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....