Steeling myself against the weather....

Contextualising workshops to suit the subject area of the participants isn't easy, but fortunately one of today's Research and Scholarly Activity workshops was with engineers, and the other was in an area I've worked very closely with in the past: Art/Design/Media.

This in some ways made up for today's sessions clashing with my friends and ex-colleagues' christmas dinner in Loughborough, but has now been more offset by only having to drive home from Sheffield in a very surprising amount of snow.

Can't remember the last time so much fell in such a short space of time, or when it fell this side of the New Year, but at least that's my travelling done for three weeks so it'll be "working from home" and golf until early January.

Strategic Priorities and Managing Risk Conference

The big day!
After 3 months of planning and publicising, 85 (who according to their feedback sheets were very happy) delegates attended what will now be an annual HE/FE conference organised in association with EIAT Consultancy.
Keynotes were delivered by John Widdowson: Principal and Chief Executive, New Durham College & Chair of the MEG Group, David Jenkins: Director of Educational Partnerships, Staffordshire University, Executive for Associate for Collaborative Provision, and Charlie Woodcock: Executive Director Business & Community Development, Chester University, and I ran two workshops on "Scholarly Activity and Applying for Third-Party Funding to Support it" with Madeleine King.
Not only will the conference pay for two weeks somewhere equatorial in the new year, but 4 colleges offered me staff development work in February/March and one of the delegates asked if I could help her put together a Scholarly Activity conference next Summer.
Full programme details can be found at http://www.eiat.org/hefeconference.php

Strategic Priorities Conference Dinner

Queens Hotel, Leeds
Spent a very enjoyable evening at our pre-conference dinner discussing amongst other things (leaving the "work talk" until tomorrow) such random topics as phantom whippets and pigeons with the Association of Colleges HE Policy Manager Madeleine King, why there's no real ale south of Sheffield with the Mixed Economy Group's Chair John Widdowson, and how LUFC will be back in the big time possibly at Stoke City's expense with David Jenkins from Staffordshire University/SURF/ACP.
Although the company has been stimulating and the food/wine excellent, unfortunately it's bedtime as there's serious work to be done in the morning...

Acronymed Out!

As I'm now on a train heading North after attending today's HEFCE FEC Data Day at the Regent's Park Holiday Inn, I'm wondering who decided that everybody in education had to have some sort of snappy acronym to confuse first-time delegates at these kind of events.
In no particular order there was NUS, HEA, IFF, HEFCE, TQI, NSS, IM, QAA and many more mentioned in the presentations, all of which I knew but there were many delegates puzzled by what some of them stood for. Time for conference organisers to include a glossary?
Memo to self - add one to next month's Strategic Priorites pack after I've read the presentations.

Strategic Priorities Conference

Having now agreed to be party to the organisation of a national conference for HE/FE - this blog entry exists only to publicise the date & venue, December 10th, Queens Hotel, Leeds.

Working with EIAT Consultancy it's going to bring together expertise and experience to assist colleges in developing their strategies to manage risk through informed choice.

More details to follow on both the main PlayingwithLearning website, and the EIAT one, but I'll be helping to set it up, publicising it to the world (you heard it here first!) & running workshops on the day.

It's Grim up North (& South, & West & East probably)

Am now sitting waiting for my train home after delivering a day's staff development for a college management team & reflecting on how I don't miss the annual nightmare of enrolment week.

I think everybody working in education would agree that the treatment students receive at enrolment informs their impression of what to expect on their course and needs to be a positive one, but while we've been coccooned from the world in our team building workshop, prospective students have been in the main hall getting agitated by not being able to get answers to their questions as the poor lecturing staff on the desks are repeatedly interrogated on courses about which they know nothing.

Don't have an answer as to how colleges can solve this problem without securing increased funding, but until some system (on-line enrolments? in-depth FAQs? Admission Tutors? available ex-students?) is put into place, they'll always be considered as inefficient by their local community in comparison to any local HEI, even if the course delivery/management is in reality far better.

Enhancing the Student Experience conference

After the "star billing" of Monday, today was the rather more usual relegation to "support act" on the "Enhancing the Student Experience" conference bill at Nottingham's Basford Hall. First up was HEFCE who told us that times are hard, there's no money, and their continued role in UK education is not guaranteed etc.
The delegates then chose from many workshops: by me (3 times: "Involving students in Assessment"), Wendy Stubbs from QAA, JISC RSC, Confetti Institute, Nottingham Law School, Trent Uni, Castle College, Leicester College etc and also heard from the NUS about what students want (subject knowedge that will get them a job, social experiences so they're not alone, feedback so they can improve, etc : no surprises, although one did say that their degree certificate would make a good table mat if it was laminated, but while unlaminated served no other purpose! Times are hard apparently.....).

RSC Tour

No, nothing to do with the Royal Shakespeare Company, it's three JISC Regional Support Centre conferences.

June 23rd: For the third time in only 5 days, I had the pleasure of visiting Leicester, on this occasion for the local JISC RSC's annual conference held in the Walkers' Stadium where the keynote outlined how difficult it is to find what you want on the web.
Lots of page returns from Google searches apparently...

The second date on my one-week summer tour of JISC Regional Support Centre conferences was out on the west coast (Southport) where I witnessed a wonderful presentation/lecture/demonstration by Russell Prue, an "ICT evangelist & corporate trainer" who agreed in principle to be part of PWL3 (dates permitting).

The third (& last) date on my summer tour of JISC RSC conferences was at the newly built (completed just before the LSC started pulling the plug on construction developments) Epping Forest college, which for some unknown reason is not in Epping, but in Loughton 7/8 miles away. On the way there, my taxi driver kindly pointed out local features of interest ("Jade Goody's buried in that cemetery", "Jade Goody used to live there", "Jade Goody went to that school" - you get the idea by now I'm sure!) while I tried not to make jokes just in case he was a relative or an acolyte of some religious sect that I'm not yet aware of (called maybe the Goodies? - oh no that's been done).

Seren atynfa daledig i mewn gwin!

After spending most of Sunday on trains (6 of them: 5 connections) travelling to North Wales I had the honour of being keynote speaker (or as the facillitator described me, the "star attraction") at today's "Best Practice in Higher Education" conference.
A memorable two days out, not least because following my 30 minute presentation, I'm now better off by a crate of wine. Yep. 12 bottles. Not exactly easy to carry across country, but they had assumed I'd go by car & I didn't want to offend them by refusing: after all it is another country & I am unfamiliar with local customs....
Free bottle to the first person to guess what the heading says (there are clues in the text) and convince me you've worked it out & not simply copied it into a translation site (which is what I did in case you're wondering).

All in the best possible Taste

Twenty college delegates from across middle-England (East to West: Worcester up to Stockport) joined us in Leicester College's hospitality suite (part of the Taste restaurant - "Leicester's best kept secret") for the latest Experiential Learning Day with Dr Colin Beard.
As an aperitif , I introduced myself & stated that there were no planned fire drills (although we had 4, apparently due to incompetent builders), and who Colin was (is?), followed by a main course of teaching techniques that can readily adapted to individual subject areas.
Dessert was me swapping strips of raffle tickets for completed feedback sheets (20:20 happiness) & a prize draw for some copies of Colin's book which were left over from last year's Playing with Learning Conference. As I've been to more than a dozen of these so far, the highlight for me was finally (after 4 failed attempts) getting to experience (geddit?) Taste resaurant's food part-way through the day.
Everything I'd been led to believe it was. And more. Absolutely delicious....

KC in the Sunshine: new brand

Just spent a very sunny (30 degrees+) afternoon at what is now Kirklees College, an institution formed from the merger of Huddersfield and Dewsbury & Batley colleges.
This was their inaugrual HE staff development day, and I was asked to deliver a workshop on how/what/why scholarly activity (HE in FE's big topic at the moment if you hadn't gathered from past posts...), but have only blogged it so I could use the title pun....
Sorry.

Expectations, Experiences and Encounters in HE and HE in FE – The 3Es

The theme of this one-day conference, hosted by the University of Bolton on behalf of the NW Network Group (the universities of Bolton, Central Lancashire, Chester, Manchester & Cumbria, and the colleges of Bradford, Burnley, Stockport, West Cheshire and Blackpool & the Flyde) was student expectations, experiences and encounters, and exploring staff perceptions through innovative research partnerships between staff teaching higher education in universities and further education colleges.
I was originally asked (back in December) to be the keynote speaker, but was relegated to first-up after lunch to accomodate a presentation on the issues that have arisen from research undertaken on the student experience. After listening to 30 minutes of figures and looking at graphs which couldn't be read from 10 metres away - and I was at the front of the 60+ audience! - I fully understood why the organisers had decided to start the second half with someone (i.e. me!) less likely to induce a post-pastry snooze-a-thon. Not an easy thing to do if your talk is on "why and how HE in FE staff can get involved in scholarly activity, the value that both sides attach to, and can get from, working in partnerships"...
Feedback forms are getting sent out to the delegates along with the day's presentations, so it'll be a couple of weeks before we find out whether visiting the Final Year Students' exhibition on the ground floor would've been a better way to while away an hour or two.

No Stone (Henge) Left Unturned...

Having spent a less than exciting evening in Chippenham (where an "About the Area" guide lists one of Swindon's roundabouts as a "place of interest"!), an early morning train ride took me to Corsham for a HE/Partner Staff Development day. Appoximately 50 college lecturers gathered to hear a welcome, a short talk by a HE Manager, then yours truly on why college lecturers should get involved with scholarly activity and how they can be supported before dispersing to attend sessions entitled “How does a FE lecturer become a HE lecturer?”, “Improving recruitment, retention and achievement ”, "Assessing group work with work based learners"and “Building confidence: the transition into HE”.

Although by the time these had started I was already making the 5 hour journey back wondering whether the locals thought the stone circle down the road was some precursor to modern roundabouts.....

One Man Went to Mow (Bray)

This week's hurricane tour (4th presentatio/workshop in 3 days) blew into Melton Mowbray to deliver a speech on " The Regional Impact of National Policy on FE/HE Partnerships" at PERA (Production Engineering Research Association as was) for the local LLN.
The day started with Oxygen's Earl Lynch getting everybody to hold hands (knowing what was coming - see past post on Pork Pies - I made sure that I was in between two attractive women) and jiggle about (experiencing partnership working in action apparently).
As DIUS's Sean Simon declined to attend at short notice (so I still don't whether HE in FE comes under him or Lammy), the day's opening address was given by Chester University's Charlie Woodcock who outlined how their multi-HEI/college partnership worked.

Workshops and a nice lunch were followed by delegates tieing one another together with string handcuffs (made sure I was on a table with no blokes), and getting out of of them by cooperation and unnessary (as it turned out when you knew the solution) close-quarter gymnastics!
Still fuelled by adrenalin, I then delivered my much-rehearsed 25 minute talk to probably the most animated 200+ audience I've ever had - conference facillitators take note!

Where's Fiona Bruce when you need her?

Spent today at my old college, not just seeing some old (well they do look old - FE does that to you!) friends and colleagues and fielding job offers (yes they'd have me back), but also helping PlagiarismAdvice.org to run a workshop identifying where plagiarism in student work is likely to occur, developing strategies to prevent problems recurring and encouraging student engagement.
The workshop participants also learnt how to use plagiarism detection software, in this instance TurnitinUK, to assist with detecting student plagiarism and also as part of a more formative approach.
Nice to go back, but glad it was only for a day....

Scholarly Activity Workshop

Spent today at Solihull College's Woodlands Campus running a workshop for FE lecturers who work at HE level and want to increase their engagement with research and scholarly activity.
In addition to my input, delegates benefitted from the expertise of:

• Liz Willis from the HEA Engineering Subject Centre
• Sue Moron-Garcia from Coventry University's Centre for the Study of Higher Education offering an introduction to what is meant by scholarly activity, guidance in getting started with carrying out research, gathering evidence on learning and teaching, and writing papers for academic journals.
• Becky Turner from the HELP CETL showcasing some examples of successful practices from colleges in the SW to give an idea of the kind of things college lecturers could realistically achieve with their limited resources (of time and money).

Without a doubt, one of the best scholarly activity workshops I've been involved in, and thanks very much to Liz, Sue & Becky for making it possible.

PWL 2 : Still glowing like a RediBrek kid outside Sellafield!

Scarman House, Warwick
After 11 months of anticipation and 9 months of planning, Playing with Learning 2 : Making Connections finally arrived to showcase what conferences should be about.
Starting with yours truly doing the welcomes and setting the tone for the day, we then had Gary King, Britain's No1 Graphic Facilitator, explaining how/why he was going to create this year's conference image (last year's is below).

My good friend Kev Brace from the local JISC RSC demoed some interactive voting buttons supplied by Promethian and showed how we were going to use them during the day, followed by Dr Colin Beard and Pr Alan Mortiboys staging a "Desert Island Discuss" - yes, with music - about teaching with emotional intelligence.
Prior to an interruption from a pair of puppets beamed in from California (really the room next door via Huddersfield and back - courtesy of Direct Visual), Kirsten Hardie described her NTFS-recognised "On trial" teaching technique that would follow what proved to be an excellent lunch. Using students - yes we actually get them to participate - and volunteer delegates as prosecuting/defence counsels etc, we put the nation's educators on trial as "not using technology effectively to the benefit of their students". Guilty, by the way. After attending a choice of one from four workshops (while I helped to disassemble our television studio), the delegates gathered again in the main auditorium for 45 minutes worth of final summations from Gary King, Kirsten Hardie & me, before exchanging their feedback sheets (see below) for a free copy of Alan Mortiboy's latest book.

Sample comments include:

• "The best event I've been to since 1994" (We can probably assume that he/she started teaching then, not that 1994 was a landmark year for education!).
• "Not just talking about innovative delivery, actually doing it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - why can't all staff development be like this?"
• "A truly wonderful day out, thank you, thank you, thank you"
• "Will be including some of this in my teaching from tomorrow - first time I've ever been able to say that"
• "Thanks for a great event. Truly inspirational"
• "I just wish that all my colleagues had been there too. The ripples of the impact of this event will spread ever outward. It was terrific to be involved in such a high quality event."

Proper Planning Prevents Poor Pork Pie Performance

I was sent by the HEA to the Skills for Sustainable Communities Lifelong Learning Network (based at the University of Leicester) after a request for a conference speaker had been passed to me with no details whatsoever about audience type. After outlining the work of the academy & its subject centres, we then spent the afternoon discussing my high-profile speaking engagement at their annual conference next month in Melton Mowbray: "Maximise the potential of your people for improved business performance".

The aim of the event is to bring together their educational partners to celebrate success of partnership working, help provide ways they can work together in the future and overcome any barriers to help vocational learners progress.

After agreeing a biography they're putting on the website & in delegate packs, I now know that I'm supposed to be an expert on "The importance of FE and HE working together, new developments for FE/HE (good job I went to an Advanced Apprenticeships meeting yesterday!), can give many successful examples of FE and HE partnerships, and talk about regional policy/strategy as it affects HE in FE".

Fortunately the content of the speech won't be a problem, but it would have been nice to know what the brief was before the meeting so I could have put some proposals together. Still, this will serve as a good example of the 6Ps I can give out to give students prior to their vivas.

Lights, camera, action!

As Playing With Learning 2 now includes a hamper of puppets (think that's the correct collective noun: apologies for showing off if it is; serious embarassment if it isn't), I had to find out if the company filming the day could set up some sort of teleconferencing facility in Scarman House so that the puppeteers could work in a different room - one reserved for the afternoon workshops - to the main event, preferably at no extra cost.
Technically, it turns out to be no problem at all - probably! - and after I've outlined how much more beneficial to them the footage will be for their own promotional work, it fortunately won't cost any extra except a couple of beers the night before & additional stress on the day while I worry about something else that could go wrong...

Master of Puppets

Denby Dale (home of the world famous pie)
Spent this afternoon with a puppetry company called Get Your Head Round It! who currently specialise in teacher's lesson plans, DVDs and semi-improvised workshops covering four subject areas: Sexual Health & Relationships, Careers, Drugs & Alcohol, & Citizenship. Although their work is aimed at teenagers, it had been suggested to me that they might make an interesting addition to Playing With Learning 2 if they/we could come up with a suitable scenario/characterisation to include in Kirsten Hardy's "On Trial" part of the conference. As they're keen to work at a higher educational level, and the conference's intention is to explore the boundaries of innovative teaching & ways of engaging students, I travelled across West Yorkshire with a distinct feeling of doubt that there could be any kind of degree-level pedagogic value in adding some talking dolls to the grand day out, even if they are life-sized & operated by professionals.
Four hours of discussions later, and our student witnessness for the prosecution have been briefed and signed-up, ready to tell all about why it's the lecturers fault that they don't attend, work or achieve. Although it'll necessitate interviews by a remote link (as is sometimes the case with vulnerable adults/children in real court cases), having caricature students will prevent any associations with real institutions/individuals, and allow for exaggerated situations and comments on both sides. As Direct Visual are filming the day, the enhanced impact of the puppetry (would you ever have watched Spitting Image if it had been real people making those "jokes"?), ought to make the final DVD more interesting to people who weren't there, and hopefully help to engender comment/debate about the techniques used on the day - even if it is only "so were you responsible for that the conference with the puppets then?"

Scholarly Activity Forum

High Melton, Doncaster
April 2nd 2009
This evening's (yep evening: 7 'til 9) staff development session for Doncaster's University centre (part of the local college), was on why staff should conduct scholarly activities and what it means.
The latest session I've ever delivered went well and included wine (I was driving so don't know if it was any good or not), although as the college is attempting to engender a research culture while expecting staff to deliver 850 hours plus of HE per year, most of the questions were perhaps understandably about how other colleges manage to do it, and not about how to go about it.
As a result, there'll be a collection of best practice examples available through the main PlayingwithLearning website as soon as I've decided on the format.

HELP Conference

30th – 31st March
No, not 180 Beatles fans discussing their favourite album, it was the Higher Education Learning Partnership CETL's conference, HE in FE culture and experience: a partnership perspective.
As an invited guest, I neither presented nor got involved in the running of the event, but have spent two very enjoyable days at the University of Warwick catching up with old friends and making new ones, although the main reason for attending was to keep up with what's happening in and around HE in FE.

Opened by Professor Gareth Parry, Professor of Education, University of Sheffield, and closed by LMU's Professor Sally Brown ("QUANGOs are finished", "end of HEFCE in two years"), we were treated to a series of workshops and presentations in 2/3/4? very-badly signposted buildings on "The creation, operation and future of HE in FE partnerships", "The quality and style of HE in FE learning spaces and facilities", "The HE in FE experience and culture for staff", "The HE in FE experience and culture for students", and what I thought was the best of those I attended, “Regional support for implementing IQER & HE strategy” by the West Midlands RSC.

Back in 6 weeks for PWL 2: just up the road & in a much nicer venue that will definitely be well sign-posted...

Experiential Learning Day

Pershore College, Worcestershire 27th March
This latest Experiential Learning event featuring Colin Beard took place at an agricultural college south of Birmingham, which for no cohesive reason was the most successful (in terms of numbers) run over the last three years. 30 delegates (plus 11 on the waiting list for next time - probably Doncaster), were treated to Colin's Introduction to a working model to help design teaching activities, Teaching models and theories, Improving student assignment introductions, Developing higher levels of critical thinking for HE work, Developing innovative thinking in students etc...
As two of the attendees had travelled down from Stockton-on-Tees (who got a recommendation from a colleague, but since nobody else from SoT has attended any of the previous 9 that's a bit of a puzzle) and wouldn't be home until 11.45 pm, I'm not going to whine about my 4-hour trip in each direction on a Friday. Or maybe I will....

Show me the Money!

17 March 2009
As one of three "Dragons" at a workshop for FE colleges about bidding for project funding in Wellington (ish), Somerset (the others were from the local RSC and the HELP CETL), I gave a 30 minute talk outlining my own experiences of scrutinising funding applications both for JISC and the HEA, and the opportunities available for third party funding.
The delegates then formed groups to critique anonymised bids the local RSC had acquired from JISC under the Freedom of Information Act and report their findings while the presenters and local RSC staff operated as roving "experts".
After an excellent lunch (where I overate on cheesecake to allow for the 6 hours plus journey home - don't tell the wife: she thinks I'm slimming), and giving out some funding application guides, the 6 delegate groups generated bids which were theoretical but nonetheless pertinent to their current institutional agendas e.g. e-Assessment, Repositories etc and presented them to the three of us plus the local JISC HE Support Coordinator in a “Dragons Den” style format for constructive criticism and advice.
Feedback on the day, particularly with regards to the format, was all very positive, so I'm now going to formalise the delivery model and offer it with a variety of presenters to colleges on demand (well on request anyway...).

Yorkshire HE Symposium, Doncaster

Having presented down the bill at last year's event in Sheffield, I was this time promoted to keynote and asked by the organisers to speak about scholarly activity and its impact on the learner's experience. Although I originally agreed to talk for 20 minutes, most of the previous evening had been spent re-writing the speech to last for 40 minutes due to a late programme change and the organisers "didn't think I'd mind"!
As it happened, the day's introductory presentation overran, there was an unscheduled (false) fire alarm, lunch turned up late, and yes, you've already guessed: I was asked if I could possibly shorten my bit so that the conference could finish approximately on time (the grovelling about "trains to catch", "car parking about to expire" etc was accompanied by a nice bottle of Shiraz, so of course I acquiesced). Fortunately, as the original speech I wrote last Friday was still on my pen drive (& in my head), I could deliver a coherent 20 minute slot without having to rush and now have a spare (admittedly padded), unused speech for sale if anybody's interested......

Furthering Higher Education 2009

30th January, Aston Business School

Working with Blackpool & the Fylde college, I yesterday ran two sessions (both on "Support for Scholarly Activity and it's Impact on the Learner Experience") at this year's QAA/HEA joint conference exploring perceptions of scholarly activity in the FE sector, how Blackpool & the Fylde have supported and developed scholarship through the Teaching Quality and Enhancement Framework project implementation, and the ground-breaking FE Alliance and the Journal of Further Education Alliance which celebrates a number of papers relating to HE in FE.
Each of the two fully-booked workshops (30+ attendees both times, standing room only!) introduced the profiling tool used by the college to indentify and quantify scholarship on an individual and institutional level, and decribed how these activities have enhanced the experience of their students. B&F received a number of requests to demonstrate their tool at institutions & I've been invited to 6 colleges to run an extended version of today's session(s).

Think I'll write a paper on why (after again spending 2 hours stood up all the way back from Birmingham) more carriages/trains surely can't be that hard to organise and submit it to the journal of travel planning...

Blackpool Illuminations

Spent today at Blackpool and the Fylde College discussing their wonderful scholarly activity programme, Teaching Quality Enhancement Funding and the FEAlliance which exists to bring together Further Education colleagues by providing networking opportunities that will inform the FE Sector about the communities collective views.
As a result of some workshops our centre ran about a year ago Imperial House Publishing has been commissioned by the FEAlliance to publish a journal which is intended to assist FECs and their partners to share good practice, develop their research capabilities and provide an exciting and valued body of knowledge for further reflection and debate.
The FEAlliance recognises that most FE staff including Academic, Administrative and Corporate, undertake day-to-day work or study for qualifications that yield knowledge, research, assignments, studies and reports that would not only benefit their own department but also staff in other colleges. The journal has been conceived in order to provide a platform for these staff to publish their work and raise their professional standing by sharing good practice and knowledge across educational institutions.
As a result of this meeting, I've agreed to run a joint workshop at the HEA/QAA collaborative conference towards the end of this month which will explore perceptions of scholarly activity in the FE sector, and how Blackpool & the Fylde have supported and developed scholarship through their innovative TQEF project and the FE Alliance Journal, Issue 3 of which celebrates a number of papers relating to HE in FE and should be available for distribution any day now.