In it for the distance?

Having started down the route of the runners as a metaphor for the Forum and having questioned whether the end of the Forum was the end or just the beginning, this photo seems appropriate!

Are we in it for the distance?

As I have said in previous posts, PRSI put an investment into the Forum because we believed that ithis would be the kind of meeting that could catalyse activities. There is anecdotal evince that our instinct is being proven correct, but wed be really grateful if people could post some comments logging any initiatives, or conversations or any other activities however, tentative. Evidence of this appearing may encourage more ‘green shoots’ (a prompt for a future blog picture, perhaps!).

For example we understand from Daniela Tilbury the Director of Sustainability here are Gloucestershire that there are a umber of Forum participants who will be meeting inforally at a conference in Plymouth over the summer. If you are going can you post some details in a comment? Is this the All Our Futures conference in September?

Any others?

Kenny

The picture is called ‘il mondo occidentale‘ and was taken by Paolo Margari and posted to flickr. It is covered by a Creative Commons License: attribution, non-commercial, no-derivatives. It was found using flickrcc

Finishing Line … or the beginning?

Few! The Forum is over.

We started the day with discovering that the projector in the main hall had gone and had to be replaced, then we got word that there was a major accident on the M5, suggesting that some of the participants may be delayed.

However, most of the participants registered turned up and a few extras for the University of Gloucestershire were able to get away from their commitments for part of the day.

Prof Patricia Broadfoot, Gloucestershire VC, opened the conference commending the Forum participants for our commitment to the research of teaching and learning because she described this as providing the evidence base for addressing a major challenge of 21st universities.

‘Learning is not … Listening’

… it is so many other things which she went on to discuss.

We were very pleased with the interest in the active approaches we designed into the days events.

In the morning presentations the presenters and chairs did remarkably well in keeping to our almost impossible restrictions of 5 minutes and three slides per presentation in the morning sessions. We hope to post some resources from these presentations in the form of audio or video or Powerpoint presentations shortly. If you took part in these discussions, please post a comment if you didn’t get the chance to be heard on the day – or even if you did. I was only able to attend the Diversity session, but would really have liked to attend the others, so would be interested to hear what people said.

The ’speed dating’ session went extremely well. Some people clearly met their ideal research partner because they seemed reluctant to move on to another date!!

The lunch was enjoyed by everyone. This was done by outside caterers to the university (see previous post). We would welcome any feedback if you were there.

The Learning Cafe created quite a buzz in the afternoon. We have collected in the table cloths and post-it notes and intend to collate this information and make this available online shortly. Please watch out for this and comment if you feel the urge. In the meantime, I typed up the main bullet points from each chair as a separate post. Please have a look at these posts that I typed up as the Table Hosts were feeding back to the Plenary and post a comment:

• 21st century universities
• Academic Leadership in HE
• Technology Enhanced Learning
• Engaging Diverse Communities
• Internationalising the curriculum
• Linking Research Teaching and Practice
• Education for Sustainable Development

We would really like this Forum to result in a number of collaborations – otherwise it was just a nice day and a ‘talking shop’. So please keep us in touch with anything that results and let us know if we can assist. Lindsey suggested in the summing up at the end of the Plenary that PRSI has some activities, such as seminars, writing initiatives and so on that we would be keen to share with other institutions. Please get in touch and let’s see if we can achieve something from this.

During the course of the day I spoke to a number of people who had met other participants with common interests or in some cases were working on projects that were remarkably similar. We hope that these meetings and sharings will result in networks for some, collaborations for others.

So is this the end or is it the beginning? Can we continue the forum discussions in some way that will result in tangible outputs? How will this work?

Kenny

The image is ‘Finish Line‘ by ptufts made available under a Creative Commons license, found using the image search on Creative Commons

Learning Cafe; 21st Century Universities

Shelley Seguaro said:

Lots of exclamation marks & question marks appear on our on the tablecloth! (??)

The discussion covered different kinds of research – how useful is it in teaching-led institutions post-RAE

• further longitudinal studies are needed with students not just on students;
• mentoring;
• who teaches the teachers? – particular those people who may be reluctant/hesitant to engage with these issues; how to inspire colleagues to join us on the journey.

During the the Learning Cafe we found the words ‘grow’ and ‘growing’ were important to the discussion – projects could be small flowers or saplings, as much as they could be large oaks.

Learning Cafe; Academic Leadership in HE

Steve Rayner said

• “Academic leadership is learning to lead for leading learning”
• change – is all change good? How does leadership link with change for good
• challenge – is it good, how do we face it/deal with it?
• exploring ‘concern’ – leadership & management should be about people, but change can bring about concern

Learning Cafe; TEL

Martin Jenkins said

• there is a need to identify barriers to accessing or using technology for learning, not just for preventing use, but restricting the use of the technology
• student expectations of technology is important – are we reinforcing students expectations to be ’spoon-fed’ learning

Research questions:

• curriculum design – researching the effectiveness of the design of curriculum across institutions and the sector as a whole
• web 2.0 technology – are these student-led or staff-led?

Learning Cafe; Diversity

Madeleine Howe said

• The discussion tended to focus on the changes resulting from increasinlgy demand-led HE. Students particularly valued diversity of opportuntities (eg WBL makes them more employable).
• Talked a lot about the supply of graduates and questioned whether the increasing diversity of students would add to the cultural capital or would more divers students mean that some would have more difficulty building their cultural capital
• Few HEIs had policies on how to support staff on how to support/respond/enable students not from the majority group of students.

Learning Cafe; Internationalisation

Nadine Sulkowski said

Two main trends in internationalisation:

• recruitment of international students
• exporting students overseas

Key issues:

• different learning styles
• assessment
• technology – E-learning, distance learning

Conclusion:

• a lot of focus on issues and challenges, but three key words are ‘Celebrate our Diversity’

Learning Cafe; ESD

Arran Stibbe said

• need for longitudinal studies on students once they have left university and gone into employment – what is their impact?
• imposition of values on students? ESD is often accused of forcing students to think in a particular way.
• research is needed on education outside the classroom – setting students assignments not just of WBL, but perhaps talking to elders in the community

Learning Cafe; Linking Research & Teaching

Chris Short said

• One of the key research questions national and institutional is main-streaming of linking teaching and research. Moving from modules to core to programmes, faculties; the evidence needs to be found – anecdotally resarh-teaching links are universally positive
• The students need to be open to their learning being integrated with research at the start (managing student expectation) and throughout their programme rather than the final year (as in some cases)
• ‘Reluctant colleagues’ – the individual ownership of research contrasts with the shared values of teaching – there is a need for reflection and evidence.

Ready, Steady …

Well, we’ve packed the cars with everything we need for the Forum, we’ve prepared the lists read and re-read the programme and our task lists to make sure we haven’t forgotten anything. Now it’s time to just go with it and hope that we’ve got everything planned and the Forum goes ahead as smoothly as possible.

Our main concern is that the experience is useful to all the participants. We have always tried to ensure that our main events have a lively and ‘active’ atmosphere, so we hope that this is what happens.

We are very keen that networks or collaborations emerge from the discussions at the Forum. We are keen to support an emerging activity, so please keep us posted and let us know if we can support in any way. One possioble way of keeping us updated is to comment here on the blog.

We hope you enjoy the day!

Lindsey, Kenny and the PRSI Team

The image is a Creative Commons license image called ‘Starting Line‘ by Jon Marshall found using FlickrCC