About failed adventures, resilience, and preparing for the new academic year. Last week we spend four days in the Cairngorms (Scotland), as a short break after the summer was all but relaxing. However, the weird and wonderful mechanisms of stress and being worn out saw me reaching some physical and mental boundaries. And led to […]
Tag: higher education
Zoom Break Zumba
This is one option, ten minutes dance-off while you are waiting for the next session to begin–by the by: beginning. Over the last couple of months people have been asking for suggestions of what do you do during these newly acquired breaks between meetings. You know the ones we used to use to run from […]
Friday-Artday
Over the last evenings I have been playing with digital and mixed media art to reflect on all the challenges faced working in higher education at the moment. In part these are responses to the irresponsible press articles demeaning online learning and teaching–it’s all just watching some videos after all, right?– dismissing the unbelievable amount […]
A Story about Becoming a University Teacher
Living by the Proverb ABSTRACT There seems to be a strong link between developing our identities and storytelling. As humans, we strive for coherence, and this coherence is found in stories (Hermans, 2001). This is an experimental paper telling a story about developing a brave, and authentic self as an educator (teacher) in Higher Education […]
SoTL Definition Conundrum
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.
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 […]
