Subject Knowledge Enhancement Course

Introduction

Please read through these notes carefully. In this course there are a number of activities for you to complete and the first one, the Audit, is outlined at the bottom of the page. We expect you to approach all the work both seriously and honestly. The purpose of the course is to help you acquire an appropriate level of subject knowledge to begin your PGCE course of training or to raise your level of subject knowledge in your teaching of RE. Some of your work will be assessed formally, other work will be used to build a profile of your 'all round' subject knowledge. Details of the work you complete will be only be available to course staff but could be shared with a provider if they raised doubts about your subject knowledge after completing this course. Our intention is to use paper only when necessary so you will need to have easy access both to computer and to online facilities. The standard format of documentation used in the course is Word 2003. Suggestions for time allocations for various tasks are in the downlaodable document at the foot of the page.

Administration procedures - Kathryn Wright, the course administrator, is your first point of contact. Her contact details are: email: [email protected]. You will be given your own work area accessible only to you and course staff. In this area you will be able to keep a copy of the work you do and other course documents. Having registered, the course now consists of
1: the initial subject knowledge audit [this is self marking and you will have to enter the results on your Student Work Record. A downloadable document is to be found at the base of this page. When you add a mark or comment, upload it to your personal files.]
2: Three activities, an Induction Task on the rationale for RE, one Research Skills Task and two Baseline Tasks - the work you do on these should be kept in your work area
3: You will be assigned a tutor; they will be able to see the work you have completed so far and after an email / telephone discussion, set two assignments for assessment. Agreed deadlines MUST BE adhered to. Failure to meet deadlines will result in warnings, leading possibly to exclusion from the course. To assist you with your assignments we have included four downloadable documents below that might help. These are a glossary of terms taken from the main belief traditions, details of Harvard referencing, and a checklist to assist you with your essay and Powerpoint.
4: On satisfactory completion you will be given a Letter of Course Completion detailing the work you did
During the course you will have access to a Student Discussion Forum; this is for you to share ideas and suggestions related to assignments. We assume the comments will be course-related and follow usual courteous conventions.
However, to start -

The Audit
Firstly you must complete the Audit. This audit will establish for you and your tutor whether you have an understanding of the scope of knowledge within that particular aspect of the belief tradition. There are seven belief traditions available for you to test yourself on. By clicking on any belief tradition you will be expected to answer yes or no to whether you have knowledge and understanding of a particular aspect of the belief tradition. The results will be automatically recorded as a percentage and establish with you and your tutor which belief traditions you might need to concentrate on in this course.
There is a set of Potential Questions relating to the Audit and the sections for each belief tradition. These questions are designed to give you some idea of the extent and range of questions you might be expected to answer in the classroom. They are for background information only and not for you to answer.

Once you have completed the audits and looked at your results, assessed your strengths and weaknesses, you are in a position to begin the baseline tasks -
Induction Task (details in the attachment below), Research Skills Task, Baseline Tasks 1 & 2: - which will be assessed informally by Kathryn Wright at which point you will be linked to a tutor who will expect you to complete two assignments. If you have any queries - please email Kathryn- Otherwise enjoy the course