Tag: higher education
-
The most obvious insight!
How are you holding up? It’s a grey afternoon in Scotland and it looks as if a thunderstorm is brewing; alas I don’t think it will manifest itself. The announcement that we are still not permitted to travel beyond the 5 mile mark hit us hard this week. It has set wild camping plans back…
-
#FOS201 OER and OEP
Today’s topic on the FOS201 Course was OERs my academic knowledge around OERs is rudimentary at best, an image that came to mind during the FOS201 reflection was that I use OER like the fancy coffee machine in our seminar room. I use it when we are permitted to, let my colleagues know when they…
-
#ETConf20, The ‘New Normal’ and SoTL
Reflections on this year’s QAA Enhancement Themes Conference Frazzled Thoughts The reflections on this year’s QAA Enhancement Themes Conference are probably going to meander, from idea to idea, like a bumblebee from blossom to blossom. Two of my favourite phrases from the conference came from Prof Sally Krift who stated that we are in ‘a…
-
Emergence
I am going on walks every day, often Nordic Walking–which in Scotland earns me strange looks and the occasional comment. As spring takes hold and the days become longer, if not necessarily warmer, I was thinking about emergence. As educators we are used to being in an autopoietic state (Kidd, 2015), but the process of…
-
Coaching Supervision: and Course Development
An accidental insight. I had the opportunity to obtain coaching supervision, and this session led to a profound insight about one of my postgraduate courses: Creative Pedagogies for Active Learning. Brief background: The course has only been in its second iteration, after a complete restructure, and the first year went really well. However, the second…
-
Bildung & Weltaneignung an Attempted Translation of Education
There are some terms and concepts in the Germany language which directly impact my day to day work, but I have no English words for them. And a translation seems impossible because not a single word I would choose would even come close to reflecting the complexity of these nouns. I meant to write this…
-
PowerPoint for Gamification
In our course Creative Pedagogies for Active Learning we were asked by our students to share some active learning and teaching tools, we use or recommend. So that they could apply these in their own practice. So this is one from my teaching archives, the year is 2013. Although for the example I updated it…
-
Reflective Practice
The view from over your own shoulder Evaluating your teaching. This was the CPD session I ran today for university teachers at all levels. Technicians who ensure that researchers learn to work complex (and expensive) equipment, tutors, graduate teaching assistants, and lecturers. One of the things that strikes me most when teaching sessions on evaluating…
-
Enhancing Student Learning: What are you looking for?
I think it is time for a mini blog series on how to enhance student learning. Where the idea came from: I was in the middle of preparing my course documents and digital artefacts, to upload into the VLE when I suddenly noticed one of my Sway presentations had almost 7000 views! Normally its nothing…
-
The Issue with Lecture Capture
I am just out of a meeting where we planned a half day lecture training session and the discussion around lecture capture came up. As a learner, a student, I would have loved lecture capture and when contemplating why it constitutes such a problem to me two issues were emerging: The issue of permanence When…
-
Re-blog: The scholarship of learning and teaching: a victim of its nomenclature?
Scholarship historically suggests there are elements of reading, of engaging with other scholars’ and researchers’ thoughts and publications. It is a historical exercise analysing and critiquing a body of existing knowledge. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) also necessitates a strong element of reflectivity – or better reflexivity – to become a meaningful activity.…
-
SoTL is not a Concept
So I am currently undertaking a bit of background reading around Scholarship (scholarly activities aka scholarship sans publication) and SoTL. AdvanceHE put forward in their recommendation: SoTL needs to be discussed and made explicit as a concept to generate some institutional consensus on its usefulness to enhance practices’ (p.8) Fanghanel, J., Pritchard, J., Potter, J.,…
-
Context Switching
ADHD and the issue of context switching These last couple of weeks, a term made the rounds in our department which I had never heard before and which finally gave me a picture to an issue I had for a while. There seems to be some struggle with context switching at the moment. Which made…
-
How to write regularly?
Trying out a writing challenge. 30 posts in 30 days: The next 30 days will not mark a full calendar month or some other sort of temporal meaningfulness. The only reason I use today, is that I have despite all the good advice not yet managed to create this every day routine. Which is just…
-
The Power of Reflective Practice
Reflective practice, in conversations, in writing, is the teacher’s secret weapon. It doesn’t matter if we teach at university, college, or school. The ability to look over our own shoulders (knowledge on action) can help us develop knowledge in action.