Blog

On behalf of ALDinHE’s newest partner in ICALLD – the South African Association for Academic Literacy Practitioners (SAAALP) – I would like to share news of a forthcoming virtual conference: The University of Pretoria and the University of the Free State (South Africa) will be hosting a joint conference on the 29th of September 2022. This is a virtual conference and is free to anyone who wishes to attend. The theme is, ‘Reimagining our practices: academic literacy and writing centre support for the 21st century student’. View the programme for this online conference. Register online. We ask that you please share this information […]

This #Take5 post is brought to you from the TALON and #Take5 teams – and is a reflection on the power of collaboration in Higher Education (HE). This is the team that discussed the Special Issue of the Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice on Collaboration in HE in #Take5 #69 – and this post looks at the online International Symposium that followed. This is an example of an international faculty-student collective that worked to bring together diverse collaborative voices to showcase their collective and partnership practice. (And on a collaborative note, Sandra Abegglen, Tom Burns and Sandra Sinfield are part of #creativeHE that has just received a Collaborative […]

Bringing development opportunities to the masses  This #Take5 post is brought to you from Dr Lee Fallin a regular tweeter and learning developer based at the University of Hull. Lee loves all things digital, and uses this #Take5 post to reflect on his journey from MOOC consumer to MOOC producer. I first learned about Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) at the 2013 ALDinHE Conference hosted at the University of Plymouth. This was *just* as MOOCs were emerging as a popular means of accessing learning online. MOOCs are designed to support unlimited participation and open access by delivering learning through online […]

This month’s #Take5 is brought to you from Daisy Abbott an interdisciplinary researcher and research developer based in the School of Simulation and Visualisation at The Glasgow School of Art. Daisy experiments with game-based learning – and has created a novel approach to teaching research skills. Research: Mapping and Pathfinding My name is Daisy Abbott, I’m a researcher in game-based learning and teacher of postgraduates at the School of Simulation and Visualisation at The Glasgow School of Art. Join me on my quest to navigate the dangerous lands of teaching Research Skills… Keywords: Research skills, academic skills, higher order thinking skills, […]

Monday 18th July @ 3pm – 4pm Video conferencing platforms like Zoom, the video affordances of MS Teams and google handouts offer a way to connect with our students, however, their limits are the synchronous nature of the technology, the minimal shared experience and the lack of sense of place. The paradigm of adopting games and play as systems for representing and simulating real-life conditions, imparting knowledge and moral teachings, and generally nurturing social evolution, is an approach which has only recently started to be called ‘Game Based Learning (Clarke et al 2017). A recent systematic literature review by Fotaris […]

Thursday 14th July @ 3pm – 4pm Over the last twenty years, the field of learning development has been caught in circular debates about the value and effectiveness of subject-embedded versus extra-curricular or standalone activities. These debates have over-emphasised the need to consider each subject area in strict isolation. In this paper, we explore the benefits of encouraging an interdisciplinary approach to learning development. We discuss the creation of The Criticality Project, a unique six-week short course open to all students studying at Manchester Metropolitan University that has been running since 2019. Throughout this course, the concept of ‘criticality’ is […]

By Dr Selen Kars-Unluoglu (University of the West of England) & Prof Burcu Guneri-Cangarli (Izmir University of Economics) Arts-based methods which traditionally rely on engagement with material artefacts (e.g. LEGO® bricks, finger puppets, craft materials) have been on the rise in management learning and teaching (Taylor and Ladkin, 2009). COVID-19 has challenged educators to adapt these methods to online teaching environments. The challenge was to get learners to move from thinking to thinging (Knappett & Malafouris, 2008)in online environments without the opportunity to pass on, share, co-engage with material artefacts in a physical setting. While there has been some discussion […]

Blackout poetry and playful reading This #Take5 blog explores and illustrates the power and potential of blackout poetry and is a thing of real beauty. Just have a look at the amazing way Aimee Merrydew uses it to enhance reading and writing across her literature programme – and pause and think about how to adapt this to your own context.  We love blackout poetry and have used it with students and staff-as-students to help particularly with approaching policy documents. After reading Aimee’s blog we plan to use it with PGCert LTHE staff to help them think through student issues with reading, hoping […]

Tuesday 21st June @ 3pm – 4pm This webinar is based on the outcome of an ALDinHE funded project, entitled “student led online symposium on culture driven business responses to Covid-19 in Global North and South”. This project was a collaborative effort between students from York Business School (York St John University) and School of Business and Management (Queen Mary University). The main intention of using this student-centred learning approach was to actively involve students in constructing knowledge and engage them more effectively in meaningful understanding through peer collaboration. In addition, the project aimed for helping Business School students develop […]

We – Carina Buckley (Solent) and Alicja Syska (Plymouth) – are carrying out a small research project into what it means to Learning Developers to write and publish, and how that contributes to a sense of professional identity. As such, we are looking for participants to answer a short survey, that should take no more than 15 minutes to complete. All responses are completely anonymous; further information is available at the link. The survey will be open throughout May. Many thanks in advance for your support! Survey link: https://forms.gle/g3EXCMARkRhRvUz16 All the best, Carina and Alicja