The Great Gatsby

In April 2014 the Gatsby Foundation published a report called Good Career Guidance (thanks to Tristram Hooley, who was involved in the research, for giving me the heads up). The blurb on the website says:

We commissioned Sir John Holman to research what pragmatic actions could be taken to improve career guidance in secondary schools. Sir John developed eight benchmarks that identify different dimensions of good career guidance, and made ten recommendations for improving the career guidance system.

So clearly the focus is secondary schools but there's a lot in it that's of relevance to HEIs too. The guts of the report are the 8 benchmarks for providing good careers guidance, which are as follows:

1. A stable careers programme
2. Learning from career and labour market information
3. Addressing the needs of each pupil
4. Linking curriculum learning to careers
5. Encounters with employers and employees
6. Experiences of workplaces
7. Encounters with further and higher education
8. Personal guidance

All of which are relevant to HE. 

It's a well researched and well written report. I'd be interested to know your thoughts, especially if you are using in (or intend to use it) in a HE context. 

A year of blogging

It's been just over a year since Alan Cann finally persuaded me to start a blog (I was worried I didn't have anything to say). My first post was on 3 April 2009 on Developing online tutorials at Teaching and Assessment Network. It was a slow start but in the last few months I've been beginning to find blogging really useful. If you look at the archives for this blog you'll see that they extend back to January 2009 - that's because I tried to start with a team blog for Student Development, but it didn't work - but I've imported my posts from then for completeness.

Alan (him again) put it very well last week in a post of his last week re his thoughts on blogging.

To be perfectly honest with you, the main reason I write this blog is so that I can find things again. Now, I have lots of ways of finding things, such as Google, social search and all the tags on my delicious account, but they don't help very much when you can't remember what you're looking for. Writing about things lodges them in my brain so that's less likely to happen. It also changes what I decide I need to know. Along the way, I've found that some of the stuff I write is of interest to other people. Which is nice.

I don't look at the stats for the blog very often but I guess I should make it at least an annual event, so here are the top posts of all time on my blog (cue relevant music).

The Remembering the milk post is largely because James Clay retweeted it at ALTC2009 (thanks James!). I'm pleased to see one of the Tagginganna posts up there, Advice from Helpdesk Hollie, and of course (who could forget) the-practically-went-viral Brown cake.

A better conference wordle

Just taken out all the usernames from the conference wordle which results in something more informative and less self-referential (a part from the word 'twitter!). Click on it to see the original and bigger image.

Quick conference wordle

Just got back from an excellent Association for Learning Development in Higher Education conference. I'll write more of a report another time but just wanted to put up a wordle for the #ldhen10 conference hashtag (downloaded these using this Twitter tag downloader tool)

Hmmm, probably should have taken out the usernames using edit/replace as well as the hashtag! Still, another time...

Conference reflections: SLTC09

I seem to be continuing my late Friday afternoon blogging habit. But at least I'm still going and I'm hoping that as I continue I'll find it more and more useful. We'll see.

On 16th and 17 June I was in Edinburgh at the Science Learning and Teaching conference. Here are a few reflections before I forget.

Best bit

Spending time with colleagues and meeting a few new people (especially people I'd already met on Twitter).

Worst bit

Getting up at 4.30 am on Tuesday to get the flight up to Edinburgh.

Queeziest bit

Professor Dave Barclay's keynote on forensics and learning by experience.

The thing I wish they'd change

The programme was full-to-bursting and so there was very little time for discussion. I'd like to see more space in the programme next time to facilitate discussion and sharing of ideas.

And here's the wordle of the tweets courtesy of Moira Sarsfield.

Finally, I'm beginning to see how Friendfeed is going to be useful. And as I've tagged this perspicasious and erudite post 'sltc09', it should appear in there too.

ALDinHE conference 2009

I've just returned from the ALDinHE 2009 conference at Bournemouth University. I've not been to many conferences, but the ones I have been to, more often than not, have left me underwhelmed. This one, however, was different. Stimulating keynotes, a wide choice of workshops, time to network, brilliantly organised and a cracking conference dinner.

Monday's keynote was from Dr Dennis Hayes entitled From flagellation to therapy: what are students learning today? Dennis, with Kathryn Ecclestone, is the author of The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education. His presentation was thought provoking and controversial (especially in this context). I must say I enjoyed his straight talking (many didn't), even though most of his assertions seemed to be based on anecdotes. He had loads of time for questions, which was just as well, because there were loads of questions. Conversations (often heated) spilled over into lunch and well beyond. It really did the job of encouraging debate.

Tuesday's keynote was from Professor Alan Mortiboys entitled Using Emotional Intelligence in Learning Development- what does it mean for the tutor to use emotional intelligence in learning development, and why is it important? Alan is the author of Teaching with Emotional Intelligence. His presentation was much less controversial, but I thought had much less content. I was struck by his comment that we should aim for emotional as well as cognitive learning outcomes. He got us to do various activities around developing our emotional intelligence as learning developers.

I also attended some very useful workshops, not least one entitled The magic resource maker. Many of the workshops I went to though weren't really workshops, but rather presentations with a few minutes for questions at the end, which was a little frustrating. Not that I mind presentations (although I can't cope with many after a keynote), I just don't like them being called workshops.

However, even though the keynotes and some workshops were very stimulating, perhaps the most useful aspect was meeting colleagues from similar services to ours from across the UK. I particularly enjoyed meeting people I'd previously met on Twitter, including Becka Currant and John Hilsdon. The image below is a wordle formed from the tweets of the conference, which might give you a flavour of what went on.