This blog is a (much!) less-than-formal outlining of recent travels, events, happenings, thoughts and comments which tend to have some occupational relevance, but are on occasion nothing more than a means of passing the time while waiting for trains, planes & automobiles...

Monday, 24 November 2008

PWL 2 - The story so far

Spent today finalising the programme for the next HEA HE in FE conference at Scarman House on May 13th - "Playing with Learning 2: Making the Connection".
This year's doubtless fantastic conference will involve Alan Mortiboys (from Birmingham), Colin Beard (from SHU), Kirsten Hardie (from Bournemouth) and a courtroom theme "you, the lecturer, stand accused of failing to engage your learners etc..." (or something like that anyway).
It will also have 4 workshops, a man wearing a papier-mâché head, another graphically-facillitated large painting (might need another house with an extra room for it to go in) and more freebies.
The local JISC RSC are providing voting tablets (delegates=jurors) and technical support for the day, but insisted on some social networking angle so we don't have to pay. Unfortunately, this got translated into a reason for incorporating Second Life so I now need to find someone to facillitate the attendance of assorted daleks, falcons, teddy bears & talking vending machines at my flagship production...

Thursday, 13 November 2008

HELP (& advice)

No, not a request for assistance, but an acronym for the Higher Education Learning Partnerships CETL (based at the University of Plymouth) who invited me to make two 7 hour train journeys in order to be part of their 2-day Advisory Board, most of which was taken up with helping them to plan their "HE in FE: A Partnership Perspective" conference next year.
Most of day 1 (2 pm start as some of us had been imprisoned on a train since 6am) was taken up by various HELP CETL employees describing what they've done since inception & their plans for the next year, and an ex-consultant to fdf outlining an evaluation report which I'd read last week.
Day 2 (9am start so that some of us could get home for 10pm), mainly concerned their conference & how to evaluate its success/impact, and who, if anybody, would care if the CETL wasn't going to organise a subsequent event for 2010 (but they might).

VETNET LLN Annual Conference

5th November 2008, London

Working with MEDEV's Megan Quentin-Baxter and Gillian Brown, I helped to run a workshop on "Making use of resources to support education: Health and Life Sciences". JISC Intute's Laurian Williamson also contributed to a session attended by approximately one third of the 95 conference delegates.

Participants were given a very short presentation to outline who the presneters are and what they do, then broken up into small groups to examine some of the resources available such as the Assessment Playing Cards and a Student/Lecturer interview DVD.

Our session was particularly well-recieved (anecdotal evidence only at the moment, particularly in contrast to the LANTRA 14-19 one which took place next door apparently), and the University of Gloucestershire's Professor Stephen Hill wondered whether I would assist in their college liaison programme - nice to be asked.

Other sessions over the day included:
The Appeal of APEL
Barriers to Progression for Vocational Learners
Information and Advice (but not guidance!)
Curricular hurdles to vocational progression
Supporting vocational students transition to higher education
Curriculum response to employer needs
Curriculum development to stretch talented vocational learners

There were also a couple a keynotes which were too subject-specific to be of interest to anybody who's not a vet. And even if you were, they might not have been that exciting. Wouldn't have thought so, but can't be sure...