PGCert

Teaching in Higher Education

The PgCertHE is designed for practitioners delivering on higher education programmes across HE and FE institutions. It offers development in Learning and Teaching in the modern HE environment as well as introducing participants to a wide range of approaches meeting the Enabled Active Learning and Universal Design for Learning USW guidelines.

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Key Course Details

  • Start Date

    September

  • Location

    Online

  • Campus Code

    C

Fees

The course is designed to help participants develop their professional practice in Higher Education.

Designed For

The PgCertHE course is designed for those who have less than four years' experience of teaching in a Higher Education environment, whether at university or in a partnership college delivering higher education courses. The course is for lecturers, PhD students, professional services staff or technicians that have regular face-to-face contact with students.

Accredited by

  • Advance HE

Skills taught

  • Lesson planning 
  • Curriculum design 
  • Action research 
  • Use of digital technologies 
  • Assessment design 

Course Highlights

Accredited Course

Participants will be able to gain either Associate Fellow or Fellow status by evidencing the Professional Standards Framework through the course.

Supportive teaching team

Every participant has a personal tutor who acts as a pastoral support throughout their course during 1:1 tutorials.

Varied career prospects

This course provides professional development for lecturers in an HE environment.

Module Overview

This course aims to support and propel those new to teaching in HE into their academic careers, with a clear understanding of institutional practices and approaches to learning and teaching in higher education. It is a great opportunity for them to focus on specific aspects of their teaching; to gather new ideas, to consolidate and think about their current practice. It will equip them with knowledge, skills, professional values, and an appreciation of the demands of the working context of higher education, so that they can become an effective, reflective, adaptive, and responsible teacher.

Planning for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education 
The module encourages participants to critically reflect on learning theory and practice in higher education contexts. Participants will engage critically and will experiment with pedagogy and technology that enables student-centred learning across disciplines and diverse learning environments. 

Curriculum Design – what we teach, why and how 
The module allows participants to explore and apply curriculum design principles and contexts at local, national and global level to critically develop innovative and impactful practice. Participants will have the opportunity to create their own module curriculum and to defend it on a simulated validation panel. 

Practitioner Inquiry 
The module is a problem-based module. Participants will have the opportunity to carry out an independent Action Research project to evaluate the effectiveness of a pedagogical change they will have implemented in their own classes/tutorials. 

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

Typical qualification requirements:

The course welcomes applications from both USW academic staff and also college-based HE staff within the USW partner college network.

For entry to the PgCertHE, successful applicants will need to hold a level 6 qualification in their teaching subject area. A minimum of 4 teaching hours/week across the duration of the course is required. 

Applicants would be new to HE learning and teaching; typically with less than 4 years of teaching experience in HE. 

Applications are welcomed from both fractional staff and also substantive Hourly Paid Lecturers that fulfil the above requirements.

A USW academic with a fractional contract of less than 0.4FTE is able to access the first module of the course, Planning for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education.  This will enable them to apply for and claim AFHEA upon successful completion.

Additional Requirements:

Applicants will need to have synchronous teaching with interactions with students across the duration of the modules.

Support to attend the course will also be required from the respective Head of Subject/Line Manager.

International applications welcomed:

We welcome international applications with equivalent qualifications of our entry requirements. For more details related to your country of residence please view our dedicated country pages.

It is noted that both USW and college-based HE applicants that qualify as an international applicant will undertake a Right to Study process during the application stage, which is standard across all USW programmes.  This is a separate process to the HE Right to Work process.

English language requirements

International applicants will need to have achieved an overall of IELTS 6.0 with a minimum of 5.5 in each component/TOEFL 72 overall and a minimum of 18 in reading, 17 in listening, 20 in speaking and 17 in writing or equivalent.

Equivalents can be located on our country.

If you have previously studied through the medium of English IELTS might not be required, please visit our country specific page for further details. If your English Language pages is not featured, please contact us.

If you do not meet the English entry criteria please visit our Pre-Sessional course pages.

Contextual offers

We may make you a lower offer based on a range of factors, including your background (where you live and the school or college that you attended, for example), your experiences and individual circumstances (as a care leaver, for example). This is referred to as a contextual offer, and we receive data from UCAS to support us in making these decisions.

USW prides itself on its student experience and we support our students to achieve their goals and become a successful graduate. This approach helps us to support students who have the potential to succeed and who may have faced barriers that make it more difficult to access university.

 

We're here to help

Whether you a have a question about your course, fees and funding, the application process or anything else, there are plenty of ways you can get in touch, and we'd love to talk to you. You can contact our friendly admissions team by phone, email or chat to us online.

 

Fees and Funding

Further Information

Studying at university is one of the most significant investments you'll ever make. Whilst you’re studying, you’ll have two main financial obligations – tuition fees and living costs. There’s lots of financial help available from the University of South Wales and external funding sources, that may provide loans (which have to be paid back) and grants, scholarships and bursaries (that don't).

*Full-time fees are per year. Part-time fees are per 20 credits. Once enrolled, the fee is anticipated to remain at the same rate throughout the duration of your study on this course except as described below.

Please be aware that we may increase the maximum fee for home students on full-time undergraduate courses only where the Welsh Government increases the permitted level of inflation of fees. Fees for all students (including part-time, postgraduate and international students) may be amended in accordance with our applicable Fees and Debt Management Policy.  We will ensure that students are given clear, intelligible, unambiguous and timely information about our courses and costs in good time, ahead of the next academic year.

 

Fees and Funding Scholarships and Busaries Alumni Discount

Additional Costs

As a student of USW, you’ll have access to lots of free resources to support your study and learning, such as textbooks, publications, online journals, laptops, and plenty of remote-access resources. Whilst in most cases these resources are more than sufficient in supporting you with completing your course, additional costs, both obligatory and optional, may be required or requested for the likes of travel, memberships, experience days, stationery, printing, or equipment. 

Course Highlights

How you’ll learn

This is a blended learning course, with a combination of online and face-to-face learning sessions, practice-situated learning, and online tutorials /professional dialogues. The assessment on this course is all coursework based and is different for each module. Examples include presentations, annotated lesson plan and a report, and are all designed to develop skills needed as a lecturer in HE. At the beginning of the course there is a face-to-face three-hour induction session. 

For each module, there is one online three-hour session per week for eight weeks. Two hours are facilitated by the module leader, the third hour is for the participants to engage with set tasks in groups. 

Participants will be able to choose to attend the on-line session either on Mondays morning (9am-12pm) or on Thursdays afternoon (1pm-4pm). For each module, there are also 2 sessions face to face, respectively in week 5 and week 10. Participants will have the choice to attend either on Mondays morning (9am-12pm) or on Thursdays afternoon (1pm-4pm).  

Teaching staff

  • Dr Carol Wood
  • Beth Dando
  • Dr Giovanna Comerio

Some sessions will be delivered by visiting lecturers.

Placements

At the beginning of the course there is a face-to-face three-hour induction session. For each module, there is one online three-hour session per week for eight weeks. Two hours are facilitated by the module leader, the third hour is for the participants to engage with set tasks in groups.

Participants will be able to choose to attend the on-line session either on Mondays morning (9am-12pm) or on Thursdays afternoon (1pm-4pm). 

For each module, there are also 2 sessions face to face, respectively in week 5 and week 10. Participants will have the choice to attend either on Mondays morning (9am-12pm) or on Thursdays afternoon (1pm-4pm). 

Facilities

Most of the course is delivered online using Blackboard Collaborate. The on- campus sessions are held on a different USW campus for each module so that you can familiarise yourself with the attractive and varied learning spaces available within USW. 

Library facilities are accessible on every campus.

Careers and Employability

Possible career paths

The course supports your current teaching practice, providing a reflexive and collaborative environment to enable development of your teaching, learning and assessment practice that will benefit all higher education students.

University Quality Assurance

At USW, we regularly review our courses in response to changing patterns of employment and skills demand to ensure we offer learning designed to reflect today’s student needs and tomorrow’s employer demands.

If during a review process course content is significantly changed, we’ll write to inform you and talk you through the changes for the coming year. But whatever the outcome, we aim to equip our students with the skillset and the mindset to succeed whatever tomorrow may bring. Your future, future-proofed.

How to apply

There is an online application process for this course. Please choose the application form for your preferred start date and mode of study (i.e. full-time or part-time).

International admissions

Please see our international admissions advice for further information about how to apply as a prospective international student.