Sally Brown

We are getting in the mood for festive celebrations at home in Newcastle, and tonight I fly down to Southampton for my penultimate consultancy workshops before Christmas. On Wednesday, I will be running a session for  Solent staff on working towards Principal Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, together with some more sessions with course teams on enhancing the student experience. It’s tremendous working with Solent staff, and enjoying the festive atmosphere: the University is doing so much to enhance student life for home and international students, in the lead up to the celebrations. Phil’s  and my slides on working towards all levels of Fellowship including our big colourful diagram on UKPSF are here: UKPSF-recognition-slides-w5-July-2019-1.pptx (621 downloads) UKPSF-grid-latest-March-2019.docx (530 downloads)

This week I am back down again at Solent University, working with course teams on improving NSS scores through curriculum enhancement, and doing some other workshops including this week’s session on assessment for which the slides are here. Solent-PRSB-workshop-w.pptx (488 downloads) Even though Phil is retired, he is coming down to keep me company this week, and so I said he could have a guest slot in my university wide workshop. The slides you see here are the ones from which we will both select. We will also be giving the biscuit game a whirl:  Activity-1-The-Biscuit-Game.pdf (603 downloads) .
As the dark days of autumn head progressively towards winter, the nights  draw in and gloom is in the air politically, it’s a good idea to do things for fun which make us cheerful.

On the afternoon of the 28th, Phil did a guest input on Feedback in my workshop, then Paul Maple recorded and led guest video interviews with us both on assessment and feedback, to be edited and made available to staff at Solent through their website. The photo, taken by him, shows us with Karen Arm of Solent.

We’ve had such an amazing fortnight (please see photos) with our four grandchildren together in Wales, then enjoying Michelle Morgan’s Doctoral graduation in Bournemouth with Debbie Holley, then three very satisfactory days with my son Matt in Brighton before getting ready for the always-fabulous SEDA conference in Leeds.

Here I will (I hope) be co-presenting with Kay Sambell our work undertaken with Linda Graham of Sunderland University, on how we can manage to do low-cost/no-cost CPD activities in these tough times. Our slides are here:  SEDA-conf-Nov-19-Doing-it-for-ourselves-w1.pptx (464 downloads)   Stand by for biscuits, cherry tomatoes and surprises!

From then on until the Christmas holidays it’s full-on at Southampton Solent, which is hugely enjoyable and (I hope) productive work (alongside making Christmas preserves including Sloe Gin and Christmas Pudding Vodka!).

After a marvelously relaxing little holiday last week in Cornwall, where Pauline Kneale as expert friend and chauffeur helped us learn more about gardens, seabirds, coastal geography and many other things, this week Phil and I are working in Edinburgh, contributing to the Learning and Teaching Conference at Heriot Watt University. We will be going live across the campuses in the UK, Dubai and Malaysia for our joint keynote on ‘Bringing your Teaching to life: practical tips to inspire learning’ and Phil will be taking questions from colleagues as part of the open door events, while I speed off in a fast car down to Galashiels to lead a session with Textile and other Arts colleagues at that campus.

Our joint slides are here: Heriot-Watt-Keynote-on-bringing-your-teaching-to-life-f.pptx (609 downloads) and my slides on assessment are here: Assessment-and-feedback-masterclass-Galashiels-w.pptx (551 downloads)

Next week, we are looking forward enormously to helping the new cohort of National Teaching Fellows to celebrate their fabulous achievement in Manchester.

The sun is shining bright in Plymouth today for our workshop at Plymouth College of Art where Phil and I are helping colleagues think about teaching,  learning and assessment   Our slides and related resources are here: plymouth-college-of-art-w.pptx (467 downloads) UKPSF-recognition-slides-w5-July-2019-1.pptx (621 downloads) UKPSF-grid-latest-March-2019.docx (530 downloads)
Let’s hope the sun shines for the rest of the week when we are on holiday in Falmouth with Pauline Kneale ( but I’m not holding my breath!)

This week I am starting a substantial block of work at Southampton Solent University which will be mainly process driven, but this whopping presentation will be what I select from when working with teams and particular issues arise. Solent-big-presentation-ww.pptx (560 downloads)

On Friday I will be working at Leeds Business School, Accountancy Division, mainly on Masters Level assessment, and the presentation I use is here: Masters-level-assessmenLeeds-Bus-School-w.pptx (529 downloads)

It’s great to be back in harness after the summer: but I am now completely full up with work until Christmas, what with confernces and other events alongside my granny duties and pro bono work. No rest for the wicked.

What a fabulous summer! It was not quite as restful as I first envisaged but I did:

• write open educational resources for Cork IT and Heriot Watt University;
• read some novels, including reading in the daytime!
• have an expensive new dental crown to replace one with an abscess underneath (certainly my most expensive endeavour of the summer);
• catch up with lots of friends;
•  a fair bit of grandchildren care with Phil;
• take 4 kids for an exhausting day trip around York including Jorvik and the railway museum;
• Help a bunch of under 10s decorate beakers with ceramic pens plus other crafting and baking;
• Undertake a goodly amount of  mentoring;
• attend Carole Baume’s excellent 70th birthday party in Milton Keynes, where I caught up with lots of Ed Dev friends;
• relax in a lovely hotel, the Burnside, in the Lake District in a room with a hot tub on the balcony;
• ​see 14 shows at the Edinburgh Festival with Carole and David Baume and Phil;
• Examine an excellent PhD in UCC Cork on using Virtual Reality to teach Graph Theory: (congratulations Dr Larkin Cunningham!) and thereby expand my own knowledge in the area);
• Help my BAFTA winning niece Becky Wray Rogers celebrate her wedding to Roddy Fawcett in Leeds, with lots of family and friends;​
• worry a great deal about Brexit;
• pick many kilos of fruit from our garden and make quite a lot of jam;
• start my salsa classes for the Autumn term;
• benefit hugely from attending the RAISE Conference in Newcastle (see #RAISE19)  thanks to Colin Bryson for letting me attend;
• host Debbie Holley of Bournemouth for a relaxing weekend.

So now the new term starts and first up this week I am delighted to be receiving an Honorary Doctorate on Tuesday from Lincoln University: what a terrific thing to be doing at the start of the academic year, so thanks very much to the Vice Chancellor, Mary Stuart and colleagues for nominating me for this great honour.

This week sees the last of institutional conferences to which I will be contributing this academic year, after which my proper summer holiday starts (unlike academics on the payroll for whom the months of July and August just mean a different kind of work, I can enjoy the months of jam making and Granny caring!).

So Friday sees me at the Royal Veterinary College talking about ‘Coherent curriculum design, delivery and assessment to promote learning and well-being’ (my slides are here: RVC-July-curriculum-ww.pptx (790 downloads) ) as well as contributing  to discussions of student support for learning and taking part in a conversazione on visions for higher education in the future.

Of course I won’t be idle over the summer, I will be writing, mentoring and working on my many diverse projects. But some of the time I will join Phil on a sun lounger (one each actually)  and watch the clouds in the sky above. I hope you all have some lovely down time too!

This week, after our hectic and extensive peregrinations over the last three weeks, I can now see the summer holidays within reach, but before that I have an exciting fortnight.

Firstly Phil and I (with Phil making guest appearances now that he is close to being retired) are working at the Royal Agricultural University on Thursday 11 and Friday 12 July, on Achieving HEA Fellowship and teaching small groups (the slides I will be using are here): UKPSF-recognition-slides-w5-July-2019.pptx (592 downloads) RAU-small-groups-w.pptx (895 downloads) and Phil will be running a session on ‘Making learning happen in large groups’ RAU-2019-w.pptx (592 downloads)

And then I am fulfilling a lifetime ambition of going to Wimbledon on Saturday to the Number One Court!​ I’m really hoping to see Mixed Doubles but will be happy with whatever I see.

After that, my last working day until the autumn is Friday 19th July at the Royal Veterinary University, where I am linking coherent curriculum design with fit-for-purpose assessment.

Then the holidays, with a little interesting desk work for Heriot Watt University! Let the good times roll!