Recordings from all the keynotes from the recent ATU DigitalEd conference, and many of the sessions are now available online . The talks from my fellow keynotes, Sue Beckingham, Phillip Dawson, Tony Bates and Meg Benke are all worth taking some time to watch.
Many thanks again to all the team at ATU for putting on such an informative and enjoyable conference and for sharing the resources with the wider community.
One of the great things about working freelance is that you get the opportunity to work with a range of people. Over the past three years I’ve been really lucky to have been able to work with some really fabulous people, and happily I’m in that situation again. For the next couple of months I am working with Helen Beetham on a review of curriculum and learning design across UK HE, commissioned by Sarah Knight at Jisc.
Helen, Sarah and I all worked on the Jisc Curriculum Design and Delivery programmes well over a decade ago. So it is great to come almost full circle with this piece of work. With everything that has happened over the past 2 years, I think this review is really timely. The pandemic and the subsequent “pivot” to emergency online teaching caused a huge cultural shift in learning and teaching practice. As we transition back to more on campus delivery, have the experiences of the past 2 years impacted practice and what are the main challenges facing the sector moving forward?
As part of the review we have developed a survey which had launched today and will be open until 13th June. We’re also looking for vignettes of effective practice, so if you would like to share more, then please do complete the survey and leave your contact details. Or if you want to find out more – just DM me.
We’ll be sharing the outputs of the review, including the survey results, in late summer.
You can access the survey from the link below. Thank you in advance if you are able to participate in this study.
https://jisc.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/curriculum-and-learning-design-survey
Last week I had the pleasure of attending and keynoting at the ATU (Atlantic Technological University) Digital Education Conference. It was my first face to face conference in over 2 years, the first time I had been on plane for over 2 years, the first time I had been out of Scotland for over 2 years. So I was a bit worried (stressed?) about travel and being with people before I left. However everything went very well, and it was so lovey to catch up with old friends and new in person.
One of the great things about being given a keynote slot is that you have the luxury of time. For that hour you have the opportunity to speak about something that will hopefully spark off some thoughts and maybe even actions. In my talk I really wanted to provide some time for reflection, not just on the conference itself, but on the experiences of the last couple of years. As we transition back to more on campus activities, are we really giving enough time to consider how we use our physical and digital spaces effectively?
Hybrid/hyflex approaches are being suggested but how do they actually work effectively? Are our physical spaces suitable for that type of learning experiences? Apart from trial and error how are staff learning to design their activities for more mixed mode delivery? What about our students -are we working with them to really understand what works for them as we design learning activities? We all learnt a lot during lockdown about online learning.
The great online “pivot” happened very quickly but what are we pivoting back to? Metaphorically speaking, has our learning and teaching sofa got stuck going round that tricky corner on the staircase in our transition back to not quite fully on campus delivery?
Having spoken at last year’s (fully online) conference I was able to revisit some of the questions around wellbeing – it was quite an interesting comparison. People seemed to be glad to be seeing students and each other in person, but there is still uncertainty, particularly about engaging students. It’s mental health awareness week this week, so this week might be a good starting point to start having these type of conversations around hybrid learning and teaching with colleagues and students.
At this stage I think it is really important that we don’t succumb to what I’m calling “pandemic amnesia” We need to make time to critically reflect on what we have all experienced, how we are all coping and recovering from that experience, so we can start to develop practice and staff development opportunities that meet the needs of our current context.
Many thanks to Carina Ginty for inviting me to speak, and to all her team at ATU for all their work in putting on a great conference and dealing with the challenges of hybrid delivery so professionally.
NB This is a co-authored post by Keith Smyth, Bill Johnston and myself.
Last September, we contributed a blog post to the Special Collection organised by Post-Pandemic University to celebrate the centenary of Paulo Freire’s birth (Johnston, MacNeill and Smyth, 2021). Our post set out to contemplate how Freire’s ideas, including his critical perspectives on technology, marginalisation and empowerment, resonated with the state of education during the pandemic responses of 2020 and the on-going disturbances of 2021/22.
Our post, and the ideas explored within it, were an extension of our ongoing research, scholarship, and reflexive dialogue concerning the purpose of higher education, and the place of critical digital education practice and praxis, as captured in our book ‘Conceptualising the Digital University’ (Johnston, MacNeill and Smyth, 2019). While our book was written prior to the pandemic, we were interested in using our post for the Post-Pandemic University collection to consider how a Frierian lens could be applied to reading the pandemic, and to consider the extent to which key aspects of our own thinking about ‘the digital university’ were applicable in the context of education within the pandemic.
We were encouraged that there was also a resonation with the thinking of others, when after the publication of our blog post we were invited to present at the Warwick International Higher Education Academy to lead an online seminar to share more of our thoughts on Freire, dimension of digitally enabled education, and universities within and beyond the pandemic.
Our seminar was titled ‘Universities and post pandemic digital praxis: critically reframing education and the curriculum’, and we were pleased to be joined for it by educational practitioners and researchers from a range of roles and institutions across the sector.
We framed our seminar, as we framed much of our own work, against Freire’s ideas as put forth in ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ (1970) and particularly ‘Education for Critical Consciousness’ (1974). Against this backdrop, and within the overall themes we set to explore in the seminar, the seminar provided us with an opportunity to revisit the models we had created for our book exploring the concept of the digital university. This included our ‘Conceptual Matrix’ for the digital university, and our model of the Digitally Distributed Curriculum’, both of which we developed as a response to critically reframing higher education and digital education praxis against neoliberalist practices and structures.
Given the rapid shift to fully online delivery of learning and teaching, and the challenges and inequities in the organisation of and access to education revealed through the pandemic, we sought to question whether our models remained relevant. We believe they do.
Conceptual Matrix for the Digital University (original form)
Of course the context has changed, but we think our original ‘Conceptual Matrix for the Digital University’ (developed in 2012) does still work in articulating the various dimensions of practice and permeations of space within which digital educational practice and digital spaces for engagement can be framed. Over the past 2 years, the ‘Digital Participation Quadrant’ of the original matrix has come sharply into focus. While we are still grappling with the question posed by Collini (2017) around what universities are for, in order for us all to work out what we actually need to do, our ‘Revised Conceptual Matrix for the Digital University’ (produced for our book) offers a further refinement of our thinking, and of where academic development and organisational development need to intersect.
Revised Conceptual Matrix for the Digital University (Johnston, MacNeill, Smyth, 2019)
During the seminar, after exploring the above, we undertook two activities to support participant dialogue around the changes to the delivery and support of learning and teaching they had undertaken and experienced in their own responses to the pandemic. The first activity was more of a reflection on what they had done (or had been done to them!), what worked, what didn’t and more importantly what they now want to develop moving forward.
Using a padlet wall we used five categories (‘the shredder’, ‘the shop window’, ‘the greenhouse’, ‘the pantry’, and ‘the museum’) to capture participants’ experiences. In summarising what was sharded back, there were some key themes that emerged. One was the recognition that in the beginning of the pandemic, there was a proliferation of responses and interventions that while well intended, perhaps resulted in “throwing everything at [our] students”, leading to confusion and cognitive overload for students around where, when and how to use different online spaces and tools. Variations on what are broadly being referred to as ‘hyflex’ approaches were also highlighted, with a preference from students for engaging in either one mode or the other. Conversely hyflex was also highlighted as an area that was “in the greenhouse” developing, but with related issues of staff workload, student expectations, cognitive overload all being highlighted as areas to explore.
Developing communities of practice, the use of collaborative tools such as padlet, and more purposeful approaches to technology were also highlighted as now being core elements of practice. So too was the continued development of online staff development opportunities. It was felt vital that our institutions and the wider sector develop ways for staff to appreciate the online experience from a student/participant perspective. And, if hyflex approaches are going to be developed, that meaningful opportunities are given to staff to allow them to experience a hyflex approach to then develop their approaches to it within their own disciplinary context, and so that there is an experiential evidence base to how staff are engaging and supporting their own students..
The other model we developed in our book which we explored in the seminar is that of the Digitally Distributed Curriculum. We conceived this model as a way to reconceptualise the purpose, activities and location of the curriculum in the context of higher education as a public good, and of extending engagement in how the curriculum is enacted through digitally-enabled and open practices. The model us focused around the values of praxis, public pedagogy and participation, linked to ‘enabling dimensions’ and then the pedagogic approaches, interventions and actions that enact the digitally distributed curriculum.
Digitally Distributed Curriculum (Johnston, MacNeill, Smyth, 2019)
In our piece for the Post-Pandemic University, and through our activities in the seminar, we feel that our take on the Digitally Distributed Curriculum does still have relevance, perhaps increasingly so post-pandemic. Within the seminar, we undertook an activity to explore an instantiation of the model using three of the aforementioned ‘enabling dimensions’ of the model, namely co-location (which we reframed as ‘co/dis-location’ in recognition of the dislocation caused during lockdown), co-production, and porosity.
In terms of co-location, our discussions in the seminar concerned how everyone was dislocated from the physical campus and experienced the challenges of working and studying from home. These were particularly acute in the first lockdown, when it created pressures on space as well as access to technology and digital connectivity. On the other hand, this forced dislocation also brought about an enrichment of the digital landscape (for those who could access it). Suddenly systems that were not much used before had to be used by everyone. Other systems (hello Zoom) also came to the fore.
There was a consensus that there was a huge level of activity focused around the co-production of resources, for and with students as well as for staff development. There was a renewed and extended focus on accessibility and flexibility. Pedagogical approaches had to be adapted and people had to try, adapt, and further refine new approaches. The internal narratives around learning and teaching were also felt to have changed, and are changing still as we seek to learn from the challenges of the pandemic while retaining and building upon the increased opportunity to engage, and to engage flexibly and more fluidly, in learning and teaching that were created in the response to the pandemic.. However, as we pointed out, the dominant political narrative around “proper university learning” does still seem to be firmly entrenched in the ‘on-campus’, in the lecture theatre, on the importance of the lecture and what we might recognise as traditional ‘one-to-many’ teaching. Or what Paulo Freire himself described and would recognise as ‘the banking’ delivery method.
In terms of porosity, our explorations in the seminar led us to that there was an increased awareness and use of more open or ‘openly’ approaches. Many individuals, institutions and organisations mobilised to share guidance, examples and educational resources that would support the collective response to the pandemic (for example ALT, and OneHE). Publishers even opened up resources. But, in true beware of Greeks bearing gifts fashion, some publishers of academic material and educational development resources only allowed materials to be openly available for a relatively short period of time. How to sustain and pay for access to resources, tools and technologies that were made openly available, or that budget was found to allow greater access to, is a question that many universities are still grappling with. More positively, developing a richer range of digitally-enabled assessment was felt to have allowed more ‘open approaches’ to assessment that afforded students the opportunity to create, share and keep some of their work in digital formats, and had enabled us to move further towards aspects of the Digitally Distributed Curriculum model that relate to the curriculum supported the development of digital artefacts that can openly share knowledge of value beyond the university, and to students as digital scholars.
Moving forward, what does this all mean? How can we develop approaches to learning and teaching post-pandemic that, as one colleague asked, are “adequate for out time”? How can we create meaningful space and time for staff and students to reflect, convalesce and grow? Learning to live with Covid, and of the ongoing challenges of the pandemic is, as we are all experiencing right now, complex and challenging. Fluctuating infection rates necessitate the continued need for flexibility of access to and within education, and for continued structures of care across society for those at high risk. There is no ‘normal’ to go back to, but there may be a new way to reconfigure education post-pandemic. We feel there is, and our seminar concluded with optimism that this may just be possible.
Thank you once again to Warwick International Higher Education Academy for the invitation to offer our seminar, and to all those who took time out to participate. WIHEA have made our slides and a recording of the seminar available online.
References
Collini, S. (2017). Speaking of Universities. London: Verso.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Freire, P. (1974). Education for Critical Consciousness. London: Continuum.
Johnston, B. MacNeill, S. and Smyth, K. (2019). Conceptualising the Digital University: intersecting policy, pedagogy and practice. Palgrave.
Johnston, B., MacNeill, S. and Smyth, K. (2021). Paulo Freire, University Education and Post Pandemic Digital Praxis: https://postpandemicuniversity.net/2021/11/09/paulo-freire-university-education-and-post-pandemic-digital-praxis/
Yesterday I got a notification from Twitter that it was #myTwitterAnniversary. They helpfull created a little post for me to share too.
15 feels like a significant number. 15 years is a significant amount of time – a good chunk of my working life. Over the past 15 years I know I have benefited from being on, and active in Twitter. Being active on twitter really effectively extended my PLN and my professional reach. Particularly back in “the early days”, those days before ads, of 140 characters, before Twitter tried to be “helpful” by organising your feed . . .
I’ve always treated twitter a bit like a series of conversations. Some are useful, some are informative, some are inspiring and thought provoking some are just silly. I’m still very lucky in that I haven’t suffered from any serious trolling but that is, and continues to be, the seriously down side of twitter. I’ve never really been that bothered about missing anything on twitter, if it’s relevant I’ll find out some how, and if I’m late to that particular conversation then there’s probably a good reason for it.
Of course my interactions and conversations have waxed and waned over the past 15 years. I know I don’t tweet as much now as say 8 years ago, maybe even 4 years ago, but it still draws me in. Even if it’s just to say hello on a grey Tuesday morning . . . sometimes I just need that.
For me, Twitter is still a useful space to share and to find out things. But my active network has and is, constantly changing. Thanks to twitter’s “helpful” algorithms and promoted tweets, and the sheer volume of stuff in my stream I don’t always see things from people. But that’s natural, if I’m not near people how can I join their conversation? I’m probably not who they need to speak to. There are certainly more topics now that I don’t feel a need to keep up with.
At times I do feel a sense of loss. I miss conversations with some people I used to “tweet with”. I can sometimes see bits and pieces of conversations – or perhaps conversation starters – that look interesting . . . They don’t exclude me as such, as I can see them and could join in, but I guess I have less of a need to be seen to be active. I am much better and managing my time and focusing my time.
Still, 15 years is a long time, and I do get a bit nostalgic at times for those I came, I saw, I tweeted, therefore I might matter days. However, I’m now at an age that I can be more selective and less sensitive about twitter FOMO. Of course there are always conversations to be had, and connections to be sustained and created, and I guess that’s what keeps me on “the Twitter”. It’s still useful and keeps me connected, listening and talking to people that matter to me.
I was going to share some probably boring stats about my twitter activity, but I’m still waiting to get an updated archive of my tweets from Twitter – I guess 15 years is a lot of tweets, enough to bork a TAGS explorer sheet or 2!
Just a short post to share the slides from a presentation Keith Smyth, Bill Johnston and myself gave at a webinar organised by WIHEA early this week. We took the presentation to further explore some of the issues we raised in a short post published last year by the Post Pandemic University to celebrate the centenary of Paulo Friere’s birth, and also to revisit our previous work around the concept of the digital university.
This is just a marker to share the slides as quickly as possible. During the session we got lots of feedback from delegates around changes they have experienced during the past 2 years and over the next couple of weeks we have agreed to analyse the rich feedback we got from participants during activities in the session, and publish a more in depth follow up post.
We were delighted with the open and thoughtful responses we received throughout the session, so thanks to Letizia Gramaglia and the team at Warwick for giving us the opportunity and platform to share our thoughts.
It’s almost 2 years since we all went in to lock down. What a strange couple of years it has been. Although there have been significant markers of time, like the dates when we could see people outside, when we could go into family and friends house, when we couldn’t again, when we got vaccinated, when we (for some) had to isolate, I find the last 2 years a bit of a blur. And now, despite all the cries for getting “back to normal” it seems our world has just ratcheted up the crazy again.
Over these past two years we’ve all had to change our habits. We’ve had to get in to the new (for some) working from home habit, the not going out habit, the going for a daily walk habit, the keeping a safe physical distance from others habit, the washing our hands habit, the wearing face masks habit. These habits were of course strengthened by legal requirements. As these legal requirements are coming to an end, I suspect many of these habits will too. Never mind the vulnerable, never mind that covid infection rates are really high right now, we can just go back “to normal” and forget about those pesky, enforced habits.
Despite living through two years of a global pandemic, it seems that “society” hasn’t really learned from the experience. Our understanding about infection transmission doesn’t seem to have improved. This is despite us all being quite obsessed with COVID transmission data and mortality rates, and being bombarded with them across all media outlets.
The habits of washing hands regularly, keeping surfaces and public spaces clean, wearing a mask in enclosed spaces all seem to be diminishing now too. Never mind that they are really effective ways of stopping the transmission of COVID-19 but lots of other viruses too.
I’ve been thinking about my own habits too. During the first lock down, I made a very conscious effort to keep writing regular updates in this blog. I think this was partly to give me a focus, but it was also a determined effort to keep my professional profile active as part of trying to ensure that I had enough work to survive. I also had the freedom to write about issues that some colleagues in university didn’t.
I’ve always seen blogging as a habit, but I have noticed that this year I have been seriously getting out of that habit. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, I am just quite often at a loss about what exactly to say. It’s often difficult for me to write openly about work I am doing as it can be confidential and/or not really suitable for a blog post. I find I have less of the “I need to have a bit of a rant about this” moments which inevitably used to end up as blog posts. There are also so many “big” things happening in the world, that I often feel very small and insignificant, so writing anything seems slightly pointless.
Just now I wonder more and more about teaching and learning habits, and in turn managerial, and strategic planning habits. So many things changed over the past two years, what habits do we need to keep? Can we ever get out of the habit of endless meetings? Can we develop effective habits of flexible, accessible learning and working conditions? Will we change any of the “habits” of the curriculum? Will the habit of presenteeism win back its stranglehold? Will strategic thinking about HE have collective amnesia about the experiences of lock down?
Anyway this is more of a ramble than a coherent post (ah yes, dear reader, some habits will never change). But I’d be really interested to hear your views on your habits – what ones are you sticking with? Now we can go places again do you still go for your daily walk – or is there no time for that now? And in terms of your working practices what habits have changed?
Well dear reader, it’s been a while. I have been trying to write, I have a number of half finished posts that I just haven’t quite got round to finishing. With everything that is going on in right now, I just don’t have the words and energy to try and figure out what I really want to say. However, if I don’t hit that “publish” button soon, I fear I never will again. So, today I’m going to quickly share 3 good things I found out about this week.
1. I found out you can now embed ThingLink directly into Powerpoint. How good is that? I love a good ThingLink, and this add on just opens up so many presentation possibilities. Also thinking of students and student projects/presentations, it’s a great combination too for enhanced digital storytelling.
2. The findings of the ALT annual member survey are now available. I always think the annual ALT member survey give the real story of what is happening with learning technology across the sector. Big trends this year are the importance of student engagement for driving the use of learning technology, and the importance of other collaborative tools -it’s not all about Zoom and MS Teams. Worth an look.
3. Bryan Mathers has added another element to the remix machine – the remix o’meter! How many uses could there be for this meter? There’s already quite a few remixes available. Here’s mine.
So if you are looking for distraction this Friday, try any one of these 3 suggestions and hopefully they will distract you, and might actually be useful too.
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I saw this question being asked by a teddy bear in a window as I was out for a walk yesterday. I found it quite an arresting image, it made me stop and take a picture, and it also made me think am I feeling more normal now? My answer, well to be honest I’m not really sure.
I can’t remember if has ever been “normal” to put a teddy bear in your window asking deceptively simple questions. Since the first lock down, putting signs of support on windows has become normal. Starting with rainbows to support the NHS, and then various other campaigns such as Black Lives Matter. There was a reassuring and visible sense of community and collective hope and struggle in the variety, scale and at times imagination in these images. Particularly when we couldn’t mix with each other, and our “out door activity” was pretty much limited to walking in our local neighbourhoods. As lockdown measure have eased, these signs have become less commonplace. I kind of forgot about mine and eventually took them down.
But this in the window, the “cute” teddy, the apparently comforting but actually quite disturbing (for me anyway) question. This was a different experience from the lifting of spirits that a run of NHS rainbow windows gave me. So, of course I thought I’d share on social media to see what others thought. I got a quite a few likes on FB and just one comment /question “what is normal?”, LinkedIn similar, with someone telling me that they would feel normal when they got to Jamaica next week (I’m presuming for a holiday). Thank goodness for twitter – and thanks to everyone who responded. Elaine’s response resonated with my feelings
Do we really understand what is “normal” now? Sui-Ming added to this with some really salient points about the realities that we face and the lack of meaningful contextual discourse around “normal”.
Despite political drives to “get back to normal”, COVID has not gone away. Tens of thousands of people are contracting it every week, and at least for the time being here in the UK, having to isolate. This makes “normal” teaching even more challenging, as Sui-Ming so succinctly highlighted. Consistency of experience for staff and students is constantly changing. The nuances of hybrid teaching are just starting to be understood. How to “normalise” it, imho is a huge challenge.
Aileen also shared something that resonated
I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I still feel quite on edge at times, not wanting to plan to much just incase another strain arrives and we go back to more limited/lock down measures. Mind you, in the current UK political context, any kind of restrictions are pretty much doomed to fail since it came to light that the UK PM was ignoring all of them all along.
I do think there needs to be a wider discussion that takes us beyond the “back to normal” rhetoric. We are now in a new phase of, well I’m not sure what, but of something that means we can’t go back to the perceived normality of life pre March 2019. Remember that version of normal wasn’t particularly inclusive so we really don’t want to go back there. We’ve all lived, worked, learned, taught from home (generally pretty successful) now. For many support staff in universities working from home was almost unthinkable 2 years ago. Do we want those “normal” attitudes surrounding presenteeism to take hold again? But maybe it’s already too late for that one . . . Similarly with learning and teaching, do we really need to go back to perceived normal of large lectures? Can’t we really take the opportunity to make some fundamental and necessary changes to our curricula that reflect the lived experiences of the past 2 years, are inclusive and accessible.
I wrote recently about recovery and the need for it in education. I think we are all going through a period of convalescence, but not admitting that we need to allow a period of recovery for ourselves, our organisations, our society to rebuild. We don’t actually have to go back to, for example exams, it actually doesn’t matter if you get to 17 and haven’t sat a “proper exam”. There are alternatives, that work just as well that involve far less stress.
So maybe the answer to the question am I feeling more normal now? is no, and I don’t want to. What do you think, would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
I’ve been easing myself back into work mode this week. I’ve been “hangin’ around” twitter a bit more, trying to do a bit more formal and informal academic reading, trying getting my brain switched back into writing mode, having more meetings, speaking to people and generally doing “stuff” after work free festive break. I’ve also been trying not contain my rage about the current revelations around the UK govt actions during the first lockdown. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I have been laughing a lot about #partygate, because if I let my thoughts and emotions go the other way my head might just explode with rage; or I would never stop crying thinking about the now over 175,000 people in the UK who died from COVID-19.
We have all been through so much in the past nearly 2 years now. Yet still our future seems to be firmly rooted in the past. Getting “back to normal” still seems to be the ultimate aim. Back to campus, back to exams, back to not having to consider how our actions could impact others health. In our rush to economic recovery (for ultimately that’s all our political leaders really care about) are missing out a vital step around human recovery and the need for a period of convalescence?
Just before Christmas I heard the poet (and COVID-19 survivor) Michael Rosen recommend book called Recovery, The Lost Art of Convalescense, by Dr Gavin Francis. Michael was in a COVID induced coma for many months, so the topic was particularly relevant to him. I was intrigued by his description of the the book so I bought it. It’s quite a slim volume and documents the experiences of one doctor (based with a western/global north medical tradition). The author describes it as “a series of explorations of recovery and convalescence.”
In the first chapter, the author shares his own childhood experiences of convalescence and recovery. He talks about the rehabilitation he went through after a serious knee injury, and the rehabilitation he went through. I was drawn to his description of rehabilitation
“the word rehabilitation comes from the the Latin habilis, ‘to make fit’, and carries the sense of restoration: ‘to stand, make, or be firm again.”
I think there is an an analogy here with what is happeing in education just now. There doesn’t seem to be space for any kind of rehabilitation after the roller coaster of covid infections isolations, lockdowns, continuted restrictions. It’s all full steam ahead for “back to normal”. I can’t help but think that this is a mistake. Staff and students need time to recover. Despite the urban myth that moving online wasn’t a real or proper education experience, and seen as an easy option, it was bloody hard work for thousands of staff. There has been a bit more focus on “well being” but that’s not really addressing some of the key issues. Is it too far beyond our imagination to acknowledge that we need to have some space for recovery to heal and regain strenght and perhaps a different perspective on how we actually do things. Gavin says in the book “the flow of my life had been stilled, but it was that stillness that allowed me to heal.“
Now, I’m not suggesting that everything stops, but I do think that it is possible to make some space for critical reflection on what has happened and what needs to be done next. Could we revisit notions of the sabbatical in terms of recovery to allow staff some dedicated time reflect, to engage with different pedagogical approaches, with (re)design, to have more opportunity to improve public engagement around online learning and teaching and assessment and maybe start to have an informed discussion about the apparent need for final summative exams? There could be cross disciplinary/institutional opportunities for sharing of ideas, practice whilst on sabbaticals which could then feed back into institutional developments. Every member of staff (academic and support) should be offered the opportunity too.
I’m still really thinking all of this through, however I do think there could be something about revisiting our notions of recovery and convalescence that could help us do more than just “get back to normal’ and actually allow us time to heal and so that our education systems, and more importantly the people who work in them can be restored, be fit, and firm again. Would love to hear your thoughts.
