Adventures in Academic Development
Faculty Development, Hochschuldidaktik, Play and Creativity in Higher Education, SoTL
Didaktik und Hochschullehre
Dr Vicki Dale and I are running a very hands-on postgraduate course around creative pedagogies. One of the core messages I think we still have to make stronger–there was yet another course participant asking for discipline specific pedagogies–teaching methods are in the least interdisciplinary–although I vote for transdisciplinarity! So I am making a public plea: … Continue reading Looking Beyond: Thoughts on Teaching Models
This last half year has been challenging with weird and wonderful health issues, busy workload and all around “the world is doomed pre-apocalyptic mood-ness”. However, as long as there is life there is hope. Right? So I have about 50 posts in draft status and work on various OERs. Watch this space. Are you by … Continue reading An Experiment in Format
Some Evening Thoughts You are, you are in teaching. The whole you. Your past, your present, your envisaged future. When your learners bring something to you, challenge you, question you, ask you. They are bringing themselves to you. They are making themselves vulnerable—even if it might not feel like it to you in that moment. … Continue reading What is in Teaching?
I am taking you with me on an adventure. Okay maybe a micro-adventure, nevertheless if you need a mental break from thinking about work–come along. As pebbles crunch underneath my trailrunners I notice: today smells like adventure, here in Scotland! Adventures smell of summer and soil, petrichor, deep dark woods; they smell of minerals in … Continue reading Something Different: On a Lunchbreak
Here is my hypothesis: The more we focus on one aspect of the learned, i.e. in exams we force the expression of learning into a specific way and the closer we look at that one specific factor the less we are able to see the effects of said learning more widely. A personal experience example … Continue reading Evaluating learning: an uncertainty principle
One of the themes of our engagement in #ALTC Winter Conference and #LTHEchat was that the terminology we have chosen to use ‘disruption’ and ‘active learning’ smell too much of buzz-word bingo to sit comfortably with colleagues. And we agree. But … There is also a but … what else are we to use. We … Continue reading Academia and Buzz Word Bingo
The origin of this post goes back to 2011, much has changed since, including my own personal development and career. But let’s get the pens out: I was rather keen on going back to the topic of doodles as I have become more and more interested in Sketchnoting, which you could think about as purposeful … Continue reading The Power of Doodle
All the upheaval this year has brought on reminiscence and reflections–many of which circling around a childhood whose remains can only be found in museums, dusty atticks, or maybe the odd collections treasured individually. Nobody would know of the books we have read. East German children books had such sophisticated and brilliant illustrators. Where did … Continue reading Roots in times of Upheaval
So I promised a little contribution for this week’s events. For more about the UofG Neurodiversity Network go here (link opens in new window). Without further ado: My ADHD Superpowers –an attempted poem I design and make clothes, mainly dresses that fitSilversmith, wordsmith and sometimes do knitI draw life with words, images, pens, and brushBut … Continue reading Neurodiversity Celebration Week
Context I am experimenting with writing again. So back to the beginnings of my academic journey and ethnographic writing. Without further ado: An Excerpt The smell is difficult to describe, an echo of floor polish clings to the dry air, the worn Lino floors make my shoes squeak, but it smells of something else; I … Continue reading Ethnography of a Museum
During the last months I have often been thinking of my granddad. And today after blurting out crying a couple of times I thought I write up a couple of memories and inevitably learning about teaching. He worked in an agricultural boarding school, after having to stop being a farmer. The young adults—many of which … Continue reading Granddad
I have had a bit of frustration with getting a definition sorted. So I made a thinking thing … ‘definitions are living creatures’. That’s the premise. Continue reading SoTL Definition Conundrum
Reflections on a summer holiday where almost nothing went as planned My granddad always said: There is always something to learn, in every situation, and in the least you will learn how not to do a thing. Writing some contributions to the Life Wide Magazine* for which the editors asked to reflect on how imagination … Continue reading You can find Learning Everywhere
I am having an ADHD day from hell so to get my brain back into focus I just went down to the kitchen and made a chocolate cake and now I do what I always do to get the thinking thoughts out of my head–I write. (Okay I cheated and used a bake mix so … Continue reading Hybrid Spaces
Adventures in Academic Development 