judge on the panel for the awards, was delighted at how the first staff awards event had gone and said. “What an innovative bunch we are here at Fife College – all of the entries gave us a real insight in to the wide range of innovative projects taking place and it was a pleasure to be part of the judging.

“The aim of these awards was not just to celebrate the great work taking place, but more importantly it was about hearing all about the wide range of innovative work we do so that we can share it, so we can all benefit from these ideas and best practice, and of course to shout about it and to mark our achievements. I would like to thank our guest speaker Scott McGibbon and also Karen Corbett, HM Inspector of Education, who gave a wonderful vote of thanks at the end of the event.

“I would like to congratulate all our finalists and winners - they are all fantastic examples of team Fife College and how we are pushing forward with innovative approaches to support our learners and our colleagues.”