Learning Spaces and Learning Communities

So what’s the problem? “I have had to contain the anxiety not only of students but lecturers who are new to this way of working.” LondonMet Academic Mentor The coronavirus (#COVID-19) global pandemic has presented many challenges for Learning Developers. This #Take5 blogpost is brought to you by Lee Fallin from the University of Hull and Sandra Sinfield from London Metropolitan University and ALDinHE and focuses on the challenges for University staff and students of moving learning online and some of the issues it raises for us as learning developers. Reflecting on our experience so far, we’d like to think […]

Creating powerful learning spaces and real learning across a suite of first year Computing modules This #Take5 blogpost is brought to you by Tom Burns and Sandra Sinfield – reflecting on a project that embedded creative learning development practice in an ‘Higher Education Orientation’ module offered to students across a suite of first year Computing, Design and Animation courses. ‘MySpace’ – not In university, students, especially those from non-advantaged backgrounds, can become rendered silent and passive or alienated and disaffected by the very spaces in which we teach and expect them to learn. Students can experience ‘our’ spaces, the lecture […]

ALDinHE Conference 2019: Critical perspectives of learning development practice – and hills This #Take5 blogpost is brought to you from Lee Fallin – the phantom tweeter of #aldcon 2019 – you know, the one who produced all those beautiful, illustrated visual notes… The 2019 Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE) Annual Conference was hosted by the University of Exeter. This was my sixth ALDinHE conference, and my first time in the lovely city of Exeter. This blog post will provide my reflections on the conference and a summary of the keynotes by Dr Liz Morrish (Tuesday) and Professor […]

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 […]

Sandra Abegglen, Tom Burns & Sandra Sinfield This #Take5 blog focusses on three academics working collaboratively in their learning, teaching and research practice: as a way of helping us to better enjoy our time as practitioners. Context All three of us work in UKHE, in a post-1992 University with a diverse student body from non-traditional backgrounds[1]. Our job descriptions vary, with TB and SS in staff development and SA as a course leader in Education; we are one full time and two fractional with heavy workloads[2]. Our institution has been through radical reconstruction, including a merger, the institution and then modification […]

TLC: The Best Teaching and Learning Conversations http://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/flex/tlc.php Happy new academic year! This year, #Take5 is celebrating MMU’s Teaching and Learning Conversations (TLC). These free, open online conversations offer an exciting informal cross-institutional collaboration to provide joint CPD opportunities for everybody teaching and/or supporting learning in Higher Education. Manchester Metropolitan University with London Metropolitan University, Northampton, Surrey, Suffolk and Sheffield Hallam universities are organising these monthly Webinars to bring together colleagues from different disciplines, institutions and countries to engage in Teaching and Learning Conversations. Together, we will discuss and debate a variety of current teaching and learning topics in a […]

Close your eyes and relax… Sam Aston and Helena Ross from The University of Manchester, have been focussing on wellbeing and meditation to help students calm down, relax and focus. Here in this #Take5 blogpost they share their techniques and strategies – and invite us to share our practices with them. Sam Aston is a Teaching and Learning Librarian working in the Learning Development Team at the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons at The University of Manchester Library. She works on My Learning Essentials to deliver skills support and is currently applying for senior fellowship of the HEA and conducting a […]

In our last post we suggested that you had a look at Hybrid Pedagogy’s #moocmooc on Critical Pedagogy. This week they are discussing the limitations of an education system totally geared to employment – and ask whether it is possible to create educational alternatives. This is what they say: MOOC MOOC: Critical Pedagogy is a six-week exploration of critical pedagogy. During this fourth week of MOOC MOOC: Critical Pedagogy (MMCP), we will be discussing Jeffery Shantz’s essay, “Spaces of Learning: The Anarchist Free Skool” (chapter 7) in Anarchist Pedagogies and considering the impulse to dissent as seen in Thoreau’s essay […]

In UKHE a significant aspect of the work of central Educational and Learning Developers is to help university staff develop their pedagogy and their curriculum practice. We work with staff to help them become educationalists – to teach and assess more effectively – and to develop their practice to tackle emerging changes in society, in educational policy – and in the aptitudes and attitudes that they encounter in the students before them. Our work involves change: in our practices – of our resources – to our ways of thinking about teaching and learning. Change can provoke disquiet, unease and even […]

Welcome to Take5! So – it’s Week Zero (W0): another day another dollar; another Semester and another Year.  Change is all around and we can’t help noticing doing Inductions and Preparation for Study courses how things move on. Buildings, rooms, modules, staff and of course students – all moving – all changing – and all diverse. ‘Diverse’ could be a prefix for London Met – and no matter what sort of student you have taught before – it’s all changing again. Everybody is already exhausted and wondering where the summer went … and here we are – the Take5 project – […]