Dr Simon Paul Atkinson (PFHEA)
Enhancing Institutional Outcomes
In recent weeks as the war in Ukraine has unfolded I have watched educators trying, with significant success, to use events as teachable moments. The intricacies of shifting boundaries and conflicts used to fuel debates about historical context. Economics teachers use economic interdependences between countries, evidenced through oil and gas supplies, phosphates and grains to …
Continue reading “Ukraine: a teachable moment finding its way into our curricula.”
Transcript: Welcome all. Please feel free to share this video with colleagues, if you think they would find it of interest. I want to talk today about engaging students about the need to mix it up a little bit in terms of the way that we deliver our learning, the way that we engage …
Continue reading “Guidance for Educators: Mix it up!”
Transcript Welcome all. Please feel free to share this with your colleagues. If you think they’ll find this. Interesting. So let’s talk today about how you deliver your notes. I’m going to assume that if you’re delivering any kind of lecture, you will have notes and it’s absolutely critical that you don’t stand and read. …
Continue reading “Guidance for Educators: Speak freely”
Transcript: Welcome all. Please feel free to share this with colleagues. If you think it would be of interest to them. So, today I want to talk a little bit about why it’s important to plan your sessions. This is particularly pertinent if you’re delivering a stand-up lecture, that’s expected to keep students engaged for …
Continue reading “Guidance for Educators: Session Planning”
“If you managed to cover the absences of staff successfully last semester, are you maybe just over staffed?” If you managed to move all of your learning in a frantic fortnight with minimal support, well “how hard can it be, and do you really need all of that expensive support?” There is a danger of …
Continue reading “‘Resilience’: the latest hyped up term being applied to education.”
Transcript: Welcome, all. Please feel free to share this with your colleagues, if you think it would be of value to them. I want to talk today about passion. It’s really important that your passion for your subject is conveyed to your students. Even if there is something about your subject that you don’t particularly …
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Transcript: Welcome all. Please feel free to share this with any of your colleagues who you think might benefit from it. Let’s talk today about complexity and simplicity. So, I think you can save yourself an enormous amount of time by carefully planning a session based on the complexity or simplicity of the argument that …
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I have never believed in social-constructivism. At least not the way the educational anthropologists’ definition of the phenomena has been distorted and contorted into current practice. Social-constructivists justifiably argue that knowledge is often constructed through social interaction. Further, they state that the social and cultural context in which that learning occurs is significant. I just …
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There are many courses out there that do a great job of teaching manual, dexterity and physical capabilities. From bricklaying, hairdressing, to gas-fitting, there are course that are focussed around manual processes. However, there are huge numbers of graduates from tertiary programmes that cannot perform duties required of employers on day-one simply because they have …
Continue reading “Why we need to change how we design courses.”
2021 may have proven to be only slightly less challenging than 2020. If only because some disruption and tumult were expected. All sectors of education continued to make adjustments to their practices, embed new processes and look to long-term solutions. FLANZ is also developing to handle future challenges.
Te Pūkenga (https://tepūkenga.ac.nz), the centralised vocational tertiary organisation in New Zealand created in the last two years, represents an exciting opportunity to create a new way of conceiving of the learner experience. A learning experience based on learner choice, learner contexts and personalised journeys. During a recent joint ODLAA webinar, Dr Som Naidu provocatively …
Ten years ago, in 2011, I wrote a blog entitled ‘there’s no such things as blended learning’, which essentially suggested that all learning experiences are blended to some extent, making the term irrelevant. Since then, the boundaries between contexts, technologies and experiences have become even more blurred. Yet rather than discarding the blended terminology, there …
Continue reading “Blended by us or differentiated by learners: the future of courseware design”
Lots of blogs are declaring the ‘new’ trends in e-learning for 2022. There is nothing truly new in most of these. The difficulty with trends is they frequently draw from the ‘thought-osphere’, rate than from emergent practice. One of these trends predicted for 2022 is ‘adaptive learning’. This ‘trend’ has been around for well over …
Continue reading “Why is adaptive learning not personalised learning”
I have a problem with the use of the term ‘self-directed learning’. Or more precisely, the misuse of the term, certainly as it relates to formal programmes of study as defined by United Kingdom (QAA) and New Zealand qualifications authorities (NZQA), and others. The casual use of vernacular language to define specific concepts is a …
Let’s talk about the skills required of learning designers, or instructional designers. Context makes all the difference. Learning design in a face-to-face University context looks very different from an online instructional designer working in a government department or commercial enterprise. Roles using generic job titles can differ significantly. There are learning designers who guide academics …
With the disruption to delivery models, timetables, and staff and student expectations in the last 18 months some institutions are struggling to maintain their faculty’s motivation and commitment. Some are wrestling with changing notions of autonomy and accountability.
One characteristic of a four to five year Learning and Teaching Strategy (LTS) is that it should require a complete re-write when it comes up for renewal. Given the inevitable pace of change, any remotely ambitious strategy is likely to have several ‘not achieved’ elements when it comes up for review. If you can sign-off …
Continue reading “University Learning and Teaching Strategies Post-Covid”
The FLANZ webinar ‘Is the Future of Education Inevitably Going to be Digital First?’, held 6th November 2020, was a conversation about how the world of higher education, in particular, has responded to the Covid-19 pandemic and whether the future looks different as a result. Duncan O’Hara, FLANZ Vice-President, led contributors, Australian-based Professor Neil Selwyn …
Continue reading “Is the Future of Education Inevitably Going to be Digital First?”