Currently I am giving a keynote presentation at the 16th annual SEDA conference in Birmingham. In reality I am sitting at my desk, at home, in Islington, not even talking into a microphone because I recorded the whole thing about three weeks ago. Being today 36 weeks pregnant with twins we decided it was too risky for me to make the event in person and even too risky to think I might be able to talk through the whole thing in person. Hence the pre-recorded version.
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On Wednesday night I had the honour, and pleasure, of attending the National Teaching Fellowship Awards Scheme dinner as I received a National Teaching Award this year from the Higher Education Academy and have now become a National Teaching Fellow. The ceremony and dinner was held at Middle Temple Hall in London which was a very plush and ceremonial location. Yes the dining hall might have looked a bit Hogwarts-esque but I think the idea was that that kind of grandeur befitted such a ceremony.
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At the end of June, due to some complications with my twin pregnancy, I was suddenly signed off work, indefinitely. Scary health issues and related stress aside, I have found this whole experience pretty weird and difficult. I was 15 weeks pregnant at the time and the prospect of not going back to work for about 18months was a pretty daunting prospect. I was told I could work at home but had to take it easy – avoiding stairs (not that easy), lifting, running, no travel etc etc. Being signed off so rapidly – one day I was in work and then next I wasn’t meant considerable readjustment both for my work and home life. Read the rest of this entry »
There is a lot of talk, particularly from politicians about choice at the moment. And the rhetoric implies that choice is always a good thing.
Sometimes, it obviously is – choice of Easter cupcake from coffee shop (lemon, chocolate, strawberry); or on a less flippant level, choice about who you vote for, where you live, where you work, what you say and do. But is all of this real choice? What about other sorts of choices? The privatisation of the energy companies – yes more choice, but not necessarily a meaningful choice but a confusing, mess of a choice between often one poor service provider and another and lots of inefficiency (don’t get me started on an 18mth battle we have been having between British Gas Business and British Gas Domestic who don’t talk to each other). In recent dealings with the NHS I have been offered a lot of “choice”. But when asked what I would like to do by a medical professional who is supposed to be an expert in their field and has studied for 7 or more years, I don’t really want that choice. I want to be advised and guided by the professional, but yet I am asked to make a decision about something I know little about. I want to trust that medical professional to use their judgement to help me. Thinking back to my GCSE reading, Sophie’s Choice is an extreme but graphic example of the often hideousness of having choices.
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A few people have asked for details of the exercise I did at the SEDA conference around KPI and measuring, so here it is….
The exercise relates to my other post on coffee, lego and KPIs about measuring the impact of educational development initiatives. I had about 20-30mins to run this from start to finish but it could definitely have lasted longer. For the accompanying presentation I used a prezi Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been meaning to post this for ages and given that I have been v v slack with my blogging (I blame pregnancy, seems as good as excuse as any!) seems appropriate to start back with this.
So I’ve talked to a few people about the genius coffee and papers idea and I can say genius as it is not my idea at all, but stolen from the inspirational Colin Beard, Teaching Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University and a National Teaching Fellow. I saw Colin speak at the SEDA conference in 2009 and really liked his approach and some easy to use exercises he had to engage students. We then invited him to run an event at City for our Learning Development Fellows where he talked through some more ideas, including the coffee and papers idea. Read the rest of this entry »
The scene….
Last Monday we held our first researchers’ day which was intended to bring new researchers and phd students together and help create a strong research community. The day was a mix of plenary discussions/presentations and breakout workshops. Ajmal and I had volunteered or been volunteered (can’t remember which!) to run a session on the digital researcher.
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This post is fulfilling a number of functions:
- summarising a discussion at the Heads of Educational Development Group (HEDG) on Monday about the value of KPIs
- my notes from Barbara Dexter’s session at the SEDA conference the following day on “Targets and performance measures in educational development: how helpful are they?” and David Baume’s session on “How do educational developers make an impact – and how do they know they have done?”. Both part of the Evaluating Impact and Value for Money strand at the SEDA conference
- my presentation as part of the same strand on “Making the drinking the coffee into KPIs – managing impact measures within an educational development setting”. I’ll post up the activity I did for this another time
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In the spirit of the THES #loveHE campaign and also because it is Friday thought a positive post would be appropriate.
The other week I had the most ridiculous week, but came out of it strangely positive and with a renewed appreciation of the benefits of working in HE in the UK.
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Constructive realignment? UK educational development from the outside
Opening keynote from the SEDA conference in Chester was given by David Green from the University of Seattle. David used to work in the UK so gave an interesting perspective on the differences between educational development in the UK and the US.
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