On the 15th of each month, we are inviting those working in the field of learning development to share their day. Write up what you have done on the 15th of the month (or your nearest working day to this date) (plus reflections) and share it with us via this short submission form. The entries will be shared here on the ALDinHE blog.
In 2010-11 and 2014-15, the ALDinHE website was previously used for a collective online journal by members of the LD community. The collective journal re-launched on the 15 May 2023. You can read the journal entries for each month. The shared experiences and ideas have helped shape CPD resources developed for new and experienced staff, and to identify other areas for future work.
A reminder will go out on the LDHEN list on the 15th of each month. Share your day by completing the short submission form for it to be added to the ALDinHE blog.
Zulfi Qureshi – University of Central Lancashire
After the Xmas break, I’ve been busy preparing for upcoming workshops and meetings with staff and students. The workshops are both generic and bespoke in nature with the former created for any students across the university to join and the latter created for a cohort of students studying a specific course in response to their subject lecturer’s request for additional support. This offers some variety in my work because it forces me to consider the content and tasks I develop that best match the target audience. Beyond this, I have held an online group tutorial with students wanting further support for an upcoming assignment that required me to first become familiar with their assignment brief to better understand the context behind their varied questions. It was not just interesting but also felt like the most impactful thing I did this week because I was responding directly to students’ own questions as they came up in our conversation.
Robert Ping-Nan Chang – University of the Arts London
The day started from a colleague seeking help with her teaching today due to her sickness. This is followed by a number of emails to courses and students I am support regarding workshops today and tomorrow. I also received an apology from students who unable to come to my workshop today due to sickness. I often feel touched when students let me know about their absence because academic support is mostly optional to them. This demonstrates that academic support is valued. I also communicated with an English language development tutor about what she’d like to do next Wednesday with a cohort which I also support. I have found the communication between us established over the last few months help us to pool the resources together. She has weekly lessons with them, while I only have around six groups session in a year. She plans to guide students to reflect on the use of Machine Translation and other tools/devices, and I was able to provide her with a list of ideas and items to kick off her session.
This morning I also had a meeting with someone from Veolia about a potential visit to the local waste management facility. The meeting was very productive as we discussed not only the logistics about this visit but also associated tasks for students to provide students opportunities to explore, research and do something beyond just a one-off tour. How is such a visit related to academic support? In my view, it allows learning beyond campus, especially critical thinking, creative practice and climate justice which is embedded across all courses at my university. Many of my art and design students are concerned about the environment and interested in circular design/economy.
I wrote up this morning recount around lunchtime. Thanks for reading it.
Kate Coulson – BPP University
Today, I was working from home and I started off by writing part of a CATE submission; I find that undertaking this type of work earlier in the day rather than dealing with Teams messages and emails is much more fruitful. So I spent half an hour doing that and then went straight into our senior leadership team meeting. As associate dean, I lead several teams within our directorate and the SLT meets weekly to go through project work, finances and staffing. We spent a lot of time looking at spreadsheets, not my favourite thing but super important.
I then had my weekly 121 with my line manager and I updated him about some new projects I have kicked off in my teams including: AI and Library, a copyright review, Academic Skills review project and a potential new CPD framework for the University. All very exciting.
At lunchtime I had to pop to the local secondary school as I recently became a governor/trustee and they needed to ensure I could access their IT system. I spent most of this visit talking to their systems manager about AI in education!
Back at my desk I dialled into a meeting with our Academic Quality team – we meet regularly to ensure everyone is in the loop and then I was on a Curriculum Review Panel to validate a new level 7 programme. I finished off the day by replying to as many emails and teams threads as I could. I noted down any outstanding tasks I had missed (call the Head of the Students Association about a new project, a colleague in Vancouver wanted to book in a catch-up and review a policy). It was a good day.