Widening Participation

Join us in the new EDI working group We are establishing a working group to focus on our approach to EDI as an association and a community of practice. We know excellent work is going on within our community and we feel it is important to bring together colleagues to create a vision of how we might embrace EDI work. The Steering Group has been discussing the concept of an EDI working group for a while, but we felt that it is important the community makes these decisions. Therefore, we would like to invite colleagues who are interested to fill in our form so […]

Frantzeska Kolyda provides an overview of her article published in issue 27 of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education which aims to encourage educators and universities to explore interventions and practices that cultivate a growth mindset to reduce inequality in the academic success of students and the central role that learning development plays in achieving this. ‘I am not good at maths’, ‘I am not good at this’, ‘my classmates are smarter than me and get things quicker’, ‘I feel like an imposter’; educators may hear students saying. Students’ beliefs about their competence, intelligence, and skills play an […]

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 […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from Julia Reeve – and it is a beautifully detailed and thoughtful look at  LEGO® Serious Play®. Julia Reeve is a National Teaching Fellow based in Leicester who works in diverse educational settings including Further, Higher, prison and community education. Her practice focuses on building confidence, connection and creative thinking via imaginative, multisensory learning. If you’ve never attended a LEGO® Serious Play® session yourself – please, please read on.   Setting the scene My name is Julia Reeve, I’m an educational consultant and part-time lecturer in the Faculty of Business & Law at De Montfort University, Leicester. I’m […]

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 […]

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 #Take5 post is brought to you from Dr Carina Buckley of Solent University – and is in dialogue with her #Take5 on students and camera use in online teaching and learning from a few weeks ago. The Evil DrB herself Should your students turn their cameras on? A rebuttal A few weeks ago, I argued in this blog that students should be free to choose whether or not to turn their cameras on during live online sessions, and that there were other ways for students to participate. While I still support this approach, particularly from a student-centred, theoretical point […]

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 […]

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 […]