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.