Development workshops discussion

As we begin to focus on the staff development aspect of the project it has been interesting to discover that there are a range of similar activities in development across the University.

Today we had a meeting to share what was planned, knowing that our library service, computing service, e-Learning and academic staff development colleagues (and probably others!) had plans at various stages of development. It’s encouraging that staff development on the use of technologies and related pedagogies for both teaching and research practices are being considered across the university, although it also highlighted the difficulties in communicating and sharing these plans and the potential for duplication of effort – it was more by accident than established process that we made the initial connections!

The meeting achieved our aim of agreeing to at least develop a joint calendar of events and co-ordinated promotion of them, as well as collating details of each one to help identify areas where we may be able to collaborate and share the workload of delivering activities.

The reasons for planning events included:

• To respond to the needs of specific user groups e.g. research students and staff wanting to use social media in research practices
• To develop digital literacies – part of the JISC funded PriDE project
• To develop capability amongst colleagues involved in this JISC Transformations project and our associated FLP
• To provide ‘just-in-time’ training for teaching and learning staff
• To develop practical ‘hands on’ skills
• To help staff gain confidence in exploring new pedagogies and supporting technologies
• Generally raising awareness and prompting discussions of a more strategic nature

It seems that we will be considering several different types of event ranging from 30 minute practical sessions, to plenary seminars and workshops of varying length. A key aspect will be to capture the events with a view to building on the programme in subsequent years, using archive materials as preparation for the next iteration of an event as well as making them available to those who may miss the session first time around.

Coming together helped us to realize the opportunity to slot our events around those of others. Our initial plans were concentrated very much around the plenary type event, followed by focused events for our faculty and departments to explore ideas arising from these. It’s a relief to realize we won’t necessarily need to develop and deliver all of these single-handedly and it was helpful to share connections and networks which may assist us in convening speakers for our events.

I found the recent Innovating Pedagogy report from the Open University very timely in stimulating thoughts around possible topics for the plenary events and we’ll certainly be sharing details of events beyond the confines of the University as we get them off the ground.

Melanie – Project Officer