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Blended Learning – Weeknote #16 – 21st June 2019

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London

It was Monday, so as well as having a few online meetings, responding to e-mails, I was also writing stuff too. There was an interesting discussion on the Twitter about the term blended learning. Started off by this tweet from Peter Bryant.

I do agree with the sentiment of Peter’s tweet that the assumption blended is somehow better than other kinds of learning is flawed.

Reflecting on this more I thought about it, I realised that we’ve always had “blended” learning.

I posted my response to his tweet.

There are many ways to deliver learning (is that even a thing, can you even deliver learning) and ways for people to learn. My experience is that people like to learn in different ways and in different contexts depending on what they are learning, how they are learning, with whom they are learning, the topic, the subject and even the outcome of that learning and how it will be assessed. Don’t fall into the trap of learning styles, thinking that each individual has an individual way of learning, as the way in which people learn varies all the time and what works one day, may not work for them the following day. Sometimes your don’t even have a choice about certain aspects, as in I have to attend that compulsory lecture regardless of how I actually feel about it and the subject.

I think technological advances have allowed people a much wider choice of ways to learn. I expanded this in another tweet.

Since writing that tweet, I realise that the control aspect is both enhanced and diminished by the advances in technology.

We want to “measure” learning by using tools such as the VLE, whilst students can subvert that control by using tools such as WhatsApp or historically Facebook groups (are Facebook groups still a thing these days?).

So what do you think? Is blended learning new or has it always been here?

Tuesday I was back in London, it was warm and sunny and we had blue skies, alas as the day went on it started to rain. I was in London for an event by London Higher on research they had undertaken on commuting students, and the impact of commuting on student outcomes and wellbeing.

I made a sketch note of the event.

These sketch notes are mainly for my benefit, as they collate and coalesce my thoughts from the event.

The event took place at the BT Tower and I did initially think we would be at the top of the tower, alas it wasn’t meant to be, the event took place in a room on the ground floor. I was close, but not close enough.

In between meetings I went to a new coffee place and enjoyed a flat white as I caught up with my correspondence.

In the afternoon I was off to the RVC for a meeting with an old friend to discuss learning and teaching in higher education and her thoughts about what Jisc can do in this space.

The end of the week saw me once more off to London, this time for a meeting with officials from the DfE. It was really nice and sunny compared to Tuesday.

Oh had more coffee as well…

My top tweet this week was this one.

weeknotes

Avoiding the President – Weeknote #14 – 7th June 2019

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Lighthouse at Dungeness
Lighthouse at Dungeness

After a lovely week off in Sussex, it was straight back into work with three days in London. I am expecting a few issues as it would appear a certain American President is also visiting London during the same three days!

Though I have been off work for a week (well four days if you exclude the bank holiday) and having cleared my inbox before I went away, I did think 110 new emails wasn’t too bad. I suspect a fair few are automated notifications. There were no direct messages in Slack, but Teams was quite busy as was Yammer.

The big story of the week when I was away was the Augar report, I spent some time reading various articles on the report.

Tuesday was a blast from the past as I attended the Jisc Digital Futures Quarterly meeting in London. This was a regular meeting I participated in when I worked in the Futures directorate. In my new role I am in a different directorate. Myself and Zoe had been invited to speak about the Technical Career Pathways. After our session and a working lunch, we sat down and we spoke about mapping the relevant sections of the SIFA framework to the Learning and Research Technical Career Pathway. Using the SIFA framework is going to enable us to provide consistency across the different Technical Career Pathways within Jisc.

Pasean restaurant

Wednesday another day in London, this time I was speaking to the Jisc e-textbook publisher strategy group meeting about the Jisc HE Learning and Teaching strategy.

It was an interesting conversation about not just the future of learning and teaching, but also some of the current projects Jisc is working on,

I didn’t see much of the Presidential visit except the huge number of helicopters flying overhead, so when I got home I was pleased to see the back of them. So you can guess I wasn’t too amused by the number of Royal Navy helicopters flying over my house on maneuverers on Thursday. Weston-super-Mare is home to the Helicopter Museum and the armed forces often fly their helicopters to that location and then back home.

I spent the end of the week going through the e-mails I had built up over the week (and the week I was off on leave).

My top tweet this week was this one.

weeknotes

What is required of us as educators for the future? – Weeknote #04 – 29th March 2019

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After a busy week last week with three days in London, this week is nearly as busy with another three days in the big smoke. On Monday I attended an ideas workshop in London. There were two identical sessions looking at two grand challenges. I enjoyed both sessions and felt that I both learnt stuff and contributed stuff.

The following day I was preparing for my presentation on Thursday and the slidedeck I prepared was just images. I like to do that now and again. Back in 2006, which for me feels like last week, but was some time ago, I remember a senior manager commenting on the amount of text I had on my slides I gave for a presentation. I realised that despite having initially a minimalist approach, I had started to have “text creep”and my slides were filling with text.  I usually try and keep the number of words on my slide to a minimum, but now and again I miss words out completely and go just for images. So from then on I tried to do as little text as possible.

This blog post from 2005 (and the follow up post from 2007) were very influential in my presentation style and slidedeck design.

One meeting I was in was about Jisc’s student partners. I have always thought that the student voice is important and should inform your planning and development. Having students participate is really informative and useful, but as we do, consider what the student gets out of the experience as well.

Another meeting was discussing a development session we are running for staff towards the end of April on implementing agile. This was originally something I said I would do in my previous role, but am happy to do

Wednesday I was back in London for a workshop on looking at how Jisc can influence the influencers. This was an interesting day and again it reminded me how much I enjoy working in the London office. This was followed by a management meeting. A later finish and an earlier start the next day meant I was staying over in London. Gave me a chance to walk around the area near the hotel (close to BBC Broadcasting House) and have a nice meal at Wahaca.

Chargrilled Crown Prince squash grown for us by Riverford Organic, served with kale & cashew nut mole

On Thursday Waking up earlier than planned gave me a chance to have an early morning walk around Regent’s Park, there are some lovely green spaces in London and if I have the chance (and the time) I do like to explore some of them now and then.

Regent's Park

I was presenting on Thursday the keynote I prepared earlier in the week for the Association of Colleges and The Education and Training Foundation Data Science Conference. My session entitled What is required of us as educators for the future was an insight into fourth industrial revolution, Education 4.0 and what FE Colleges might need to consider to meet these exciting challenges and opportunities.

I also showed the Jisc Education 4.0 video.

The rest of the day was stimulating and informative. The hands on workshop run by my Jisc colleagues sparked a lot of interest from delegates.

Friday was a chance to update my colleagues on Jisc the state of play of the sector strategies that we have in place and are developing. I lead on the HE and student experience sector strategy and this was an chance to discuss progress on the existing strategy and where we may be heading in the future. You won’t be surprised to hear that Education 4.0 is on that horizon. I spent part of the day clearing out my inbox of e-mails, making sure I was up to date and planning for the next couple of weeks as well.

My top tweet this week was this one.

conference, jisc, jiscel12

Valuing CPD

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Victoria Street, London

I’ve recently (been) signed up for a one day event in that London town.

The event cost is £325 and the train ticket is over a hundred pounds.

That isn’t cheap!

I think it will be an useful event and (probably) value for money.

However when you consider the costs of the JISC Innovating e-Learning Online Conference at just £50 and what you get for that, you might want to consider attending.

As one delegate from last year said:

“I think it is a brilliant return for the investment and consider this to be a major part of my CPD each year.”

There is a packed programme and in addition to the usual week of presentations and discussions, there is the activity week, a chance to have a go at stuff.

For £50 you aren’t probably going to find something of similar value anywhere else in the UK.

Of course also as it’s online there are no travel costs either.