My Senior Fellowship experience

I have been awarded Senior Fellow status of Advance HE. While I started writing and thinking about Senior Fellowship just over a year ago, my Senior Fellowship experience began, although unknowingly at the time, at the Aurora programme I attended in 2016. At Aurora I defined my values, my strengths and my skills. This in turn led me to changing roles from an Academic Librarian to a Lecturer in Higher Education. This move allowed me to be less constrained by budget limitations and make more of an impact on teaching and learning development. In my interview for the role, I was asked to present my approach to helping staff develop their practices and it was here I first chose to define my coaching approach. It was this coaching approach I developed into my Senior Fellow application.

My reasons for applying

Primarily, it was a pre-requisite of my probation in my new role. however, having previously completed my Fellowship application in 2015 I was aware of the value of the process. This value is what I reiterate to those who have also been told they must achieve it - yes, there are boxes to be ticked, but the space and time to reflect and discover can, unfortunately, be a rare thing. This process provides that space and time.

My process

I started by looking at the criteria and considering my case studies. I had been on maternity leave just prior to writing it so was acutely aware that some of my experience may seem out of date. As part of my role at the University, I sit on panels where people who apply for Senior Fellowship are routinely referred as they don't fit specific criteria. This meant I was able to pick up tips, which helped. I  advise, coach and train others to achieve accreditation; however, taking your own advice, as so often in life, can be challenging. I also had a different format to follow as I applied directly to Advance HE to avoid any ethical conflicts. Advance HE currently requires two case studies, one reflective account, and two references which may be different to those who go through their University's accreditation schemes. 

While I had a loose plan, I actually took a different approach to usual and used Julia Cameron's morning pages method of just writing and writing, and writing some more without worrying about making sense - to the point that when I looked again at the word count I was shocked to discover I had double the total wordcount! I'm not sure I'd recommend this approach. While I found it to be quite cathartic, I really did feel like I was then killing my darlings as I omitted whole sections when editing.


Drafts, drafts, drafts - don't necessarily mean perfection

So many drafts to the point I was fed up of it and wanted to hand the whole thing in. I would strongly recommend getting other people's eyes on it; however, I'd advise not having too many. I received conflicting advice and at one point began to question my own judgment which added to the challenges. Ultimately, I am grateful for the people who took time out of their routines to read and offer their opinions and I gained from each of the interactions. My final draft was given to one of my references who told me that, yes, while small tweaks could be made, it was suitable for submission. My old self would have jumped on that comment and 'corrected' those areas; however, done is better than perfect, so I sent it in.

Waiting to hear

I knew it would be a long time to hear back, so I had almost forgotten about it until a fellow Auroran announced she'd received hers. I was hoping I had passed as I don't like revisiting and redrafting something once I have emotionally and psychologically said goodbye to it. I was relieved indeed to receive an email soon after which announced I could now use the SFHEA post nominals.

Going forwards

I continue to keep my teaching notebook for jotting down a few thoughts after my classes. I continue to be interested in how using a coaching approach in higher education can improve both practice and wellbeing simultaneously. I will shortly be speaking at both the Accredited Programme Leader's Network and the Advance HE learning and Teaching Conference on various aspects of this topic. I also have a few writing projects in the pipeline. Paying it forwards, I would be absolutely delighted to help, coach or mentor anyone whose goal it is to achieve FHEA or SFHEA accreditation.

And, just for my mum, - my full post-nominals are BA (Hons), MA (Lond) MCLIP SFHEA.

What's a teaching philosophy, and why does it matter?

Why do you teach the way you do? How do your personal and professional values align with what's going on in your teaching practice? How can you tell?

Teaching philosophies are commonplace in primary and secondary education and are becoming more so in higher education. I've even started to hear about them being used as part of the job interview process.

Participants on the postgraduate certificate course, graduate teaching assistant course and for those applying for a Fellowship of Advance HE via the open route at my institution are required to write one.

@omgitsyeshi - Unsplash.com

Why write one?

• It helps us to make decisions about our behaviour, the tools and activities we use and the way we interact with those we teach
• It helps us be consistent in those decisions and choices
• Being self-aware and being able to articulate our reasons provides us with confidence
• Confidence will provide authority 
• Cognitive dissonance and the resulting burnout will reduce as what we believe and what we do will be in alignment
• It will help us make career choices - are our values and philosophies supported or hindered by our environment, colleagues and institution

What goes in a teaching philosophy?

Ask yourself questions such as:

• What do I mean by teaching?
• What do I mean by learning?
• What drives me and keeps me motivated?
• What are my personal and professional values?
• how do they show up in my practice?
• What actually happens in my classroom?

My own teaching philosophy is centred around my belief that everyone should have the opportunity to develop their potential and that if people could improve what they do, even if just by 10%, then this would improve the world we live in. I create space for the honing of skills such as critical thinking, independent learning and teamwork. This space helps to form connections; connections between ideas and social connections between peers. I give my time to students: I am prepared and enthusiastic; I am the first one in the door welcoming my students and the last one out saying goodbye. My materials and activities are carefully thought out and planned. This shows I take myself and my students seriously and value their precious time. 

What does yours look like? I'd love to know so feel free to leave a comment.

2013: Reflections and the year ahead

'Tis the season to reflect on the year gone past and 2013 will be no exception. Previous years available are 2011 and 2012. I haven't been writing annual reflections for very long (just the last two years - as you can see!) but I find them very helpful in highlighting where all my time has gone...

This time last year I was hoping to remain active in the library and information profession beyond just doing my day job and to stay motivated and committed enough to take up opportunities when they arose. I was concerned about my working future, as I was on a maternity contract, and I had my fingers crossed that I would have a calm, peaceful and enjoyable year.

Hmm...

Well it wasn't particularly calm nor was it particularly peaceful, although some bits were enjoyable. I stayed involved with the ARLG London and south east committee and halfway through the year become the web editor. This meant setting up the committee's online pages; I'd never done this before so it was a good opportunity to learn something new. I was also involved in the organisation of a few events for this committee as well as the Big Data conference for the London Information and Knowledge Exchange. This taught me to have a massive amount of respect for people who do organise events and has helped me recognise that I really don't like doing it! I'd much rather be attending and writing them up.

Taking part in these activities has meant that I've not had lots of time for the SLA Europe's committee roles and though I've helped out where I can with membership and event admin I do feel a little guilty. My working future is still in a state of flux although my contract has been extended, which is great. I was also encouraged to go for promotion which, although was unsuccessful, certainly taught me a few things about myself. Resulting time and money pressures meant that I only dipped in and out of the Library Leadership Reading Group but through it I became involved in a Lean-In Circle which has introduced me to some amazing women and a great support network.

I started 2013 intending to spend more of my time on life instead of solely on work and while this started well  - I got a distinction in my beginner's Spanish class, discovered RunKeeper and started running more regularly, read the Man Booker long list, started driving lessons, and booked a rare holiday weekend, it quickly became clear that these things weren't becoming well-established. Fear and a lack of money got in the way of driving and work commitments meant I had to quit the Spanish lessons. For someone who hates leaving things unfinished, this wasn't a great feeling. I've also been writing fewer book reviews and blog posts which is something I hope to rectify in 2014.

Some highlights of 2013:

From l-r: weekend away; shortlisted for nominated student award; free tickets to om yoga & gratuitous cat picture, minus ears

So for next year;

I'd like to go to some of the big conferences I've not had chance to go to yet - LILAC, Umbrella and ARLG. While attending conferences wipes me out, especially as usually I get to go because I've helped organise them, I do find them motivating and usually get a lot out of them. I've already made a start on this resolution as I've been accepted to speak, with a colleague, at ARLG.

All being well, I will be moving house in the next few months and I will have a garden - with an apple tree! I am really looking forward to growing vegetables, like you would never believe. I love being outside, sticking my hands in the soil, and listening to the birds sing. This is going to be outside of London so may have some impact on my attendance at London based events. Only time will tell.

I'm going to continue with running and yoga as it keeps my emotional, mental, and physical health in check. Once I've polished off the remaining Christmas mince pies, that is. If I'm feeling brave I may even enter a race. One highlight of 2013 was winning tickets to the Om Yoga show . It renewed my enthusiasm for the practice and when I was there I attended a lecture on using yoga in education. This has started me thinking about ways in which I can combine all the things I like doing.

Once I've passed my driving test and refreshed my Spanish knowledge, I want to have a little exploration of the FutureLearn and Coursera MOOCs. I've heard good things about them and I'm a big fan of lifelong learning as well as professional development. I'm tempted to refresh my knowledge of mythology or children's literature but am also intrigued by the psychology courses.

I've learned not to get too hung up on the schemes which don't work out as there's usually a decent reason for it and life has a habit of getting in the way of strict plans anyway. So, with that in mind,  I hope that mine and everyone else's plans, hopes and dreams for 2014 work out even if it turns out to be something quite different than what is expected. Happy New Year.

LIKE 35 - Books: why bother? with Anne Welsh

On Thursday 26th April, I attended LIKE 35. After a mad dash from work to get there in the nick of time I was thrilled to be met by Tina Reynolds holding a glass of wine towards me as I entered, bedraggled and flustered, through the door. After composing myself and finding my table, I then sat down to listen to Anne Welsh, a lecture in cataloguing and historical bibliography at University College London. She started by asking us who amongst us wrote blogs, articles and then books - even though the numbers decreased each time I still found myself slighly in awe of the amount of people surrounding me who had written books. Anne then went on to ask why bother try to get published at all when there are so many options for people to find information available.
Some of the reasons were:

• it structures your thoughts - (I think any type of writing does this)
• a book defines your reputation in your chosen field - (I agree with this - one of the reasons I chose UCL to complete my Masters was because the lecturers had written the books we would be studying - it made me think they would really know what they were talking about)
• books are finalised thoughts not just the embryonic musings one has in a blog (I've heard a few people say this now - that seeds of books have been borne through blogs)

I had previously thought that academics were encouraged to write books as part of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) but Anne explained how even though books are needed as they help to consolidate all the information available on a topic, because they are no longer accepted by the REF  more practioners are writing instead of academics. Apparently, this has always been the case in America - they have workbooks where Britain has theory books. While it would be a shame if the number of theory based books were to reduce sometimes when you're a practioner yourself and you haven't got a lot of time to digest the theory and come up with amazing ideas related to it it can really help to read a book which highlights exactly what others have done and how it has worked in practice.

Lastly, Anne spoke about digital versus print and how students, in particular, perceive it.  She claimed that research suggested students believe printed books are more authoritative but that they prefer the portability of digital. She did suggest too that students might only have said they preferred the digital version in the studies due to being given free kit and that this opinion many change if they were required to upload it onto their own devices.

Overall, the session wasn't quite what I was expecting. I was hoping for something a little more related to how to get started writing, although to be fair Anne did ask us to consider our audience, who our competitors are and whether print is the best format before submitting a proposal. However, it was an enjoyable and interesting session and encouraged me to to think about thought processes, the REF and book styles. There's one more LIKE evening to go and then there will be LIKE's inaugural conference - which I am very much looking forward to.

Writing for Publication

On Tuesday 31st January I attended an event coordinated by CILIP in London and Library and Information Research Group entitled 'Writing for Publication'. Having my name in print has long been an ambition of mine that I have yet to realise so I thought this would be a great opportunity to give me the push I needed. My problem is that I have lots of ideas but have struggled to tie them down - I'm also not sure where to start.

The morning started with introductions from Alison Brettle and Christina Irving, members of the Library and Information Research Group. We then introduced ourselves to the small groups we were seated in and discussed our writing experiences; people seemed to have very similar ones, for example, a few had had some previous experience of writing blogs and newsletters but had not written formally. I fit into this bracket too as I have my blog, tweet fairly regularly and have written up an event for Eclipse - the CILIP in South East newsletter, but haven't really done anything else.

In our groups we discussed the reasons why writing is important for the profession. These were;

• for the promotion of the service
• for passing on and recording knowledge
• a chance to reflect
• respect amongst peers and colleagues
• a way of sharing best practice
• preventing the reinvention of the wheel
• a way of engaging in critical thinking

We then discussed the challenges and barriers we often face. We all have different ways of writing and some people are lucky enough to have it scheduled into their workload. However, as this is not always possible we were given some tips, such as bounce ideas off people before writing and find a suitable environment.Other tips were:

• Find out the guidelines and expectations of journals before sending copy, perhaps asking the editor your topics fits their scope
• Think about your audience
• Try critically appraising articles to discover what works and what doesn't
• Try writing literature reviews as  it gives a chance to practice writing and find out what works are already available
• Try writing book reviews

Overall, I'm glad I attended the course and found it useful. It helped to bring together a lot of information and tips and more importantly give me the inspiration and motivation I need.

My next plan is to choose a topic, possibly something related to web safety as this is a large part of my job at the moment and can be a very emotive subject or something related to how Learning Resource Centres can support higher education courses in the future as students will be paying much more and have unrealistic expectations of what they will receive in return. Will keep you posted!

Library Day in the Life - Day 2

This blog post is part of Library Day in the Life

Usually on a Tuesday I spend the majority of my time single-staffing the HE Centre; keeping the place running smoothly and the students and academic staff happy. This usually involves helping them with everything from help with referencing to how to print a document double-sided.

However, today was a little bit different. At 8am I was on my way to an event jointly run by CILIP in London and Library and Information Research Group (LIRG) called Writing for Publication. I have been telling myself I would write for a while now and haven't gotten round to it. I also believe that it is important for librarians and researchers to share good practice so others can benefit by not having to cover the same ground and also to learn from what has been discovered and/or written about. I am not going to cover this in too much detail here as I intend to write up the event properly quite soon -  suffice to say it has given me motivation and some useful tips which I hope to put into practice shortly.

When I returned to work after the course  I had a few brief minutes to catch up on my emails before going straight into a meeting with my line manager and  a colleague to discuss the student focus group we had recently organised. This had been put together with the intention of getting feedback from the students regarding their resource priorities and study habits. The outcomes of this will heavily inform the way we spend our budget. The focus group went well but now we have the task of extracting useful information from the recordings as well as writing up the minutes from the discussions and group activities we had set and, most importantly, setting action points.

After the meeting, I went to the HE Centre; checked everything had been okay in my absence, tidied it up as a lot of students had just left then put up the new February display materials ready for tomorrow.

Cpd23 - Thing 16 - Advocacy

Thing 16 is about advocacy and getting published.

I have not been published. I have been intending to get published for the last three years and for some reason something stops me from putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. I have entered library competitions where the winner would have to write a piece on the event they attended - I never won. I keep volunteering to write book reviews just to get me started and for some reason this hasn't come off (although, fingers crossed, there should be something in the post soon from the editor of Managing Information). In the past, I have written pages of ideas and introductions but never completed them. I guess previously the only library 'stuff' I did was for my job and I was a little nervous about writing about this in case I said something that was 'the wrong thing'.

However, now I am much more involved in library 'stuff' outside of my job, it is a much larger part of my life. I have written a piece about a CoFHE LASEC event I was involved in for Eclipse magazine, the CDG LASEC publication, and I hope this is published. Blogging is also getting me into the habit of writing more; I should probably take much more care crafting beautiful sentences in case people think this blog is an example of my ability I write!

Reader, I could probably advocate more. I didn't know there were advocacy resources on the CILIP website and I've started looking at a few of these. While useful, I'm a little concerned how out of date some of them are. The HE in FE information, the area I work in, is from 2004. So much has changed on the last seven years, including the rise in tuition fees, the change in government, the controversial Browne Review followed by the even more controversial HE White Paper that someone from CILIP needs to go over all this material.

I advocate where I can and explain what I do when someone says - " you did a Masters in stamping books". When I've had the opportunity to go to events I've involved myself in conversations and talked about the work I do, not only in my current role but also for CoFHE LASEC. Advocacy is so important, especially when the impact of everything undertaken needs to be assessed. I have started ensuring I can do this. I am currently investigating how I can realistically assess the impact of inductions of student performance and have also set up procedures to assess the impact of displays and events within the LRC. While teachers are becoming focused on evidence-based teaching, it seems that we have to do the same too if we are to remain.

There has been a lot of work put into trying to save the public libraries, an incredibly important task if we are to save them for future generations. It seems like school libraries have all but disappeared  - how was that allowed to happen? As part of CoFHE LASEC, we are considering doing some work on ascertaining the scale of redundancies and unfilled posts within the FE sector. I guess what this shows is that we all want to protect our own little silo of the information world. It would be lovely if we could get together and support each other but at the moment I'm not sure if this is possible. Many people are just trying to stay afloat and sometimes even this can be very gruelling at times. I don't know what the future holds for the profession or for libraries, however, as long as we do the best we can in the circumstances we are in and give the best service we can to our users then I would suggest then I would say we are all advocates for what we do.