Learning Spaces and Learning Communities

Event date and time: Wednesday 28 January 2026 14:00 – 15:00 It’s reasonable to assume that a core focus of learning developers is student learning and the techniques we use to support this learning. It is interesting to note, therefore, that Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) – seen by some as ‘the single most important thing for teachers to know’ in compulsory education (Wiliam, 2017) – receives very limited attention in the Learning Development literature. More broadly a survey of key higher education teaching concepts published in the International Journal of Academic Development makes no mention of this theory (Kandlbinder & […]

This blog post is brought to you by  Jasmine Snowden (University of Southampton) Heidi Singleton and Debbie Holley (Bournemouth University). Jasmine is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Southampton with experience across Children’s and Adolescents Mental Health Settings (CAMHS), including inpatient, community and eating disorders. Heidi is a Senior Lecturer at Bournemouth University and has over twenty years of teaching experience and children’s nursing experience. Debbie’s research interests are in  immersive, virtual and augmented realities to enhance the student experience, inside and outside the formal classroom. From this piece, we hope readers gain some insights into using 360 […]

Where do we find inspiration in times when Higher Education is suffering from lack of funding and Learning Development is regularly undervalued despite our best attempts to convince those around us of its benefits?? Perhaps by focussing on the things we really value in education, such as the freedom to think – and the freedom to hold out the hand of friendship. In this post Ursula Canton writes about the Council for At Risk Academics (CARA), Scholars At Risk (SAR) and the Committee of Concerned Scientists – telling us about what they do – and how we might get involved.  […]

“The world of simulation and immersive learning technologies is developing rapidly and in parallel to the existing and predicted future requirements of health and care on a global scale”.  [Enhancing education, clinical practice and staff wellbeing. A national vision for the role of simulation and immersive learning technologies in health and care HEE, 2020] This  #Take 5 reflects upon ways in which paramedic students responded to a compassionate pedagogical approach to debriefing groups after a high intensity simulation experience. Their experience through changing the ambience of the debrief transformed their session from one where students reported anxiety, insecurity where lecturing […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from Professor Debbie Holley – Bournemouth University. We have all experienced the pandemic pivot – and now we are engaging with myriad interpretations of a post-digital world. This blog seeks to answer some of our niggling – and some of our deeper questions: what will our teaching and learning look like in the future? Will all the lecturers be in the university teaching students who are all at home? Just how ‘meta’ will our worlds be? With respect to the digital worlds we might inhabit: “The Metaverse is owned by Mark Zuckerman, the founder […]

Authors Professor Debbie Holley and Dr David Biggins provide an overview of their research published in issue 27 of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. Their paper is titled: Designing for student wellbeing: challenging assumptions about where our students learn. Our work started with students reporting ‘technostress’ during the pandemic (and yes staff experienced this as well) and reporting that they turned to family and friends to seek support, with only 18% turning to the excellent online materials and signposting Universities offered in lockdown. Digital equity remains an issue across the board, and intersectionality of class, race and […]

Reflecting on who we are: the evolution and growth of Manchester Met’s Learner Development team This #Take5 blog is brought to you by Avril Buchanan, Chad McDonald, and Kate Haley from the Learning Development team at Manchester Metropolitan University following their recent takeover of ALDinHE’s Twitter account.  The post can be seen as a follow up to last week’s #Take5 – which explored finding your feet as a new learning developer. This post constitutes a ‘what the learner developer did next’ – providing some musings on MMU’s LDU’s  evolution, how they currently work and why—and as they say: “recognising that […]

This #Take5 has been brought to you from Tasha Cooper from UWE, Bristol and Anne-Marie Langford from the University of Northampton. In this post,  Anne-Marie describes the creation of a brand new ALDinHE community of practice (CoP) focused on Health and Social Care programmes. This CoP is particularly interesting in being online and asynchronous. In this post they focus particularly on the responses curated from a recent community activity that looked at Collaborative Reading Circles. LD Health CoP: Background The LD Health CoP started as a conversation at the ALDinHE conference in June 2022, where I, Anne-Marie, noticed that there were […]

This #Take 5 blog is brought to you by Ed Bickle, Steph Allen and Marian Mayer, the Learning Development (LD) team, Bournemouth University Faculty of Media and Communication, who, with the help of LD colleagues, reflect upon the workshop they delivered at the 2022 ALDinHE conference. Focusing on the concept of change, they examine how LD might look at the turn of the next decade. They begin their blog with a reflection on the excitement of being face to face with LD colleagues again. On the road It was with great excitement that the team travelled up to Northampton in June for the 2022 ALDinHE […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from …Karen Welton and Jennie Dettmer, facilitators of the ALDinHE N/I CoP (read on to find out more!). They are passionate about breaking down barriers to learning in higher education for neurodivergent students. If you are interested in making a difference and being part of this dialogue, they welcome you to join the crusade! Cerebrum Celebration! We are all different and our individuality is something to be celebrated! It is this individuality which makes the world so richly diverse, informing and altering our perceptions of anything and everything. Some differences are immediately apparent, but […]