Saturday 31 December 2016

2016: Reflections and the year ahead

"Which paths will you pursue, and which will you abandon? Which relationships will you prioritise, during your shockingly limited lifespan, and who will you resign yourself to disappointing? What matters?" (Burkeman, 2016)

Lots of reflective articles do the rounds at this time of year - out of all the recent ones I found the one above most pertinent. I started 2016 on a similar note by reading Reasons to stay alive by Matt Haigh Both discuss the fragility of life and the choices we make with the time we have. I've had enough personal experiences to know the truth of this, yet still feel that it can't be said or read enough.

Monday 19 December 2016

The end of Fellowship?

This is the final part of my series of blog posts on gaining Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.

If you’ve already read last week’s post you’ll know that I have completed my FHEA accreditation portfolio. I am very happy about this. Students and other staff may not know or care about it but it is a process I have found valuable and if it is accepted (I find out in February) then I will get a few extra letters after my name.

At the beginning of 2016, I decided to look into what gaining accreditation for my teaching involved. As my confidence had taken a nose-dive after various personal issues, I felt I needed to ‘prove’ myself again.

Rather than repeat everything I’ve done for it, here are a few links to the process I went through:
  • Embarking on Fellowship: More reasons as to why I started the process, an outline of the different types of accreditation the Higher Education Academy provides and the various route my institution provides to gain the award.
  • Choosing an FHEA mentor: I was required to have a mentor who was absolutely marvellous. This post covers what traits are required in a mentor and how I chose mine.
  • FHEA progress to date: Reflective Assessment Portfolio. I was required to write and collate a portfolio. This post contains information about what that consisted of and a more detailed look at the core knowledge and professional values I needed to demonstrate across the five small and two large case studies, as well as the professional development plan.
  • Technologies, peer-assisted learning, FHEA case studies...with a touch of Frost. This post goes into more detail about the two larger case studies submitted in the portfolio. The workshops were observed by academics at my institution, one of whom was my mentor. They offered feedback on improvements and used them to inform the references they provided – another requirement of the accreditation.

While it’s felt like quite a long process, I actually completed it ahead of my deadline by three months. As I took the Open route the deadline is chosen by the participant rather than the institution so there was no need to set this particular time – although it does feel nice to have submitted before Christmas.

So, these are the advantages I've found in doing this:

Monday 12 December 2016

Technologies, peer-assisted learning, FHEA case studies...with a touch of Frost.

This is part of my series of blog posts on gaining Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.

Reader, I submitted my portfolio! My blog posts on this topic have been intermittent but in case you were wondering whether I’d given it up entirely; while the thought did cross my mind, I am a finisher so I’ve been plugging away at it and finally got it all in.

As I was thinking about my case studies at the end of the last blog post, I’ll write about those here and then write one more which sums up the entire process later.

So, as you are aware by now, if you’ve been reading this, there are several roads to accreditation and I took the one less travelled…actually, I took the APEX Open route which is reasonably well worn by academics and professional staff at my institution. This involved, along with all the other bits I’ve previously mentioned, two large case studies. I chose to focus on the use of technology in the workshop for my first one and, for the second, looked at peer-assisted learning.

Case Study One: Poll Everywhere and Twitter