Sally Brown

I’m flying to Belfast on Monday 21^st May to work at Letterkenny IT in Ireland on Tuesday and Wednesday, then driving down to work at Waterford IT on Thursday, Cork IT on Friday and then home to Newcastle for the weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and making new ones.  I’m doing workshops on assessment,  Refreshing your curriculum, Internationalisation, Retention and promoting excellent teaching. My presentations will be posted on this website after each event.

Earlier this week Phil and I attended a very lively Association of National Teaching Fellows symposium in York, where we collectively initiated a promising book proposal. Yesterday and today we are at the SEDA May Conference in Chester, where Janice Priestley, Tim Deignan and I gave a presentation on our Masters Level Assessment Project ‘Assimilate’. Here are our slides SEDA Conference (10).

Having just got a PhD myself by this route and learned a lot along the way, I am now offering universities the opportunity to enable groups of staff to work with me over around a year or so on achieving a PhD by this route. Click here for more information.PhD by Published works (20)

I am delighted to say I have formally been told today that I have been awarded a PhD by Published Works. It’s been a fairly tortuous process but an enormously interesting one, and I learned a lot by doing it. I started with the view that it would be fairly straightforward to ‘convert’ my publications into a PhD, but actually the process was an extremely challenging and strenuous one, but also very enjoyable and has reignited my enjoyment of writing for publication, particularly journal articles. Funnily enough I am now planning on writing a guide to doing a PhD by Published Works so I can share my learning with others.

Today was  spent at the inaugural North East National Teaching Fellows network meeting where Phil and I gave a presentation about how you bring about change in universities. It was great to meet up with people I know well  alongside people who I’d only bumped into before. I think the network will be very useful in the future. Here are the slides we used in our presentation. On 14th and 15th May we will be going to the Association of National Teaching Fellows  symposium in York  which I am sure will also be very useful.NE NTFS Change (28)

Should they have an NSS in Ireland?

See my input  to the webinar held today at

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8zeub8yy8cl2k79/SallyBrown.m4v

The whole webinar is at

http://www.linireland.com/events/webinars.html

Incidentally Paul Hewson’s work at Plymouth University on the way data is used erroneously in NSS is fascinating.

My two articles on change in universities mentioned in the clip can be found in the posting for 24 April just below this post.

I am participating on Wednesday 25 April in the second in the series of Learning Innovation Network webinars http://www.linireland.com/about.html . See below. I can’t participate live, but have prepared a video presentation which I will be posting on my website after the event.

Topic: An Irish National Student Survey – Do we need one and what questions should we ask?

Date: 4pm Wednesday 25April 2012

For more information and to register: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3378869289

Other speakers include:

Dr Rónán Ó Dubhghaill, Director of Planning and Institutional Research at University College Cork

David Keogan Vice president (Academic and student Affairs) DIT Student Union

Since becoming an independent consultant, I have started thinking a lot about how we effect change in universities. I have written two journal articles on the topic. The first Brown, S. “Bringing about positive change in the higher education student experience:  a case study” published in Quality Assurance in Education Vol 19 No 3 p195-207 has just been chosen as an Outstanding Paper Award Winner at the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012.

The second: Brown, S (2012) Managing change in universities: a Sisyphean task? Quality in Higher Education, Vol18 No 1 p139-46 has just been published this month.

To summarise briefly what I propose, I argue that change in higher education institutions doesn’t happen through managerial dictat, but through painstaking, evidence-based, long-term work, where managers strive to bring colleagues with them in a collegiate fashion, focusing on the student experience.

Thanks to everyone for contributing usefully to the workshop and one-to-one consultations at Plymouth University today on ‘Enhancing the student experience and improving NSS scores’. Here are the slides we used Plymouth 2012 April (41).

Phil and I are travelling today to Plymouth to attend their PedRIO pedagogic research conference, where I am looking forward to hearing Glynis Cousin speak and attending the workshops. After that we are doing workshops for staff there on assessment and enhancing student satisfaction.