Blog

This #Take5 blogpost has been produced by Dr. Tiffany Chiu and Dr. Olga Rodríguez Falcón This project was conducted at UEL 2017, where we intended to address a growing concern over student transferable academic skills for employability in higher education. It aimed to implement and evaluate a dialogic approach to embedding academic literacy skills into the subject curriculum. As researchers and practitioners in higher education, we have observed that, very often, students have found it challenging to generate ideas/strong arguments for their assignments and present them logically in writing. We devised a range of writing exercises which are informed by […]

The what, why and how of the RLF Consultant Fellowship Scheme By Cath Senker, RLF Consultant Fellow Place ‘professional writers in higher education institutions to offer writing support to all students.’[1] This is the inspired idea behind the Royal Literary Fund Fellowship scheme, which has been sending authors into universities since 1999 to offer one-to-one tutorials to students. And it’s proved extraordinarily successful. Why? Writers face several of the same challenges as students: how to develop an idea into a piece of writing; how to plan and structure it; and how to edit a rough draft, smoothing out the bumps […]

The birth of our online resource: Studying on your commute This #Take5 blogpost comes from Janette Myers, a learning developer at St George’s, University of London  Sometimes it can feel that the concept of higher education is based on students who live on Campus or who live in or near their place of study. This vision excludes many students and their experiences. Many of our students travel long distances to our Campus, and many more have long journeys to clinical placements in hospitals and community settings all over the South of England. The students I see often talk about how […]

The Meditation Project – Kent We decided to start the new academic year with a meditation – rather than either a bang or a whimper, appropriate as either would be – and have invited Louise Frith, University of Kent, to share her experiences of building meditation resources with and for her students. This is what Louise has to say: “The meditation sessions were great, I realised it was not just me who is feeling overwhelmed.” (Stage 1 student). The meditation project at Kent was developed from a growing awareness of the stress that students experienced related to their studies. Firstly we established a […]

The Thesis Boot Camp Thank you to Heather Campbell for this #Take5 post Take twenty-six PhD students, keep them in a room for 24 hours over a weekend, feed them, water them, motivate them and encourage them, and what happens? They write. In fact, collectively they write over 200,000 words towards their theses. Here at Queen Mary University of London the Thinking Writing team have just completed our fourth Thesis Boot Camp and the event seems to be going from strength to strength. The premise of providing the time, space and motivation for PhD students to write may be a […]

This #Take5 blog has been written by Lynne Crook and captures the essence of her excellent interactive session delivered in Hull at the 2017 ALDinHE Conference. BIO: Lynne has worked in HE since 2003, and is currently an Academic Skills Consultant at the University of Salford. Her academic background and PhD are in English Literature, specifically the uses of comedy in the contemporary Irish novel. Since 2008, in her spare time, she has also performed stand-up comedy and then improvised comedy with several troupes around the north-west of England. Using Improvisation Skills for Confidence Building in Public Speaking for Students […]

Managing academic writing: how managerialism puts pressure on academics’ writing practices By Sharon McCulloch of the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University Writing is central to what academics do, mediating almost every aspect of their work, including research, teaching, administrative and service work as well as public engagement. Much has been written about student academic writing, but less is known about the range of writing that academics do these days and how this might be changing in light of changes in higher education such as marketization and the use of managerial principles in higher education. This #Take5 […]

For this #Take5 we have we have invited Helen Webster from Newcastle University to blog about Learning Development values. This is in honour of our ALDinHE Conference, 10-12 April, University of Hull: http://www.aldinhe.ac.uk/events/9/aldinhe_conference_2017.html?p=7_9, and follows her recent interesting discussion on the LDHEN list.  So – thank you Helen! Everybody else – do leave a comment – pass the post on – have a great Conference … and think about offering your own blogpost very soon! The Value(s) of Learning Development What are professional values? I remember when I was doing my teacher training that values didn’t really get much attention in […]

Turn-it-off:  Making use of ubiquitous plagiarism to facilitate academic skills Liam Greenslade  While asking why writers plagiarize might seem to be a fool’s quest, it can actually be very helpful in preventing future plagiarisms. After all, if we assume it isn’t just the “evil” that plagiarize, it makes sense to take a moment and figure out what would make a “good” person commit such a deed. Bailey (2017) In our cut and paste culture, even if it is not actually the case, it sometimes seems that we are being overwhelmed by a plague of plagiarism, not just in academia but […]

*** STOP PRESS: #creativeHE new run: 16-20 Jan!! *** A new version of #creativeHE with a focus on creativity, play, narrative & storytelling and making will be offered by MMU’s CELT in collaboration with London Metropolitan University’s CPED 16-20 Jan 2017. Participants are invited from across the sector – such that colleagues from both institutions and elsewhere will have the opportunity to learn and develop together within a diverse and distributed community of higher education practitioners. Get together with colleagues who are involved in teaching, supporting learning or development of others with an interest in creative teaching and learning, who […]