Sally Brown

On 27th May, after some assessment activities at Leeds Beckett University, Phil and I will be embarking on a week’s holiday in Filey with our family, so we are hoping for lots of sunshine, fish and chips, seaside outings, and novel reading/ music listening.

If you follow us on Twitter you will have noted some Tweets about a new resource I am developing to help staff and students discuss criteria and how to apply them (#biscuitcriteria).  The task briefing I am piloting is here,   Biscuit-game-Anglia-Assessment-Album-w.docx (1092 downloads) and you might like to have fun trying it out. If you do, I would really welcome any feedback on how you have used it (or indeed packets of biscuits to sample). If you are having a holiday too, have a great one..

On Tuesday 24th, I will have the honour and pleasure of speaking at the awards at The Union,  Manchester Metropolitan University student-led teaching awards. It’s really nice to celebrate outstanding teachers and others who support students and I was delighted to have been asked. I am doing a 12 minute presentation using only images and talking about how students can make the most of their time studying and on graduation. I’m not supplying the presentation here as some of the pictures are of private individuals who  might not want them shared widely but  each of the 12 images will give me a chance to talk about a topic beginning with the letter R. For example I will be talking about resilience, respect and rejoicing. What else would you include? Tweet me with your best suggestions: @ProfSallyBrown

This week and next week will have a Scottish flavour, as Phil and I are going to Aberdeen where I will be working on 4th May contributing to Robert Gordon University’s teaching and learning conference, where I will be keynoting on ‘Enterprising Learning and Teaching’:  RGU-Enterprising-learning-and-teaching-w.pptx (609 downloads) . I will also be contributing to their finally plenary panel.

On 12th and 13th of May, we will both be at the SEDA Conference in Edinburgh, where I will be doing a workshop with Kay Sambell on transforming assessment. It will be great to see old friends and meet new colleagues at  what I was think is the best UK educational development conference.

Today I’m back in Cambridge continuing work on ARU’s assessment resources project, and then down to Hove to see colleagues about publications and my son Matt.

Photo thanks to Charlotte Graham

Next week is insane! On Tuesday it’s Peterborough for a committee of National Teaching Fellows meeting, then off to Birmingham to keynote at The Association of UK Business Schools conference, then Sheffield on Thursday keynoting on authentic assessment for their enterprise conference and Friday at the University of Portsmouth again talking about assessment enterprise and employability. The main slides for these events are here: Aston-Bus-schools-confernce-April-2016-w.pptx (1418 downloads) Sheffield-Enterprise-April-2016-w.pptx (676 downloads)   Portsmouth-H2-influence-Enterprise-w.pptx (673 downloads) Portsmouth-Engagement-keynote-w.pptx (641 downloads) . And the next week I am working at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen and the week after, Edinburgh for the SEDA conference (Hoorah!)

I was asked yesterday who does my diary, and the simple answer is I do it myself hence the insanity. I am, after all, supposed to be semi retired!
But when somebody asked me this week to do 12 days in May and June I had to say I have no availability at all until September.
But I do keep Mondays and Tuesdays pretty much for fun with the grandchildren so that does provide good balance.

After a cracking ANTF symposium last week and a lovely family Easter, it is now back to work with energy and  enthusiasm, developing multi-media resources with colleagues at Anglia Ruskin University on assessment on Friday and continuing work on the book I am writing for Palgrave with Kay Sambell and Linda Graham. Next week, on 6th April I am keynoting for the Science and Engineering Faculty at Northumbria (nice and close to home) where the topic is once more Assessment and Feedback. I used to work at Northumbria nearly 20 years ago so it will be interesting to see some well-known faces there as well as meeting new colleagues.  Northumbria-Assess4Enhancement-w.pptx (643 downloads)

This week Phil and I will be participating in the NTF Symposium in Birmingham where we will have a chance to meet up and engage with almost 100 fellow delegates, all NTFs on day one and other colleagues too on day two. Stand by for lots of Tweets on #ANTF16 which are likely to feature lots of Playdoh models (thanks to our sponsors Hasbro), the NTF Wall of Scholarship that will feature current and recent NTF publications, new photos of delegates taken by our friends Ede and Ravenscoft, (which may include ones of us wearing our NTF stoles), and other random images and text.

Phil, Peter Hartley and I are running a session for people on day two for people who are not yet NTFs but would like to be. Our brief slides are here:  ANTF-prospective-NTFs-w.pptx (718 downloads)

On Thursday and Friday this week I am working at Reading University helping colleagues think strategically about assessment and feedback: others might like to use these questions [here: Reading-assess-rich-questions-w.docx (615 downloads) ] as prompts for overhauling your approaches to assessment and feedback at validation, course review or just as  part of annual Spring cleaning (It must be Spring soon!).

On February 23rd, I am starting an exciting project with Anglia Ruskin University. Having worked with Sharon Waller, Margaret Price and Erica Morris for two  years on the ‘Transforming Assessment’ project which saw NSS scores for assessment and feedback improve on average by 11 points, we now are working on a suite of video and text-based resources, and we start filming our conversations today. Not only will it be fun but I hope it will provide a lasting legacy for our joint work.