Study Skills

Puzzling the pieces This #Take5 is brought to you from Katharine Stapleford who has solved this year’s Covid-19 problem – how to get students working (and reading) collaboratively when studying online and at a distance. Here’s Katharine: Background I teach on the MA Digital Education programme at Leeds University. The programme is 100% online distance learning and recruits students from all over the world. The programme adopts a flipped learning* design, whereby each weekly unit centres around an interactive student-led synchronous seminar with some asynchronous pre- and post-seminar tasks. Why the jigsaw technique? The underlying principle of the jigsaw technique, […]

Date / Time: Thursday 18th February – 3pm Location: Online via Collaborate Presenters: Arielle Redman, University of York Description:  Processing, understanding, and remembering information is often aided by combining images with text or keywords. These are the two essential ingredients of the majority of memes, which are, by definition, widely shared and enjoyed. Come prepared with a piece of research or key idea you have heard, read, or written. Enjoy a whistle-stop tour through the history and purpose(s) of memes, what makes one successful for your chosen audience, where memes have been used malevolently, and how you can positively contribute to making the internet […]

“I was asked to deliver a ‘skills’ session to a group of second years. I went into the room – the students were dotted about in ones, occasionally twos. They all had their coats on. They did not know each other’s names. These students had not arrived in that classroom. Arguably, they had not arrived on the course.” (Member of staff) Why is this an important area to cover? Not only is it important ethically to develop humane and compassionate teaching spaces, it is vital to the notion of facilitating the dialogic co-construction of knowledge; for active, deep and meaningful […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from Dr Chris Little. Chris is a Learning Developer and Teaching Fellow in Keele University’s Institute for Innovation and Teaching Excellence and serves on the editorial board of Innovative Practice in Higher Education. Chris writes about the journal – with a special focus on their new poster section. Publish Your Poster Presentations with Innovative Practice in Higher Education Innovative Practice in Higher Education (IPIHE) is an independent online journal currently, and very kindly, hosted at Staffordshire University. The journal is an opportunity for any colleagues in HE to share their innovations in delivering teaching […]

This #Take5 post is brought to you by Helen Hewertson … who works at a large post 92 UK University. She is the main person responsible for the day-to-day running of the foundation programme in Humanities and Social Science and is module leader for and teaches on all the core modules. There is a cohort of between 40-100 students per core module which cover topics like study skills, critical thinking, research methods and digital literacy.  Helen’s student’s drawing Start here “The foundation entry degree was probably the best thing I did. After being out of education for so long (15 […]

This month’s #Take5 blog is brought to you from Ian Johnson, Learning Development Tutor, University of Portsmouth. Ian discusses an interesting, dynamic reflective process that makes reflection move beyond performance to something useful and meaningful. Reflective Practice – ‘Surfing the Wave’ Teaching students how to reflect in writing can be a thorny issue for disciplinary staff and learning developers alike, and one that often raises more questions than answers. Why is reflection so often uncomfortable for students? In theory, freedom from the dreaded academic mantra ‘never write in first person’ could be so liberating, but more often, it feels like […]

Stortelling in Learning Development This #Take5 blog post is brought to you by Anne-Kathrin Reck co-organiser of the recent ALDinHE one-day regional symposium at the University of Portsmouth: ‘Storytelling in Learning Development’ (September 12th 2019). This turned out to be a day filled with fun, informative and participatory sessions, covering presentations, workshops, show & tells and a world café session. The speakers were recruited from the university with subject areas ranging from law to gaming, maths and performing studies. The presenters were learning developers, lecturers, librarians, and a faculty dean! What’s the story morning glory? Storytelling is undoubtedly powerful and […]

Happy new academic year! #Take5 is back and ready to go. This year our hope is to bring you at least one post a month – and to kick us off we have a great post from Jennie Dettmer, one of the organisers of an inspirational event that took place between ALDinHE and SIGMA – the maths people!  ALDinHE and SIGMA in An Event of Four Firsts This #Take5 post is brought to you from Jennie Dettmer, one of the organisers of the joint ALDinHE and sigma Network regional event on ‘Current Issues in Differentiating Learning Development’ at the University […]

This #Take5 post is a follow up to all the fruitful discussions recently held on the LDHEN list about the 12-steps of the narrative – and the different ways that they can help us to conceptualise writing – and how we might use that in our work with students. This very practical and instantly useful blog has been written by Heather Dyer a consultant with the Royal Literary Fund who uses The Hero’s Journey in her writing workshops with dissertation students. You’re a Hero on a Journey We’re hardwired to see stories in everything: a relationship, a thesis, a life. […]

Using Cartoons to Support Learning Development Happy New Year All! And a belated thank you to JACQUI BARTRAM from the University of Hull and the Association of Learning Development in HE (ALDinHE), who has prepared this beautiful blogpost for us – and which for many reasons (let’s blame #Brexit) has taken us way too long to publish. Cartoons are us Who doesn’t love a cartoon? Anything that looks like it will add a bit of light relief to a subject will usually draw the attention of even the most diligent reader. Cartoons don’t just have to be a bit of […]