Sally Brown

It’s exciting today to be part of the launch at Kingston University of Michelle Morgan’s £2m HEFCE project exploring Post Graduate Student Experiences. The project involves nine UK universities and will last two years. I am contributing as part of the steering group, in part because of my experience running my NTFS  project on Masters Level Assessment.  Michelle’s project has the potential to really enhance learning at Postgrad level.
Here are my slides on Postgraduate Issues Pg Issues (616 downloads)

Today I am speaking to Sheffield University’s Springboard Women’s Development Programme about my life and career. My advice to them will include:

When things go wrong:

• get back on the bike and keep going (learned from my father who came back from WW2 a paraplegic and was made ambulant again by his mother, a Swedish physiotherapist, pushing him off on a bike downhill until he fell off, to build up his leg muscles);
• Don’t be afraid to jump out of the window (derived from the film The Black Narcissus);
• Remember that the boldest acts are sometimes the safest (derived from a statue by the Thames of a general of the British Army)

Tomorrow I will be at Aberystwyth University talking about my masters level assessment project The slides are here  M Level: Aberystwyth (611 downloads)

This week I am working again at Anglia Ruskin University on Wednesday doing a Teachmeet session alongside Mark Schofield of Edge Hill University. I am leading a short session on ‘fifteen things you can do to really cheese students off around assessment (and some things you can do to stop doing them) Teachmeet: how to cheese off students (531 downloads) and a session on Thursday for their Performing Arts and Media staff on assessment   Assessment slides (1145 downloads) before heading off to South Bank University on Friday for their HEA Fellowships panel.
I’m really excited about being invited to a conference in Chile in July.  Any one got any useful tips on what to do in Santiago and where to visit?  please send to sally@sally-brown.net

This Monday I spent a fascinating hour being trained to be an NTFS reviewer. Not only was it fascinating hearing about the HEA current system but it was also very interesting to be trained alongside about 40 others using Elluminate  virtual processes. Sitting alongside Phil, a fellow trainee in our study we were talked through the slides, could ask and hear responses to questions and communicate with fellow trainees. I’ve used Elluminate meetings before but once again it made me wonder why we don’t use this kind of training more often.
On Friday I am working with colleagues at Sunderland university on achieving all four levels of HEA Fellowship. It’s great to work so near home on a Friday when I can travel on my Metro Gold Card!

Yesterday and today I am working at Kitley Hall in Devon with staff at Plymouth University who are contributing to the new Palgrave book that Pauline Kneale is editing (with a little help from me) on Masters level teaching, learning and assessment.

Today is Keele’s Learning and Teaching Conference focusing on assessment and I am contributing a keynote as well as joining in the discussions on the day. Here are the slides for my keynote: Keele Keynote (1245 downloads) .
Keele is one of eight universities taking part in the HEA initiative to improve assessment systemically across institutions. the associated publication ‘A marked improvement ‘ is available on their website which contains valuable resources including a valuable audit tool to enable HEIs and departments to scrutinise and enhance assessment. Here is the link: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/assessment/a-marked-improvement

Yesterday and today I have been working at Anglia Ruskin University discussing responses to problematic NSS  scores with colleagues. Tomorrow I am meeting with colleagues from the HEA ‘a marked improvement ‘ project to discuss future developments.

On Monday I had to practically carry my granddaughter back from her first morning back at nursery as she was so tired after relaxing in the holidays and today I know just how she feels!

This year once again I’ve been working on the Centre for University Excellent Teaching Programme for middle managers at Utrecht University. I’ve been working on this programme most years for around 15 years, and it was fascinating at yesterdays Senior Management Discussion on assessment strategy how many colleagues had completed the programme over the years, and have now reached Associate Dean (Learning and Teaching) status. Congratulations, Hetty, Theo and colleagues for consistently running a great programme over the years. Thanks to today’s participants for engaging in such productive dialogues about assessment. The slides for today’s session are here. Assessing for Learning (1719 downloads)

Here are the main slides I used in my workshop on Masters Level Assessment on 11th December Masters Level Utrecht (601 downloads) .

Here also are the main slides I will use in my keynote on Assessment for Learning on 12th December. Assessment for Learning Utrecht (1481 downloads) .