Learning Spaces and Learning Communities

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 […]

And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’ And you may ask yourself, ‘How do I work this?’ And you may ask yourself, ‘Am I right, am I wrong?’ And you may say to yourself, ‘My God, what have I done?’ Photo – screenshot of Alicja Syska and Carina Buckley recording the LDP podcast trailer for the 15th time. What The Learning Development Project podcast explores the scholarship of teaching and learning in the field of Learning Development, with the aim of unlocking practitioner knowledge and articulating what makes us a unique scholarly field.  As our podcast intro […]

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, […]

This #Take5 post is brought to you from Sandra Abegglen (University of Calgary), Emma Gillaspy (University of Central Lancashire), and Tom Burns and Sandra Sinfield (London Metropolitan University) – all are members of ALDinHE and are involved in the #creativeHE community. There will be a follow up to this blog in November, where we will run the first #creativeHE event of this academic year: Game on: playful practice for online environments – 18th November 14.00-16.00 – and where we will also call for the community to say what sort of creative activities they want support with across this challenging year. […]

The week’s #Take5 blog is brought to you from Dr Carina Buckley Instructional Design Manager at Solent University and ALDinHE Co-chair. Recently Carina spoke in a webinar about how her institution, Solent, has approached online delivery whilst keeping students at the heart of their learning. It went very well – but for those who couldn’t make it, a written case study and the recording of the whole webinar is available here: https://www.solent.ac.uk/news/transforming-solents-learning-delivery-during-covid-19 Photo: Dr Carina Buckley Instructional Design Manager at Solent University and ALDinHE Co-chair Students these days… don’t turn their cameras on Where once a common question from lecturers […]

This #Take5 post is brought to you from Kate Coulson who is Head of Learning Development at the University of Northampton and the Secretary of the Association of Learning Developers in Higher Education (ALDinHE). Here she tries to summarise the current face-to-face  and hybrid teaching situation for Learning Developers from September 2020. Photo: Kate Coulson face in full visor/mask mode! Does anyone care how Learning Developers are engaging with their students? I do! I absolutely care about what my peers are doing within UK HEIs and beyond. Maybe I am just nosey but gaining an understanding around what others are […]

Happy new academic year! As many of us return to a COVID-HE, where we are still working from home – and wrangling our face to face courses into some form of active and creative online learning experience, we at #Take5 are pleased to bring you this blog post from Ben, Debbie and Anne of Bournemouth University exploring digital wellbeing. Please have a read – leave a Comment – and think about offering a #Take5 blogpost of your own. Beyond Google Garage Ben Goldsmith, Debbie Holley and Anne Quinney, Bournemouth University, UK Reflections: Image credit: Anne Quinney Digital wellbeing is one […]

This blog post is brought to you by Craig Morley, a Learning Developer at the University of Manchester Library, whose Source Top Trumps resource won the LearnHigher prize draw at the ALDinHE 2019 Annual Conference – and which we are really happy to celebrate during this alternative version of the ALDinHE Conference: LD@3! We open with a brief overview of LearnHigher, indicating how you might offer your own resources for consideration. That LearnHigher experience Learn Higher supports learning developers by promoting and facilitating the development and dissemination of high quality, peer-reviewed resources for learning development. To further support our successful […]