Sally Brown

This week I was not due to travel, but made a late decision to go and see my mentees in Liverpool John Moores  University and to work with other colleagues there including  NTFs Sarah Nixon and Barbara Walsh. And next week I am back to workshops again, so I really am back in harness. But I took a proper break over Christmas and it did me the world of good. So nowadays my diary reads like Bridget Jones’ (number of calories consumed, minutes of exercise taken, number of words written etc per day). Keep up the good work!

We’ve enjoyed a lovely weekend down in York for the panto, and at Leeds for our annual family Christmas get-together. The photo shows me with my sisters Pam (left) and Wendy (right) with one of my niece Bekki’s two Baftas showing on the mantlepiece behind us. Phil and I are now home until January, which we will really enjoy.
Over the holiday I will (with Kay Sambell and Linda)  be finishing our latest book, and writing a chapter for Tim Billham and colleagues who are editing another National Teaching Fellows’ volume, and also working on NTF activities.
There will also be time for Poppy’s Christmas crafting party, our street soirée with neighbours for mince pies and wine, and a sit down Christmas dinner for (I think) about 14 of us!
There will also be lots of reading for pleasure, writing for pleasure, playing with our grandchildren, eating, drinking and talking.
I do hope all colleagues and friends will equally be doing lovely things you enjoy over the holiday. Merry Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year to all!

I’m back again this week to Luxembourg where I will be working with colleagues on evaluating their own teaching (slides here Eval-own-teaching-Luxembourg-2016w.pptx (557 downloads) ) and helping people work on HEA Fellowship applications (grid and slides here: grid-2015-11-1.docx (629 downloads) UKPSF-recognition-slides-2015-w.pptx (702 downloads) .  No doubt it will be nice and cold in Luxembourg and I hope to get into  the festive  spirit by popping down one evening to see the Christmas market for which the city is famous.  (Actually, with the grandchildren we seem to have been  building up to Christmas for some time!)

This is my last trip away for work before  January (although I hope to be bringing the writing of my book with Kay Sambell and Linda Graham for Palgrave on professionalizing higher education to some kind of glorious fruition before New Year’s Eve!)   So  I  would like to wish all my colleagues and friends a really joyous Christmas and a peaceful and positive New Year!

This week I am again working with Sheffield University on helping their academic staff on teaching contracts to think about writing and publishing. This Wednesday we have a really crucial session thinking about what makes a journal article attractive to publishers so that colleagues can target their submissions effectively. The handout is here:  teSS-Scholarship-Circle-Session-2-w.docx (463 downloads)

This week I am again working at Liverpool John Moores University helping colleagues improve publications opportunities and also working strategically across the Sports Studies, Leisure and Hospitality Faculty to improve assessment and feedback. ( see materials here: Checklist-of-the-8-steps-4-good-assessment-and-feedback-practice-w.docx (447 downloads) Assessment-captains-w.docx (452 downloads) checklist-grid-w.docx (446 downloads) Improving-Module-guides-w.docx (455 downloads) ).

And then it’s back down to Neath to see those rapidly growing baby twins. We are delighted to say they are making excellent progress and are now four months old!

This week finds Phil and I at the SEDA conference in Brighton, which is our key network for keeping ourselves up-to-date professionally. This is the organisation that nurtured us through the last two decades of our working careers, and indeed was the way we first met. We celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary last week in Budapest.

Today I will be running a workshop with Shan Wareing of London SouthBank University on fostering effective dialogue between educational developers and leaders of learning and teaching in universities. Together we have created seven scenarios of such interaction of which we will be role-playing two, and asking our participants to try out in pairs at least one, prior to a plenary discussion of the key issues.
We hope that the resource will be useful to colleagues beyond the university, and therefore we are making our resources available here. Brighton2016-Shan-and-Sally-handout.doc (491 downloads) If you do use them, please let us know how you did and what you used them for.

This week Phil and I are honoured to have been invited to present at the EuroCHRIE conference in Budapest: we have both enjoyed working with these European Hospitality, Tourism and Events experts in the past in Leeds and Amsterdam, so  we jumped at the chance to network with them again in Hungary. It’s really important for our own CPD to keep up-to-date about learning, teaching and assessment developments in diverse subject areas, and so we will be participating extensively (although  we do plan to make use of at least one the famous thermal spas while we are there).

We are giving linked keynotes, so our slides are here (now including the slides Phil actually used – slightly different to previous version):   Budapest-4w.pptx (648 downloads)

And when we come back it is straight into monster mayhem on Sunday 30th when we host a Halloween party for our grandchildren and friends. Sounds scary to me!

After a brilliant three days visiting our granddaughters Chloe and Molly (and their parents) in Wales, this week I’m working with colleagues at Nottingham Trent University on HEA fellowship applications grid-2015-11-1.docx (629 downloads) ,  and on Friday  I am starting a really exciting project at Sheffield University’s Faculty of Social Sciences where I am working to support colleagues who have teaching rather than research-orientated contracts, over a number of months on developing their pedagogic writing and research skills. Slides should be downloadable here: tess-scholarship-circle I will also be helping them to prepare submissions for HEA fellowships.
(The photo shows Becky having a minute to look at her phone while Granny keeps Molly and Chloe happy) 

Thanks to Ed Phillips for sorting out a new host so quickly.

On Wednesday 21st September I will be contributing to Harper Adam’s Learning and Teaching Conference, where I am looking forward to learning from Harper Adams colleagues and also to meeting up again with fellow speakers Ron Barnett and Phil Gravestock. My contribution will be two workshops on assessment, the slides for which are here. Harper-Adams-Sept-2016-w.pptx (596 downloads) As Autumn gets underway, it’s really good to be reconnecting with colleagues and refreshing my own practice.