Sally Brown

I was working with an  intersting group of colleagues at Leeds on Monday producing an assessment guide based on the Weston Manor manifesto for the HEA. The publication is due out later this year.  On 13th February I will be at the Assimilate Masters level assessment  steering group in Leeds and I have been busy getting the case studies up to date. Next task is to start writing up my Masters level research into journal articles.

I presented two workshops on  feedback and assessment at the University of East Anglia in Norwich today, where the weather was rainy but the welcome was warm. Thanks to all the participants for your engagement in exploring these crucial topics. The presentations are provided here. UEA Streamlining Assessment (1165 downloads) , UEA Assessing more students (634 downloads) .

On Wednesday  18^th January and Thursday 19th January I contributed to the Faculty of Education Community and Leisure’s  Inspiring Teaching conference at  Liverpool John Moores University where I ran two workshops on Inspiring Teaching,  joined a breakfast session for the Journal Club which is aiming to support staff across the faculty in writing for publication, I also offered consultation opportunities and co-delivered a keynote with Phil Race on Bringing your teaching to life. The latter was fun in preparation, not least because Phil and I have very different ways of working (he started life as a research scientist and at one point in my career I was a therapeutic drama tutor so our epistemological models are rather different). Here are the slides (in PowerPoint 2007 files in zipped folders) for both the workshops and the keynote. LJMU workshops (1173 downloads) , LJMU keynote (593 downloads)

Happy New Year Everyone
I’m at Liverpool John Moores University today for a one day workshop on improving large group teaching and another tomorrow on small group teaching. The presentation I am using today can be found here. LJMU Lecturing (608 downloads) . Here also are the main slides from my workshop on Small Group teaching, on 6th January LJMU Small Group (575 downloads) .
Next week I am visiting Northumbria University and working on my Assimilate masters level assessment project

In slightly snowy Dublin today, for the International Conference on Engaging Pedagogy, at the National College of Ireland. Here are my slides ICEP Dublin 16th December (638 downloads)

Had an excellent meeting of the NTFS Assimilate Masters level assessment project steering group last Friday. We are getting some very interesting data from  our Q sort analysis undertaken by Tim Deignan. We will be presenting outcomes at the SEDA conference  on 17th May 2012 at Chester. For people interested in presenting a paper at our own end of project conference  in Leeds in September, here’s the conference proposal form: Workshop Proposal form (561 downloads) . Phil and I are looking forward to speaking at the International Conference on Engaging Pedagogy, at the National College of Ireland in Dublin, on the 16th December.

I’m looking forward to going to the SEDA conference in Birmingham to learn more about Technology Enhanced learning and to meet with colleagues and friends. For the next couple of weeks I’ll be working on my NTFS project on Masters Level learning  Assimilate (http://assimilate.teams.leedsmet.ac.uk/).

After a positive and purposeful day’s work with colleagues on Thursday at Liverpool John Moores University, I had a gruesome journey home involving train cancellations, a fire at Manchester Piccadilly station, chaos and poor customer services, but at least I got home just before midnight. Here are the slides we used.   Liverpool Thursday (1291 downloads)

I am currently working with a Faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, helping colleagues prepare their learning, teaching and assessment priorities  for the year to align with the universities’ draft strategic plan. Here are the slides I used, Liverpool workshops (646 downloads) together with some useful references from the literature on managing change in universities. Here are some  useful quotes (reference details are in the slides0.

George Lueddeke says “Too often new approaches are introduced by executive fiat or though a centralist management strategy, or, at worst through ad hoc and hurried planning interventions in response to years of benign neglect. It seems a rarity indeed for academics to genuinely feel that they are part of a meaningful, participatory decision-making process that values their experience or even their instinct for seeing potential pitfalls.”

Lee Harvey adds “Little progress is likely within the current external quality monitoring regime unless there is a radical shift to an integrated process of trust that prioritises improvement of learning” (Harvey, 2005, p.274).

And Geoff Scott proposes: “A fundamental factor in reshaping culture is how well the senior management consistently model good practice” (Scott, 2004, p.5).

I’ve had an excellent morning with around 140 Scottish teachers and educationalists at the EIS/Aberdeen University Partnership event today at Aberdeen University. It was inspiring to see how many enthusiastic people turned out on a Saturday morning to talk about assessment. Here are the slides I used, in PowerPoint 2007 in a zipped folder EIS Aberdeen (702 downloads) .