net zero Archives - eLearning Stuff

After a week in Manchester I spent this week working from home. I took the time to work on the implementation of our HE Sector Strategy and more on our internal communication plan to continue to raise awareness of the strategy.

I wrote up my reflections on the UCISA Conference.

Overall, I enjoyed the conference and found that it exceeded by expectations. Despite being labelled a leadership conference, I was expecting to see and hear much more about the operational side of higher education IT but was pleasantly surprised by how many sessions were on leadership and transformation. I will be planning to attend the UCISA Leadership Conference next year.

I also wrote up about sketching at UCISA 22 with some thoughts about sketches from earlier conferences. My sketch notes are really for me, rather than other people. The process of sketching allows me to digest for myself what is been talked about and demonstrated. The sketch note provides me with a mechanism that provides a process for my interpretation of what is being said and what I understand from the talk.

The process of sketching engages me in the talk in ways in which note taking does for others or conversing on the Twitter. They are not done for other people, if other people find them useful then that’s just a bonus. So if you want some sketch notes for your conference, why not get in touch.

Group working — Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

I enjoyed Martin Weller’s blog post on group work.

First up, every student’s favourite way of working – group work!

He is working on a series of blog posts about online learning.

Like many of you I’ve been getting rather exasperated by the “online = bad, face to face = good” narrative that seems to have arisen post-pandemic. So I thought I’d try a series on some of the ways in which online learning can be done effectively. I mean, I know it won’t make any difference, but shouting into the void can be therapeutic. They’ll be a mix of research and my own experience.

I worked on some reports and guides we will be publishing later in the year on the Intelligent Campus and the Intelligent Library. We originally published the guide in 2017. This was at the time well received by the sector and continues to be the core guidance in this space. Since then, universities across the UK have been exploring how they can make their campuses smarter and intelligent. Since the guide was published, there have been many changes to the landscape, as well as the covid-19 pandemic, there have been advances in smart campus technologies, and a new range of use cases. We know from sector intelligence, member voice and Learning and Teaching Reimagined that the future of the campus is an important component when it comes to digital transformation. This has shown the need for Jisc to update their advice and guidance in this area.

Continuing our research into the Intelligent Campus is outlined in Jisc’s HE strategy.

We will continue our research into the intelligent campus, learning spaces and digital platforms, and how these improve a seamless student experience. This includes how digital and physical estates work together so that they are responsive to student journeys and interactions as well as to help universities achieve their net zero targets.

I was interested though (from an FE perspective) to read about Gloucestershire College’s move to ensure that their campuses function on fully renewable energy. They are digging bore holes for a heat exchanger. For a site that is in the heart of the city centre I did think that this was an intriguing solution to moving to net zero.

I wrote a blog post on the duality of digital teaching.

When we talk about online and in-person many of us think of this as a dichotomy, either we are online, or we are in-person. The reality is though as we know, that this can be more of a spectrum, a range of possibilities, with varying depths to which online or digital can be embedded into an in-person experience.

I did think that this Twitter thread on academic presentations was interesting and useful to read on six useful things.

A year ago, a non-academic friend listened to a talk I gave. I thought it went great. My friend disagreed.

She said that academics are experts at making interesting stuff boring—and that we should all take a speech class.

So I did. And here are 6 most useful things I learned.

— Nicholas Coles, PhD (@coles_nicholas_) April 4, 2022

Practice speaking in your natural voice
Break up your talk
Don’t cram in material
Research the setting
End early
Prepare two conclusion statements.

I did like the sixth thing was interesting and useful.

Academic talks often end with a Q&A. But this can mean that the last thing you audience hears is a subpar question or an awkward “No more questions?” You can ensure that things end on a high note if you prep a post-Q&A conclusion.

This is something I am going to start doing in my talks and presentations.

My top tweet this week was this one.

That's nothing, once I nearly ran @JDonOfficial over, in Weston-super-Mare. https://t.co/ncOggqIOO8

— James Clay (@jamesclay) April 3, 2022

Some of my highlights from the first day of Jisc’s Digifest.

It was a nice start with the opening keynote from Jim Knight, director of Suklaa Ltd.

His personal reflections of the pandemic resonated with many in the audience, as did his vision for the future. There are things we want to keep and there are things we know we need to work on for the future. I did a sketch note of his talk.

I thought his presentation was nice, not inspiring, just nice.

Over the day we saw many sessions about building and changing for that future.

Stacy Vipas, head of digital learning, Askham Bryan College talked about her college’s use of an action research framework and a roadmap for the future of digital learning. She spoke about bringing together the changes in spaces needed, the digital skills of students, to bring about that future vision.

Tom Farrelly from Munster Technological University brought over his real life experiences of working with marginalised communities and how others could benefit from the lessons they learnt.

I attended another session, where a full room of delegates wanted to find out more about how Teesside used a learning design toolkit, underpinned by a framework, with academics across the university. They talked about how staff were initially hesitant, but the process of going through the toolkit was illuminating and transformative.

A highlight for me, on what was International Women’s Day was the panel consisting of inspirational female leaders and their views and reflections on their personal journeys to success and what this means for the sector to ensure that we can remove the barriers to inequality and support an equal future for women in the sector. We still have a way to go.

The climate emergency was the subject of an international panel discussion. We need to be thinking about greening agendas, carbon neutrality or even going carbon negative.

With two of the panel coming in live from the US, this was a great discussion on the importance of the education sector both responding to, but also been seen to be responding to the climate emergency.

This did mean I missed a, according to others, a great session from Rob Bladgen from the University of Gloucestershire in his session titled “Education: the great changemaker”. This session, saw Rob telling the story of Gloucestershire’s purchase of the city centre Debenhams building, with a plan to create an educational hub for students. Recognising the need for such a place to be a place for community and belonging.

We have as a sector seen real challenges over the last two years, but I did feel that now we have a (potential) roadmap to a better future.

However despite thinking about the future, we need to reflect on the past. This was the essence of Audrey Watters final streamed keynote, hope for the future. This was a thought provoking discussion about the importance of history and the future of edtech.