Leicester 2 Colin 20

This repeat visit to Leicester College (we were there in June 2009) was the 20th Colin Beard Experiential Learning Day put together for lecturers delivering HE level education programmes in a FE environment.

Even though there's been 19 similar events around the country over the last 4 years, and there'll be more in the North and on the South coast later in the year, recommendations from previous attendees meant that delegates were willing to travel from as far away as Brighton and Greenwich, with two of those present making the effort to "experience the difference" for a second time in less than twelve months.

As usual, a full day and an engaging facillitator meant that nobody's attention was diverted from the activities in the room, although our venue on the second floor of the Freemen's Park campus has such an excellent view (from the window to the right in the picture above) of the magnificent rubgy ground which is home to the Leicester Tigers that we should probably have included a mention of it in the programme for the day instead of just alluding to it in a post title...

Space (centre): the no-Phil Frontier

Having been asked to help coordinate a "Creative Assessment to Help Eliminate Plagiarism" workshop as part of the joint JISC/HEA e-asy Assessment day at the National Space Centre, I arrived in Leicester late last night to be told by the organisers that Professor Phil Race, the advertised keynote speaker, was ill and unable to attend, so "could I step in"?

3 beers, a glass of wine and a pizza-full of persuasion later, meant sleep was postponed while I re-purposed a collection of resources and wrote a presentation to make up a (hopefully!) coherent 2-hour session around the day's theme of "engaging with innovative ways of assessing learners to make assessment e-asy".

Fortunately, when the moment of truth arrived, adrenaline overrode the effects of having had only 3 hours worth of sleep, so my delivery was something close to normal, but after an afternoon workshop, a plenary and three hours to get home, the effects of "boldly going where no one (well me anyway) has gone before" has left me feeling very tired....

C'est la vie (ou la mort) ma femme fatale...

Looks like those romantic ballards about racing heartbeats might be scientifically based after all, as according to research carried out by the University of Valencia, just five minutes alone with an attractive woman can raise a man’s levels of the stress hormone cortisol to “dangerous levels” that “may be bad for the heart”.

The experiment, approved by the Faculty of Psychology’s ethical committee, involved 84 male students who were told to avoid alcohol and other stimulants for 24 hours, before being led into a room by one of the (male) scientists to solve a Sudoku puzzle. The researcher then departed on the pretext of getting another puzzle, leaving the unsuspecting student to sit alone in a room with a stranger.

Saliva samples were taken from the students to measure their cortisol levels which apparently remained the same when left with another male, but rose when left alone with an attractive female. The study added that this rise was heightened in men who believed the woman was “out of their league", and could even reach levels reportedly similar to that experienced by parachutists, an amount that can “bring on the possibility of heart attacks and strokes”.

As we now know that since pretty women are sociological gravediggers, surely our newspapers should be ablaze with headlines such as “Man dies in front of sexy woman”, “Ban these killer heels” and "French National Suicide Bid: instead of making it mandatory, they're banning the burka!"?

Roses, grants and Guildford signs ahead

Having just spent 5 hours driving down to Surrey in readiness for tomorrow's Funding Applications workshop, I'm now sat in a country hotel's beautiful rose garden looking up at the dozens of vapour trails criss-crossing what would otherwise be a completely clear blue sky while reading the travel information pages of the BBC website.
Apparently, Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland’s second-least pronounceable volcano (where to even start with Þeistareykjarbunga?) is still moderately active, and later today, due to an expected change in wind direction, it's ash plume will drift over Irish airspace and close Dublin, Cork, Waterford, and Shannon airports.
Although it's understandable that jet planes will be again be affected since they travel at the same height as the ash cloud (around 30,000 feet with lower altitudes not feasible on many levels : fuel usage, thicker air = overheating etc) and would suck volcanic dust through turbines which could theoretically heat it to glass-forming temperatures, what I can't find an explanation for is why are propellor planes also grounded when they fly much lower, or helicopters which fly lower still?