TILE stands for Teaching Innovation & Learning Enhancement and is a network with the mission to start a conversation between different groups interested in improving teaching and sharing best practice in education. TILE is part of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow and the teaching-focused speaker seminar.

TILE is completely interdisciplinary and wants to be a platform for scholarly outreach between people across educational sectors, between researchers and practitioners (i.e., across type of expertise), and between all disciplines that can contribute to the discussion. At TILE we want to discuss prevailing issues in learning and teaching and ways to overcome these using evidence-based strategies and findings. But, we want to talk about positive experiences as well and hope that you will share them with us. Whether you are a researcher in the area of learning and teaching or a teacher/lecturer not directly involved in research, we believe that all of you can contribute to the discussion at TILE.

Let’s work together to innovate teaching and enhance learning! You can read our full mission statement here.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter as well: @TILEnetwork

TILE Components

We are interested to engage with research and its dissemination in a wide range of ways. For that reason TILE has different components:

• Speaker Series: On a monthly basis we invite speakers from around the world to give a talk on a TILE-related topic. All talks are recorded (see past TILE talk recordings here) and all talks are followed up with a reflection post (see all reflection posts so far). Check the schedule for upcoming talks.
• Share Best Practice: We collect best practice teaching examples and activities that are being implemented by instructors and present them on our website. This is done to show the variety of ways innovative teaching is taking place and to offer a resource for ideas. Browse our best practice examples.
• Student Voice: We feature blog posts by students on a regular basis to provide a platform for students to exercise science communication and to allow them to have their perspective heard. Browse all student voice posts.
• EduSnaps: Experts answer a question in a short 1-min video. Check out our EduSnaps.
• Interviews: A collection of interviews of experts on different aspects of student learning and effective instruction. Take a look at our interviews.

History of TILE

TILE was founded in February 2018 by Dr Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel who is an expert in applying findings from Cognitive Science to education and an enthusiastic science communicator. She is also a member of the Learning Scientists. TILE started through a small grant funding at the University of Dundee. Previous TILE Network members who helped getting this project off the ground were Eva Goetzke (student assistant, Uni Dundee), Edward Wood (Educational Technologist, Uni Dundee), and Ginny Henderson (Lecturer in Nursing, Uni Dundee). The TILE Network moved to the School of Psychology at the University of Glasgow in January 2020 and has since increased its portfolio.

TILE was born out of the observation that there is a gap in communication between different educational sectors. So, while a learner may experience all educational sectors on their journey, the sectors themselves lack initiatives to communicate with each other and engage in knowledge exchange.

Since its foundation, TILE has been growing continously. We have added several components to TILE. What started as an external speaker series has now become a platform to share best practice and for students to engage in science communication. We hope to grow TILE in the future.