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.
Ursula Canton – Glasgow Caledonian University
A long Friday! 4 hours with dissertation students – 3 groups and each class consists of a mixture of feedback on work in progress (intro / lit rev) I’ve read and advice on methodology adapted to each programme of study. It’s interesting and challenging and enjoyable, but intense to switch from one to another. One group is very talkative and happy to discuss; another prefers to listen in silence, but they did that last time and various of those silent listeners later sent me work to review for this class, commenting on how useful it had been to hear the earlier analysis of typical problems with research questions (too vague, too big…)
I also need to prepare a feedback class for a level 1 computing module. After a short introduction they had to complete a worksheet that scaffolded the steps towards writing a section for their assignment: identifying 2 additional sources, extracting information related to the task from each, synthesising this to see what they now know about the topic and finally relating it to their practical task. It’s a huge module (almost 200 students), so just above 50 submissions is not a great percentage, but still a good bit of work for a Friday afternoon. The resulting feedback lecture has really good examples of good and not so good practice with sources, however, so it feels very worthwhile and I’m looking forward to delivering it next week. It was also useful to identify some common misinterpretations of the task, so I can adapt the worksheet for next year.