Taking responsibility as an educator during Mental Health Awareness Week

It's Mental Health Awareness Week.

Staff and students within the Higher Education sector are facing pressure like they've never known it before. In timely fashion on Monday this week, Universities UK launched an updated version of StepChange - a framework for what mentally healthy universities look like. Mental health is something to be preserved all year round not just for once a week and I think it's a good step that underlying structures are now being considered.

Even though we aren't yet quite sure whether we have escaped relatively unscathed (I imagine not many of us have) we are already pondering what next term may look like and how we might support our staff and students in what has already become an overused term - the 'new normal'. I'm hoping it will be more personalised, more flexible and more inclusive.

Despite much being out of our control, there is still plenty within it. Therefore, we all have a responsibility for ourselves and for others in our care. It may not be perfect, far from it, but as Brené Brown says 'we are doing the best we can with the tools we have'.

Some of what I'm doing for others:

• I'm creating workshop material that I hope is sympathetic to people's circumstances; e.g. they don't have to worry about when to feed their children as my workshops aren't live and therefore don't clash
• I've extended all deadlines where possible
• I'm providing free mindfulness workshops and recordings
• I'm offering free coaching to work colleagues

My local woods which I can't currently visit. 

They are the inspiration for one of my mindfulness exercises.

Some of what I'm doing for myself:

• Switching off at weekends and spending time with my kids in the garden
• Recognising when I'm getting frustrated at people's emails and stepping away till I'm calmer
• Being kind to myself - there's only so much I can do in my circumstances
• Allocating time for my yoga teacher training. I'm enjoying seeing the links between this and my coaching and teaching practices.

What about you? How are you acknowledging your own mental health and that of your colleagues and students?

New job & New baby = New challenges!



Many of you know that I completed the Aurora course this year. It's a leadership development programme for women in higher education and I wrote about it recently for CILIP Update. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have recommended it to several of my colleagues since. I've also espoused some of the lessons learned in my guest lecture to new library and information professionals studying on the UCL Masters course.

I've not only been giving advice to others but have really taken on board what I learned during the programme. I was challenged to think critically about how I present myself to others, whether I show I have the courage of my own convictions and how I bring my whole self to whatever situation I'm in.

In conjunction with the Aurora programme I was provided with a mentor and they both helped me to determine my own strengths, values, passions and weaknesses and how they align with the job I currently do.

It became clear to me that I'm passionate about helping others develop and I love teaching, learning new things and inspiring others to do the same hence my 'considered' drift over the last few years towards coaching, social media workshops, and educational development.

I've now taken it one step further and am delighted to finally officially announce that from 18th September I will be taking up a new role at Brunel University London as Lecturer in Higher Education, based in Brunel Educational Excellence Centre (BEEC). I will be able to focus more on doing what I am passionate about including coaching and supporting others. Two weeks after I start I will be going on maternity leave for the second time which will undoubtedly bring its own challenges; however, I will have something very exciting to return to.

I will, of course, be very sad to leave the Library where I've worked for five years; however, I still expect to continue seeing my colleagues as the departments have always worked closely together and I will only be across the concourse when I return.

Reflections

Presenting can be Bliss

Presenting is a very physical act, or should be, according to Philip Bliss, a communication skills coach, who was leading the voice coaching workshop I was attending in May this year.  The workshop was very physical and took me right out of my comfort zone. As it has now come to the time of year when many academic librarians, like myself, are trying hard to keep our voices through numerous induction sessions, skills workshops, and the perils of the petri dish of bugs that new students always bring to university at this time of year, I thought it might be timely to share what I learned.

Philip started off with a little theory explaining that he believed, for academics especially, that so much is focused on what is going on in the head that it becomes divorced from the body. He told us how we often forget that we are in control of our own bodies – if we are too quiet, have a squeaky voice, or talk too fast we can do something about it rather than accept it as the way we are. He gave the example of a toddler standing erect, being very vocal and demanding what they want and compared it to a teenager physicallising the hormonal and emotional turmoil they are experiencing by mumbling and crossing their arms. Doing something like crossing your arms without thinking, according to him, is seen as a very weak and child-like thing to do.

Presenting can be very physical

I’ve been to workshops on presenting before, for example, to large groups and on lecturing with confidence. This session was different in that it felt like a drama lesson and was very much focused on the voice; however, before we begin to speak there are a few extra pointers to think about regarding the mental process:

• what we communicate (before we use our language) is how we feel – if you’re feeling nervous, tired, hungover etc this will be apparent to your audience
• you have to be true to our own passion and intellect – the more you care about your subject the more this will come across in your voice
• the voice won't work well if you don't really want to communicate. If you have to lecture every day and hate it this will become apparent in your voice; it might be time to re-evaluate your job!



Water: crucial for many things, including presenting. Just remember not to clench it.

We looked at some of the problems we face when presenting and Philip came up with some tips, which I’ve bullet-pointed below:

 

Getting the volume right:

• look at how far your voice needs to reach
• always talk to the back row
• it is very important to move as it provides vocal variety - like headphones do
• a common mistake is to think you  need to fill the whole room  - your voice only needs to reach where the ears are

 

Protecting your voice: (this is quite a common problem, especially in the first term of the academic year)

• daft as it sounds, don't stick your neck out to reach the audience. This can easily be done when you’re eager to talk so try to keep your head flat on to the audience
• use your eyes rather than your neck to look
• if your voice is getting tired, check your head and neck alignment
• drink lots of tepid water as your vocal folds need moisture
• when ill (which is quite likely in term 1 - see remark above about the petri dish) speak as little as you can; this can be a good opportunity to introduce some groupwork
• gargle with warm salt water and avoid dairy products

Going at the right pace: 

• you speak as fast as you breathe, so breathe slowly
• wearing heels and sucking in your belly are problematic for breathing
•  articulating clearly will slow you down

Getting started:

• Knowing what you're going to say is crucial
• take in the size of the room
• start with as low a pitch as possible - try to make it different to the group mumble
• remember your consonant word endings - keep them strong

If you're nervous:

• look to see if you are clenching your water bottle or clickers
• don't put your hands behind back - it might convey authority but it can also lead to a lack of trust as your audience can't see your hands
• If students aren't listening, try saying  "You're clearly not listening; how can I help you understand this"

I haven't needed to use this last tip yet but I will try it if necessary as it shows you want to help your audience understand the topic. I often find my voice getting tired so have tried to remember to check my neck alignment - I know that as I am of relatively short stature that I have the habit of raising my head rather than my eye gaze. I always, always, always carry water with me when teaching which really helps to not only keep me hydrated but to slow me down if I have been talking a little too quickly. For me the best tips of all are to be mindful and to breathe. They can be difficult to do but impact on everything else. What are your favourite tips? Do use the comments if there are any you would like to add.   

Academic and Research Libraries Group: Members' Day

Last January two CILIP Special Interest Groups, Universities, Colleges and Research (UC&R) and Colleges of Further and Higher Education (CoFHE) merged to become Academic and Research Libraries Group (ARLG). I'm active in the regional branch of this group (London and South East) having become a member of the CoFHE London and South East committee in 2010 and now fulfil the roles of liaison officer, blog editor and web editor.

On Wednesday 15th May, ARLG held its first ever Members' Day - I was looking forward to attending this event as even though I had been involved at a regional level I thought it would be a great opportunity to find out more about the goings on at the top.

It was held at Regents University London in the beautiful surroundings of Regent's Park and the day kicked off with an introduction from its new Vice Chancellor, Professor Aldwyn Cooper. For half an hour, he calmly but passionately enthused about the institution, about its social responsibility, ethos, diversity, its focus on employability but most of all its collegiality. Tying in the ARLG theme of partnerships and collaboration, he expressed his pride in working with people who talk to each other across their departments.

Regents University London 

Straight after was a talk from Lesley Ruthven, a special collections librarian from Goldsmiths University. She spoke about the various partnerships she and her team are involved in from school visits to creating workshops for her academic staff. She referred to 'empowering' the subject librarians to promote the resources by breaking down the collections into subject categories. She works hard to preempt as well as to respond to enquiries and is working to ensure her role becomes a 'jewel in the crown' at Goldsmiths.

Lesley's slides.

Working with subject librarians came up at the Supporting Researcher's event I attended and it makes sense - we are the ones who know our academic staff, know who is receptive and willing to be involved and know who would benefit. The theme of the day was partnerships but if we aren't even talking to each other effectively then we can't realistically expect to get very far with others.

Next up was Abi Mawhirt from Dundee College speaking about the new learning hubs recently installed. They took on a headache inducing amount of projects at one go as besides creating the hubs they also installed RFID, installed a new library management system, migrated their Blackboard virtual learning environment to Moodle all while five campuses were being reduced to two. In each hub there is a focus on academic support and learning and despite initial misgivings from academic and library staff, feedback indicates that students feel more engaged, more capable of working together and the retention rates have improved. While all this sounded great, one thing which niggled was that the Library specified they wanted to get new staff who worked well with people so they purposefully didn't stipulate a library qualification. I can empathise with this in one way as I didn't have the qualification when I started out but did have tons of customer service experience which has always proven valuable, however, I would have expected that they would encourage staff to work towards it, plus it implies that librarians aren't people focused which is completely untrue.

Abi's slides.

After lunch and the Annual General Meeting, Ann Craig from University of Worcester told us about the development and the implementation of the Hive, a privately financed initiative to create a library for both university students and council services. They combine staffing and resources and their corporate plans are very similar. I'm still not sure about the Hive - on one hand it's great for the community as they get new facilities and access to a much wider range of materials but I just can't see what the students get out of it. Having seen how private finance initiatives have meant extortionate costs for the NHS, I can't help but be concerned that education will suffer the same fate if it follows the same path.

Ann's slides.

After a short promotion for ARLG bursaries, it was time for us to give back - in small groups we came up with and fedback answers to the following questions:

• what topics would you like to be covered at the next conference?
• what do we want from ARLG?
• what should its objectives be?

I didn't catch everything that was said but there were a lot of people interested in access, including open access and disability access, and transition, including from school to further education to higher education and within higher education itself. Help with career decisions related to academic and research libraries such as chartership, teaching certificates and PhDs alongside online help, webinars, clear communication, advocacy and sustainability also featured heavily.

The whole process of merging the two special interest groups has not been without its challenges and suffered enormously at the beginning from a lack of communication, however, it does seem to be getting back on track and having a Members' Day is definitely a positive step in the right direction. It's a useful way to keep in touch, to share what we are up to and to strengthen the bonds within our sector and I sincerely hope they continue.

LIKE 45: Open Access

"By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited." 

This is the definition of open access devised by the Budapest Open Access Initiative and, according to them, if it doesn't fit this model then it isn't open access. This is how Ross Mounce, a PhD student from Bath University and Open Knowledge Foundation “Panton Fellow” opened his speech at the London Information and Knowledge Exchange (LIKE) 45th event. While studying, Ross has come across numerous interruptions and barriers to his research which he thinks would not have been the case if access to information was more easily available. As a researcher, it is important to have access to all the previous research carried out on a topic to avoid duplication and wasting both time and funds. It is also important to have access to both data and information so that experiments are transparent and possible to replicate, decreasing the risk of fraud.

Ross's slides

This led us onto Velichka Dimitrov's, an OpenEconomics coordinator, talk, the second of the nights three presenters. Velichka opened with a well known quote from Isaac Newton's letters:

                       "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants"

This quote epitomises the raison d'etre of research - to use the knowledge of what has gone before and build upon it for the future. 

If research data is available then it is replicable and verifiable: it is precisely for this reason that the American Economic Association  have made it their policy to only publish papers whose authors allow their data to be available. Velichka's presentation led to discussions about whether open access would solve the problems referred to or whether there also needs to be a shift in the attitudes of universities and those who work in them. There was some suggestion that academics, rather than let their data and findings be openly accessible, would rather either choose select journal titles to be published in due to their perceived status or keep it under wraps so they can potentially publish further research in the future while preventing others from doing so at the same time. We were left with the quote from someone in the room that "academic culture is not suited to modernity".

To counter this view, our final presenter for the evening was John Murtagh, a Project Officer for Training in Data Management at University of East London. John spoke to us about open data and research data management (RDM) from a librarian's point of view, starting with a breakdown of the many of the acronyms which tie into this area. He then went onto explain the rationale behind the push to manage research data, namely that it is was a financial decision as the ESPRC funding body gave the ultimatum to universities that they would no longer fund research if it couldn't be proven how the data was being organised and preserved. However, it was also to prevent cases like Diederik Stapel, the psychologist found to have faked much of his data. 

John told us that RDM sits easily within libraries because librarians are impartial so don't have an agenda linked to funding and also because they are good collaborators which is necessary in this type of work. As part of the ongoing project at UEL, they provide tailored training for the individual departments as well as a generic workshop for the Graduate School and an online course for the subject librarians who are instrumental at getting their departments on board.

Overall, and like most LIKE events,  it was a very interesting and informative evening and I left feeling more knowledgeable about the issues than before. As I currently work in a university and have come across many of the issues that the speakers, especially Ross, spoke about, I think it will be fascinating to see how it develops. Even though there is currently strong resistance to open access being accepted, I can see that the momentum is growing for it and that it really can't come soon enough. 

Teaching large groups - survival tips

On Wednesday 7th November, I attended a workshop at my workplace entitled – Effective Large Group Teaching. It was aimed at new teachers but I thought it might prove useful to me. In my previous job as the higher education resources adviser in a college, I used to regularly teach. There were generally a maximum of about 35 students in classrooms and ages ranged from eighteen year olds just embarking on a foundation degree to fifty year olds changing careers and retraining. Now working in a university, I have to regularly teach large groups - sometimes consisting of hundreds of students. Having always trained but never lectured I tend to find this quite daunting, hence my attendance.

 

A couple of teachers at the workshop revealed how they struggle with students being late and trying to help them catch up. For me, this can be awkward when teaching where they then ask lots of questions because they missed the content but I don't see it as too much of an issue in lectures as I just carry on doing what I’m doing. I don't think it’s fair on the people who made the effort to get there in time to spend it getting latecomers up to speed. I also think that if you do this you are making a rod for your own back as students will know here's no reason to turn up promptly.

 

Some tips that came out of the session:

 

• Do not compromise your body language to use the microphones – either speak up or use a portable microphone. I must admit I've contorted myself in the past and it is quite uncomfortable, plus I'm still getting used to microphones
• Move around – quite tricky with demonstrations but move around and use the floor space
• Give gaps between sentences – ala Tony Blair – gives gravitas but be wary of leaving too long a gap as it can look a little silly
• Repeat important sentences over but try to rephrase them – it isn't patronising it's reinforcing points
• Try to ensure everyone has a seat - students can struggle to concentrate if they are squashed and uncomfortable 
• Set out expectations of behaviour at the beginning. This is quite tricky to do when it is not your group of students and you are a guest, however, you can lay down a few ground rules at the beginning, for example, stand up to ask a question 
• Be strict about talking - students can often have a school mentality, especially in the first year and are looking to pick holes in what you do. They haven’t matured to a point where they realise they are damaging their own chances of learning so it is important to clamp down on it and not just continue talking in the hope that people will quieten down 
• If they are being too noisy stop talking - I’ve tried this several times and it seems to work as the students have then shushed each other - it does requires a steely reserve and the confidence they will not walk out though 
• Have direct eye contact 
• Tell them calmly and clearly if their behaviour is not acceptable – lay down rules
• If the technology breaks – always give them something else to do, for example, a recap of the last session.

 

Some responses for hecklers...

 

“I don’t know the answer to that. Perhaps you could find out and share it next week”

 

“That’s an interesting question – but do you think that is relevant here?”

 

“What do others think?”

 

“It looks like we disagree – shall we move on?”

 

For ramblers...

 

Ask them to summarise their main points

 

For hoggers...

 

Ask others what they think – do they agree?

 

 

Public Response Systems (PRS) were recommended as they are a good way of breaking up a session and useful for huge groups of 300, however, they can be quite slow and cumbersome and it is easy to lose the group while setting up the technology. I used to use Quizdom in a previous job and this was often quite fun - students liked learning through the rocket chase or car racing games we used. Bearing this in mind, I still might have a go using the system we have in my workplace or else use something like Poll Everywhere which I keep hearing good things about.

 

Having now delivered several lectures I realise that I am pretty good at training but lecturing is a whole new ball game and requires a completely different set of skills. A lecture is showing off your knowledge, it is a performance of sorts and the front of the lecture theatre is your stage and performance area.

 

Source 

I found out that universities don't tend to have guidelines or rules about lecturing styles which means you can do what you want BUT also means there is no quality assurance. Having heard varying opinions from students about their slide preferences I don't think there can be a hard and fast rule but as they become more demanding I think there may be pressure put on some lecturers to change the way they do things.

 

The ultimate aim throughout all of this is that students are there to learn – you can make them laugh and have a great time but if they haven’t learned anything then you haven’t done your job. This can be a fine balance to create but an important one.

 

What next?

 

• Have a look at some of the university vocal coach materials - although I can project my voice, I often find it difficult to gauge its level so I hope this will help
• Make sure I do less demonstration so I can move around more. This will also ensure I am focusing more on the benefits of using the databases 
• Breathe and practise - working in a new institution and in a completely different way has really dented my confidence so I am trying to get it back. I know I know my stuff - I just need to keep reminding myself

Ultimately, none of this was rocket science, however, it gave me the opportunity to stop for a moment and think about how I do things and how I can improve. Since attending this session, I have delivered several lectures and workshops which I think have improved. Students have paid more attention and there has been more willingness to interact. Long may it continue...

 

 

Emerging technologies and authentic learning

On Monday 17th September, I attended a guest lecture entitled Emerging technologies and Authentic Learning by Vivienne Bozalek. It was hosted by the School of Health and Social Care at Brunel University and was held in the rather swish premises of the Mary Seacole Building.

Professor Vivienne Bozalek is the Director of Teaching and Learning at University of the Western Cape in South Africa and she was discussing the project she was currently involved in.

Her lecture was split into three parts: emerging technologies, qualitative outcomes and authentic learning.

Emerging technologies: 

In the first part she explained that an emerging technology wasn’t necessarily a brand new tool, in fact it may have been around for many years; for example, Facebook, twitter or virtual learning environments (vle). What made it ‘emerging’ was the way it was being used, i.e. being used as a self-directing, student-centred and flexible tool. 

She went on to elaborate that students are often using completely different tools to the ones they are encouraged to by their tutors, e.g. using Facebook and Twitter rather than the wikis set up for collaborative working within the vles. If institutions decide to ‘be where the user is’ then this will lead to more engagement but they must be careful not to get into ‘creepy tree-house’ territory. According to Vivienne “the ideal situation would be to utilise the potential of the tools without destroying what makes them special to their users”.

The Gartner Hype cycle, illustrated below, highlights the journey people and institutions go through when considering and taking on new technologies

Vivienne also referred to the Annual Horizon Report, a ten year project which investigates the impact emerging technologies have on teaching and learning identifies the techologies being used and explains how institutions are doing so – I didn’t know about this but think it is worth paying attention to see where we are in terms of our development. According to the report “mobile apps and tablet computing as technologies expected to enter mainstream use in the first horizon of one year or less. Game-based learning and learning analytics are seen in the second horizon of two to three years; gesture-based computing and the Internet of Things are seen emerging in the third horizon of four to five years”.

Ulitmately, the consequences of not being involved and of not showing an interest is that the gaps between effectual and ineffectual teaching and learning will increase as students continually disengage.

Qualitative outcomes: 

In the second instalment of her lecture, Vivienne started by explaining that the qualitative outcomes of the project were stimulating learning environments where students felt safe to express themselves without fear of humiliation and rebuke and where there is space to try out new things and experiment. This led to a discussion amongst the attendees about the types of rules, just like classroom rules, which should be in place to ensure students know how to conduct themselves in a virtual learning space. There tends to be the perception that because students are younger and seem to know what they are doing that they don’t need guidance on this. I think the social rules of the internet need to be taught – people don’t automatically pick up social skills even when they can do quite technical things, like designing apps.  

Authentic learning:

 

According to Vivienne, authentic learning consists of learners meeting the same content in many different contexts and with varying perspectives. Students need to be immersed in what they are learning and content should not be broken down for them to access readily, instead they should experience it holistically as they will use it in the real world, e.g. tests shouldn’t be multiple choice as people rarely use multiple choice in their everyday, real working lives.

Some of the main things I took away from this are that:

• My institution is doing reasonably well on the emerging technology front as it engages with students through a multitude of social media platforms – although there may be some tendency to be ‘creepy tree-house’
• Sometimes people think they are engaging with students by using emerging technologies, however, they are just delivering the same content in the same way but online. To use a soundbite - Technology doesn’t equal transformation
• There are still serious concerns over online identities and a lack of digital literacy amongst students
• Reflection and articulation are important for learning but vles are not generally conducive to this. It is up to staff to implement it as part of their programs

If anyone is interested in learning more about the project it can be found at http://www.emergingicts.blogspot.co.uk/

For those interested in emerging technologies, the Annual Horizon Report is worth a read.

If anyone would like to know more about web safety, you may find these JISC resources useful. There will also be a web safety in higher and further education presentation, held by the Academic and Research Libraries Group, London and South East Committee (ARLG LASEC) on 12th December 2012.

If anyone is interested in Big Data or the Internet of Things, some of the emerging technologies which, according to the Horizon Report will be used fully in a couple of years, there is a strong possibility of there being a conference focusing on them next July, held by the London Information and Knowledge Exchange.

LIKE 31 - Information Literacy: fit for the workplace

On Thursday 24th November, I attended LIKE 31. This month the topic was Information Literacy: fit for the workplace and speakers had been arranged from three different information sectors. In my current job, information literacy features heavily. Part of my job is to teach higher education students at the college how to use the electronic resources we subscribe to effectively and why they should use them rather than clicking onto the first link that appears in Google. Bearing this in mind, I was very interested to hear what other people's experiences of teaching information literacy were like.

Dr Susie Andretta introduced us to the definitions of information literacy and then the speakers, after first declaring " ultimately, information literate people have learned how to learn". The first speaker was Adjeo Boateng from the Higher Education sector. She spoke about her students needing to know how to use knowledge not just technology, emphasised by the fact that her presentation technology had just let her down! The biggest surprise I found from her speech was when she mentioned that the very role of the subject librarian was being questioned and a more holistic view of teaching information literacy across subjects was being mooted. While I can see that students need to be able to be critical of all resources they come across, I would worry that this approach would make information literacy appear less relevant to the students. Even in a college, we 'sell' our resources by emphasising how particular ones are great for the course they are studying.

Rachel Adams from the legal sector was the next to speak. She claimed that lawyers use the seven pillars of information literacy to create a tangible product and that she sells information literacy to them by stating that "it saves time, it saves money and it saves stress". Lawyers don't need an holistic approach - they need to know which resources are best for them and how to use them most effectively - the less time wasted finding out how to do this, the cheaper it is for the client. Getting people in to the sessions is not usually a problem as they have to have a set amount of Cpd to remain solicitors and training sessions contribute to this. Trainees have information overload just like our students do so instead of training them at the beginning of the course and having them forget it, they try to implement a more relevant and timely approach. I think this is very important and it is something we try and do at my workplace - tie information literacy in with assignments being completed at the time to show students relevant they are. The legal sector also has the same issues with spoon feeding of students - although this seems to be a common problem, as reported on in this Times Higher Education article,  which won't be going away any time soon.

Lastly, Caroline de Brun from the Health sector spoke of her experiences. She explained how health literacy (deciphering medical language) was often confused with health information literacy so now the term 'evidence-based' was being used instead. Claiming that doctors don't get get time to research and that it is difficult to access good resources on the NHS, it is essential that any training they receive takes the least amount of time possible away from the patients. Consequently, Caroline has developed ten minute training sessions. As with all sectors, impact measurement is required.  In the health library they not only assess by collating immediate feedback but also analyse patient feedback and statistics.

Dr Susie Andretta brought the discussions to a close by reiterating the key points which had been made throughout the evening: we need to be able to 'sell' information literacy to the people who need it possibly by giving it a different name, there is still an over reliance on Google and we need to create a 'just in time' approach to keep information literacy at its most relevant.

I really enjoyed this session and found it very interesting that the same issues regarding information literacy keep cropping up across all the sectors. I found it disturbing, but sadly unsurprising, that doctors are using Google to search for medical information and was rather perturbed that the issues seem to continue despite all the librarians in every sector and level of work and education trying their hardest to promote information literacy. Something is going wrong somewhere.

On a more positive note- the next LIKE event is the Christmas dinner! Best start looking for my Secret Santa...

HE in FE - just keeps on growing...

For the last couple of weeks, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about and writing about HE in FE. I do this quite a lot anyway as I work in a Further Education College and am primarily responsible for supporting Higher Education students with their learning resource and information literaracy needs. However, a couple of weeks ago I went to a meeting where a member of senior management asked me, as a representative of the LRC, to consider the impact of more directly HEFCE funded courses on our service. For those who don't know, if a course is directly funded by HEFCE it means that the student numbers belong to the college rather than the University - the consequence of this is that it is much cheaper for the college to run the course but students don't have access to anything the validating University has to offer. Great, I thought, a request to spend some time thinking and considering rather than just being asked to help with printing enquiries!

So I did and it kept on growing! I initially wrote down my own thoughts such as the need for more University level resources, especially electronic resources, and the fact that Universities have more generous opening hours than colleges. I then opened it up firstly to my work colleagues, one of whom suggested we should have a separate HE budget, and then secondly to my professional peers via various JISCMAIL lists, CILIP's LinkedIn page and the Cofhe Lasec blog. I even asked the potential CILIP counsellors for their opinions in the ehustings. While the responses I received weren't many the ones I did receive were well thought out and detailed. The main consensus seems to be that:

• this is going to become a massive issue as the government continues to tinker with education
• clear communication is vital between the many layers of educational institutions so people, and in particular, students aren't misled
• that it may all become quite fraught with competition between the various providers - see this BBC piece which clearly demonstrates how this is already happening.

Anyway, I found this all very interesting, if slightly doom-laden, and wrote up my findings for the groups I had commandeered for their opinions. This was then retweeted by the Guardian Higher Education Network which I was very surprised and pleased about.

So that should have been the end of it (apart from I am still waiting to feed back to the member of senior management) but not so. My esteemed CoFHE LASEC Chair, Helen Stein, is in contact with all the right people at CILIP and the policy team there were considering responding to the QAA consultation on the replacement of the IQER. So we told them that we thought this was a very good idea and then had a couple of days to put something together. Being not directly work-related meant I couldn't do this on work time so my evenings were a little busier that usual to say the least! Anyhow, it has gone through and everyone is happy and when the new version of the IQER is rolled out I can tell myself that I was involved in that. While I don't expect much, I do hope that we have encouraged a few of the powers that be to think a little more about the work that librarians do to support students and the challenges they face in doing so.