Staff and contacts
List of CHERP staff members, visiting professors and honorary fellows.
Featured below are members of CHERP staff, visiting professors and honorary fellows.
CHERP Staff
Director of CHERP
Professor Colin Turner CEng PhD FIET FIMA PFHEA NTF
Colin served as Head of School for Engineering from 2010 to 2018 and took up the post of Director of CHERP in 2020. With an initial background in Pure Mathematics, he joined Ulster University in 1998 to take up a post as Lecturer in Mathematics, Computing and Statistics and undertaking Cardio Vascular research with the Royal Victoria Hospital and NIBEC.
Colin’s areas of teaching expertise are in Mathematics and Software Development and how these relate to Engineering. He also has interests in the developments of technology to assist Learning and Teaching, for which he has twice been awarded the University’s Distinguished Learning Support Fellowship and a National Teaching Fellowship.
He has a particular interest in technologies that impact upon Employability both within the University environment and outside. He has had a key involvement in Ulster’s strategic response and implementation of the Key Information Set (KIS) and the Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR), and producing electronic systems to manage curricula and the processes of their development to ensure all appropriate information is captured. Colin has BSc and PhD degrees from Queen’s University Belfast.
Colin is a Fellow of the Institution of Mathematics and its Applications (FIMA), a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET), a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA) and the current President of Engineering Professors’ Council (EPC). He is a member of the advisory group for the All Party Group for Science and Technology at the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Lecturers in Higher Education Practice
Richard Beggs BA(Hons), MSc, CMALT, FCHERP, SFHEA, Distinguished Learning & Teaching Support Fellow
After working as a graphic and interactive designer in design and software agencies in Belfast Richard started down the education development path in 2002 when he began working in BBC NI Education Online and Council for the Curriculum Examinations and Assessment.
In 2006 Richard joined Ulster University in their Online Masters team and held various instructional design related posts advising course teams on best practice in online and blended delivery, electronic assessment and feedback and digital enhancement. In September 2017 Richard joined the CHERP team.
Richard has led the Apps for Active Learning pilot since 2015, embedding appropriate use of learning technology into the curriculum. He also brought Digital Storytelling to Ulster and is lead on the Learning Landscapes project. Richard is a lead assessor and mentor for Ulster’s AHE accredited Enhance Scheme and a teaching team member on First Steps to Teaching, the Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Practice and module co-ordinator on the upcoming Masters of Education.
Richard is Ulster’s Institutional lead for Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and a CMALT assessor. He is also heavily involved in the ALTNI members’ group and is a member of the steering committee.
He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a certified member of ALT, a Distinguished Learning and Teaching Support Fellow (Ulster) and was shortlisted for ALT’s Learning Technologist of the year in 2017. Richard has presented at national conferences in UK and Ireland on apps in education and digital storytelling.
Dr Roisín Curran, BA (Hons), PgDFHE, MSc, DProf, PFHEA
Roisín started her teaching career in Further Education in 1997 having previously worked in the financial services industry in London for nine years. Since 2004 she has worked as a staff and educational developer at Ulster University and is the Course Director of the Master in Education (MEd) programme and a tutor on the Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Practice (PgCHEP).
Roisín has also led a cross-disciplinary project team at Ulster as part of a national 'What works? Student Retention and Success Change Programme (2013-16)' involving 13 institutions across the UK. This collaborative action research has further extended our knowledge of what works in relation to improving student retention and success.
She has a particular interest in student engagement and has published papers on the impact of a 'students as partners' approach on staff-student engagement. In her educational developer role, Roisín promotes a curriculum design approach that moves away from overemphasis on specific discipline knowledge to more process models of curriculum sequencing.
She has co-developed a new Integrated Curriculum Design Framework that scaffolds the student journey and that which promotes: a relational-based partnership approach, active learning, peer support, and ways of thinking and practising the discipline. Roisin is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Vicky Davies BA (Hons), MA, MSc, PgCUT, PFHEA, SFSEDA
Vicky started her career in Further and Higher Education 30 years ago as a lecturer in modern languages, moving in to educational development following involvement in national and institutional educational initiatives.
For the last 17 years she has worked as a staff and educational developer at Ulster University and id the Course director for the PgCHEP, as well as the Programme Lead for First Steps to Teaching (FST). She also contributes to the institutional Advance HE accredited ENHANCE scheme and supports internal staff interested in developing and seeking recognition for educational excellence.
She has also been an Advance HE accreditor and associate since 2012 providing support to many UK and international HEIs and assessing direct fellowship applications. Recent research includes projects exploring the use of dialogue in professional recognition and staff perceptions of engaging with fellowship.
Dr Sarah Floyd BSc (Hons) PGCE PhD PFHEA
Sarah started her career in Higher Education 30 years ago as a lecturer in environmental science and geography, moving in to educational development following involvement in national and institutional educational initiatives.
For the last 14 years she has worked as a staff and educational developer at Ulster University and now leads the institutional Advance HE accredited ENHANCE scheme and teaches on taught routes to fellowship. She supports internal staff interested in developing and seeking recognition for educational excellence and manages the Ulster Education Excellence Awards.
She has also been an Advance HE accreditor and associate since 2012 providing support to many UK and international HEIs and assessing fellowship applications. Recent research includes projects exploring the use of dialogue in professional recognition and staff perceptions of engaging with fellowship.
Previous Visiting Professors
David Nicol, Professor (Emeritus), University of Strathclyde
David Nicol is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at the University of Strathclyde. He was previously Deputy Director of the Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement (CAPLE) and Director of REAP, the Re-Engineering Assessment Practices project, a £1m project exploring how new technologies might support improved assessment practices across three Scottish Universities.
At the University of Strathclyde, over the period 1990-2010, David was involved in supporting innovation in assessment and feedback practices across all areas of the institution.
This work involved collaborating with departments and faculties on innovations and educational improvement projects; leading the development of the university's assessment and feedback policy; helping formulate the university's graduate attribute policy; collaborating with the student body in devising a campaign to involve students more actively as responsible partners in assessment processes (e.g. the 'Feedback as Dialogue' initiative); delivering accredited programmes for academic staff and graduate teaching assistants on teaching, learning and assessment; and revising course and programme approval processes so that they provide better information about the alignment of course provision including assessment with educational strategy.
Over the period 2007-2010 David was also employed by the QAA Scotland as a facilitator for Assessment and Feedback developments across the Scottish HE sector. He also led a project at Strathclyde on PEER processes in learning funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (UK) and he jointly led the Principles in Patterns Project which also received funding from JISC.
David's research and publications are in the areas of assessment and feedback, e-learning and on change management in higher education. Although retired from the University of Strathclyde, David still holds an Emeritus Professor role there. He is still working with academic departments on assessment and feedback projects that relate to his research and he is also jointly leading a project funded by JISC called 'Learning by Reviewing'.
Honorary Fellows
Colin Bryson (NTF) - Newcastle University
Colin Bryson has worked in Higher Education for over 35 years in a variety of roles in Scottish and English universities. He is currently Director of the Combined Honours Centre at Newcastle University. Colin is a scholar, advocate and practitioner of student engagement and working with students as partners. He was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship for this work in 2009. He co-founded and is the current chair of RAISE. His ideas about engagement can be found in a recent publication; Understanding and developing student engagement, Routledge (2014).
Dr Torgny Roxa - Lund University, Sweden
Torgny has been an academic developer since 1988, and is currently at the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University in Sweden. He holds a Masters in Higher Education from Griffith University in Brisbane (Australia). His current interest is Strategic Educational Development in Higher Education, a socio-cultural approach where the essentialist and the socio-cultural perspectives are used in combination. He has developed several major measures for change, both at Lund University and nationally in Sweden.
Previously, Dr Roxa supported development of PBL-curriculum (Dentistry), introduced a university-wide concept for training of researchers in oral presentation, and initiated a strategic faculty-wide initiative for the development of teaching and learning in The Faculty of Engineering. This initiative has gained international recognition for its integrated use of rewards, evaluation, and pedagogical courses.
Dr Roxa has won the Lund University award for distinguished pedagogical achievements and has also been recognized as an Excellent Teaching Practitioner by the Faculty of Engineering there. He has served as an external examiner for the Postgraduate Diploma in Learning and Teaching at Oxford University and has served at Central European University in Budapest as a workshop leader and advisor for future academic developers of the former Soviet Union and Palestine. In 2011 he was elected as Vice President (Europe) of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.