Quick NACE reflections (part two)

The NACE conference is now over so I'm just jotting down a few more thoughts. The sessions I attended since the last post were:

1. Mobile Career Services: The Next Frontier in Student Engagement
2. Keynote Address: Anna Deavere Smith “Snapshots: Glimpses of America in Change”
3. Keynote Address: David Spector “Recruitment and Technology—The Journey So Far”

The mobile session (or 'mobul' as they say here) was useful. The take home for me was that whilst at Leicester we have given a lot of thought to our communications and use of social media in the past we need to revisit it. We could certainly do more to deliver useful and engaging content via mobile.

The other really useful thing about the last few days has been meeting people, both from employers and college sides. Some really useful connections have been made and I'm looking forward to keeping up with them on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Tomorrow and Tuesday we're visiting NYU and Penn univerity careers services. Having met some of their staff at the conference I'm really looking forward to finding out more about them and sharing ideas. Lucky me :)

Quick NACE reflections (part one)

Well it's day 3 of the NACE 2013 conference and I've got a bit of reflection time. This is more of a 'note to self' than for anyone else's benefit as I need more time to reflect, but just so I capture a few thoughts...

The sessions I've been to so far are:

1. Keynote Address: Jeremy Gutsche “Exploiting Chaos”
2. Motivating Your Students to Get on the Ball
3. Limitless Opportunities for Student Engagement
4. The Future of Career Services: Challenges and Opportunities

The keynote was loads better than I expected. Jeremy Gutsche's message was very apposite given the current context in which careers services are operating in, both in the UK and US. The importance of an engaging,cwell connected message that links specifically to 'what exactly are you trying to do' was helpful.

The Limitless Opportunities for Student Engagement session was very useful. The careers service at NYU has clearly made a big impact in terms of student engagement with their #iamlimitless campaign. It was a great example of people relatively new to social media just getting on and doing it without any 'expert' help. The trick will be though to translate engagement into results. Something I'm looking forward to talking to with them about when we visit NYU on Monday.

The most fascinating session was the Future of Careers Services. It was clearly a popular session with, I reckon, at least 500 people attending. The really interesting thing for me was that the US are battling with exactly the same issues as us - student engagement, scalability, hard measures, flexibility of service delivery and institutional responsibility. I'm pleased to say we're in the process of addressing all of these at Leicester, but we have much to learn from our US colleagues. 

NACE 2013 conference

In 10 days' time I have the privilege of going to the US with Bob Athwal to the National Association of Colleges and Employers conference in Florida. There isn't really an equivalent organisation in the UK as NACE is a combination of both employers (here represented by the AGR) and university careers services (here represented by AGCAS).

NACE describe their mission as:

The National Association of Colleges and Employers connects campus recruiting and career services professionals, and provides best practices, trends, research, professional development, and conferences.

In addition to going to the conference,  Bob and I will also be visiting our counterparts in NYU and University of Pennsylvania. I'm really looking forward to seeing how careers services are set up in the US and sharing ideas. It's a real privilege to go and I'm determined to make the most of the learning. It may even get me back into blogging...

Making a success of the HEAR conference

On Wednesday I was at the joint AGCAS/CRA conference on Making a success of the HEAR. In case you don't know, this is what HEAR is:

The Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) provides a single comprehensive record of a learner’s achievement, as recommended by the Measuring and Recording Student Achievement Steering Group in the Beyond the Honours Degree – the Burgess Group Final Report (October 2007).

And this is what the HEAR s supposed to do:

The HEAR enables institutions to provide a detailed picture of student achievement throughout a students’ time at university, including academic work, extra-curricular activities, prizes and employability awards, voluntary work and offices held in student union clubs and societies that have been verified by the institution. 

The event was pitched to:

• Review the implementation of the Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) in UK HE.
• Consider how the HEAR, and the processes that underpin it, can contribute to the development of student employability.
• Receive an up-to-date account of employer engagement with the HEAR led by AGR.
• Have the opportunity to consider how careers services may take a leading role in this development.

Zara has already blogged about it as a 2-parter (part 1 and part 2 definitely worth reading for more detail) so all I want to do is note down a few quick observations using the event objectives.

Review the implementation of the Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) in UK HE.

The project has been running for a long time (10 years) and implementation is, so far, patchy. Whilst the case study instituions have clearly done some good work, I was surprised that they weren't further along than they are. At least there is now a website (hear.ac.uk/) and when you put HEAR into Google it appears near the top (it's been difficult to find up to now).

Consider how the HEAR, and the processes that underpin it, can contribute to the development of student employability.

The focus by most early adopters seems to have been on the process of recording details of programme contents, results gained and the overall classification (sections 4.1 and 4.2) - a process governed by the Registry function of institutions. Deena Ingham from the University of Bedfordshire gave an excellent workshop on how the University of Bedfordshire is engaging with the HEAR, in particular the work she has done on breaking down the academic jargon so that employers (and students) can better appreciate what courses are about - starting with the course titles, then 'graduate impact statements', then module titles, then assessment methods. I need to mull this over more to get my head around how it fits with the identifying employability in the curriculum stuff that I started a while ago.

The more obvious area of focus regarding student employability has been section 6.1, which is the bit where all the other stuff gets recorded - student achievements, additional awards, volunteering etc. - verified by the institution. It's that last bit, "verified by the institution" that's difficult. I don't think anyone has got a really good process or system for doing this yet, at least not at scale. and it certainly needs more work.

Receive an up-to-date account of employer engagement with the HEAR led by AGR.

This was the best bit for me. Jane Clark (seconded from Barclays to the AGR to work on this) gave an update on her excellent work on engaging employers with the HEAR. I was particularly pleased to see it connected to the potential social mobility benefits. AGR has produced some useful publications for employers (HEAR the whole story: your Higher Education Achievement Report toolkit and Don't miss out on the best: your guide to social mobility in recruitment. Unfortunately these don't seem to be on the AGR website yet so here's a photo of a useful page (Top ten reasons why you [employers] should support the HEAR and Key misconceptions and why they're wrong.

Have the opportunity to consider how careers services may take a leading role in this development.

Perhaps I shouldn't say this but this was the most disappointing bit for me. Marc Lintern did an excellent job of presenting back the results of the AGCAS Heads of Careers Services survey but the responses were somewhat lukewarm. Clearly there are obstables to overcome in terms of employer uptake, but careers services and universities really need to get behind this if it's going to work, and if it helps with social mobility that's got to be a good thing.

#empysummit

Well after having had my head down all week planning and writing for our Employability Summit I've made a school boy error and not given a moments thought to its amplification. But with a good core of active tweeters coming and a very topical issue the amplification should still work well. So, things I've just thought about

• I've decided the hash tag will be #empysummit (which looks a bit too much like 'empty' but 'employability' is just too long and I know Mark likes 'empy')
• I'll put up some signs with the hashtag on in the venue  first thing tomorrow morning (if you're coming - don't forget its in the Henry Building now)
• I'll put the tag on Twitterfall at the beginning and during the breaks

What else do indeed to do? Do I need to do anything for Google Plus? And please retweet, comment, re post!

Tagginganna at Lilly West

Here are the slides Mark and I will be using at the workshop at Lilly West (#lillywest12) and, thanks to Alex, by the time we get there they should even be finished! The guts of the workshop though will be two activities centred around 2 printed out texts to simulate the online environment before we introduce it. You can find out more on the dissemination part of the Google site that I've put together. Thanks to Zara, Marta, Carol and Zoe for test running this for us.

Lilly West

Next week Mark and I are going to the Lilly West conference in California to present our (and Alex's) #tagginganna project. I've been blogging about it as we've been going along but I thought it would make it easier to showcase the project if I made a sepearate site. I've been tinkering with Google sites for a while (easy, free and getting better) so I thought I'd make a Google site for the project. I've previously used Google sites for making sites for the local cub and scout groups (I might put these up as templates on Google sites when I get the chance) but they were never used in the end, so it's nice to have an opportunity to use it for real. The site isn't finished yet but it should give you the general idea. Feedback and suggestions very welcome.

And while I'm here, things that were handy for making it:

• a colour picker - I used this chrome Eye Dropper (free)
• a photo editor - I used pixlr.com (free)
• a drawing tool - Kathy did the tagginganna tag on Brushes for iPad (costs but Skitch would have done it for free)

Pomona here we come!

AGCAS Heads of Service conference 2012

I spent the second half of last week at AGCAS's new heads of service training and then the AGCAS Heads of Service conference in Dublin.  This is an annual event for heads of higher education careers services. Just like last year it was an enjoyable conference. It was good to meet people, some of whom I had met last year but most of whom were new to me. I found a few more heads of service on twitter this year, but most seem to use LinkedIn so I've connected with them on their instead.

The opening address from Kate Dodd was a useful starting point, in particular her challenge for careers services to develop universal provision, i.e. engaging all students not just the keen or desperate few (I'm exaggerating slightly there). Also her summary of what senior managers expect from their Careers Service, that the service will:

1. help enhance the institution's reputation
2. make a positive impact on DLHE (she also made the point here that whilst we might be uncomfortable with the 6 month deadline it would be a time frame that students would think reasonable)
3. demonstrate how what they do is value for money

I attended a really useful workshop on 'Is the virtual careers service inevitable?' with Michael Clark and Marc Lintern (I'm hopping their slides will be available somewhere soon?). I also attended a less than useful workshop on 'Is the career guidance interview a necessity or a luxury we can no longer afford?', which I thought would be really interesting but unfortunately the panel was made up only of people in the necessity camp so wasn't very useful (IMHO).

It was also a good chance to catch up with Bob Athwal, who was there in his AGR capacity but starts with us on 16 January :)

AGCAS Heads of Service conference

I've just got back from the AGCAS Heads of Service conference at Conference Aston. This was my first time at the conference and I was there in my acting up capacity. As is usually the case with conferences, the best part was meeting people - especially to share ideas and compare experiences. I felt particularly welcomed by the East Midlands Heads of Service (we were trying to think of an appropriate collective noun for ourselves but didn't). Also, it was good to find people on Twitter, especially in meeting Michael Clarke from London for the first time (he was the other person at the conference tweeting!), Stephen McAuliffe (he looks very  smart on his Twitter pic) from Nottingham, and Jon Christie from Falmouth.

The common themes of the conference were around demonstrating impact of activity, strategic positioning of careers within institutions (especially post Browne), and doing more with less. The institutions that seem to be making most headway are those where both opportunities to influence strategy are grasped and senior management are supportive.

Being relatively new to things careers I found the conference very helpful and colleagues very supportive. Whether I go next year depends on what happens to my acting up...

And, what post conference blog would be complete without a wordle of the tweet hashtag #agcas11 (thanks twitter archive and Wordle).

ALTC 2010 quick mid-conference reflections

Part way through a busy ALTC conference I'm just trying to jot down a few of my thoughts on things so far (largely for my own benefit rather than anyone elses).

Yesterday was a bit of a slow start. Donald Clark's keynote was, I felt, provocative but lacking in any substance or evidence. Mostly I'll remember him for not having a lot to say that was constructive and swearing a lot. It got better after that. Geoff Stead's mobile learning demonstration was well done and it was good to meet him today. Alan Cann's session I missed because I had to leave early but his innovative use of FriendFeed to scaffold reflection is well worth a look at the slides. Our (that's Alex, Mark, Jen and me) presenation on Creating pedagogic models around  searchable tags andfreader commentaries on e-texts was well received (well done Alex!) - you can see the slides (actually, Prezi) on my previous post.

The sessions I've been totoday have been great for different reasons. The panel discussion on ethics of web 2.0 was extremely thought proving - gave me a lot to think about. The Guerilla narratives of media workshop was a lot of fun - in less than 30 minutes we generated usable ideas for using mobile devices for learning. And Dave White pulled off a brilliant presenation (that's two years in a row) on models of online distance learning - I'll blog about it more when I've had chance to digest it and hopefully post a link to the talk.

And as always it's been great to meet some new people, especially those I've only ever 'met' before on Twitter, and also bump into some old people too.

And finally, just to prove that I'm really here, here's an image of me with my apple devices in the conference from Steve Wheeler's blog post of yesterday. Thanks Steve!

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...

Engaging without invading at ALDinHE

This is an update on the draft of the workshop that I'll be running with Becka Currant on 31 March at the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education conference.

Thank you to all of you who commented on my draft - it was really helpful. The comments especially prompted me to think through the difference between using existing versus new networks, which is the major difference between mine and Becka's approach in using social media to promote student engagement.

In addition to talking through the updated slides below I'm going to make sure that I explain in more detail:

• RSS (thanks for the comment Brendan)
• Twitterfeed
• Hootsuite

We're still a little unsure of how much we're going to get participants using the tools (as per Steve's comment I'm a bit cautious about it) - it depends what they're current level of knowledge/suspicion is.

Changes to the slides (which you can see below) from last time include:

• an opening question to find out something of the attitude of workshop participants to using social media for student engagement ('I'm already using it', 'I'd like to but don't know where to start', 'I'm very suspicious of using it')
• the addition of Ning to encompass Becka's approach at Bradford
• adding a column for the USA population as per Brendan's comment
• a slide summarising the differences between existing versus new networks
• a slide on tone of voice as per Jo's comment
• I've added a creative commons logo and listed it as such in the slide details

Engaging Without Invading

View more presentations from Stuart Johnson.

This is going to be a much better workshop thanks to eveyone's comments - so thanks very much!

Student Micorblogging And Recording Timelines poster at HEA conference

I'm just putting this here for completeness. Jo, Alan and Alex have done the work really. In fact, I'm very grateful to have my name on it at all. Thanks guys!

Heat Poster

Poster presented at Higher Education Academy 2009 Conference from TechDis funded HEAT 3 project

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.

Subject specific online tutorials at Science Learning and Teaching Conference 2009

Here's my poster for the 3rd Science Learning and Teaching Conference. Maybe by next year I'll have something else to talk about other than plagiarism tutorials. Hope so!
Subject-specific online plagiarism tutorials

Unconference

I'm just hurrying off for the bank holiday, but thought I'd do another quick high-traffic-Friday-afternoon-post (!) first about the unconference I organised and ran today. Whilst I was a bit worried before hand, it really wasn't difficult to sort out (though it would probably would have benefited a bit more thought). What I've been struck by in particular is the usefulness of the conference to people who were participating via twitter. Here are the people who I know have blogged about it so far

A nearly 'unconference'

On Friday I'm running our Learning and Teaching in the Sciences conference. I say I'm running it, but I very much hope that I'll just be facilitating it as this year we're going to attempt one of those participant led unconference things.

Initially I'd decided to cancel this year's event as we couldn't get the speakers we wanted, then (to my surprise and delight) several people complained. So it's back by popular demand! Alan Cann commented that a traditional conference was the last thing we needed and suggested an unconference? So that's what we're experimenting with on Friday. Here's an outline so that I can a) get my thoughts down and b) invite comments and suggestions.

Factors

There are some of the factors we need to bear in mind if this is going to work well.

Numbers

We have 20 booking so far and I don't imagine that will go up or down a great deal between now and Friday.

Room

We will be in GPS18 - a reading room in the George Porter building - which will accommodate more than 30 but will probably be best set up as 4 groups of tables with 8-ish around each table.

Time

We have 3 hours available (10.30-13.30) but with lunch included in that, so will probably closer to 2 hours.

Participants

We will have a mix of people coming along - some of whom will be very comfortable with the idea of an unstructured unconference, others of whom (I expect) will find it all a bit odd. So I need to give the event some direction and shape, but without turning it back into a conference. I don't want to stick slavishly to the unconference model (of which there's not a great danger because I don't know enough about it!) but I do want to use it as far as it's useful in getting everyone involved and contributing and coming up with practical ideas.

Theme

The theme is assessment, more specifically we have a question to focus our thoughts: Do we over assess our students and should we assess less?

Outline

So a suggested outline is as follows (NB. timings very approximate).

Introduction (10 minutes)

Explain the proposed outline and relevant unconference elements:

• each group will have a convenor to facilitate (not lead) the discussion - they are not necessarily an expert on the chosen topic, they've just identified a challenge and want some ideas;
• each group will have a flip chart pad and pens and will need to note down (and then present back) the challenge they have identified and some suggested solutions;
• participants can choose to go to whichever group they like;
• participants can (and are encouraged to) move to a different group whenever you think they've got as much from they're current group as they can.

Pitches for session 1 (10 minutes)

This is the bit that's not very unconference-y. Get 4 pre-primed people to pitch their idea as one of the group topics. The suggestions I've had so far are as follows (not all of these people have been asked yet - some have been volunteered - but take it as a complement!).

• Using Turnitin for assessment (Jo Badge)
• 10 quick wins on assessment (Jon Scott)
• PC-based exams (Richard England)
• [and another one please - Alan? Chris? Dai?]

Each pitch is a a maximum of 2 minutes - no slides.

Just noticed none of these are problems - just things - any suggestions?

Session 1 (up to 30 minutes)

This is when people get into groups around the tables and off they go. Participants can switch group whenever they like (but not the convenor).

Feedback from session 1 (10 minutes)

Feedback from each group.

Tea and coffee (10 minutes)

Brainstorm for session 2 topics (10 minutes)

What do we want to talk about next?

Session (up to 30 minutes)

As for session 1.

Feedback from session 2 (10 minutes)

As for session 1.

Conclusion

What are we going to do next?

Lunch

Courtesy of central catering.