Success Breeds Success: In Praise of FLAIR By Dr Madeleine Davies, Department of English Literature (SLL)

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Reluctance

My application to the HEA through the FLAIR Scheme was a task I deferred for as long as possible. I did not have time; it looked too difficult; I had so many other things to do, including research, marking, teaching and administration.

To indicate that I would get down to applying eventually, I attended a briefing event given by Dr Eileen Hyder who heads the FLAIR HEA accreditation scheme at the University. Eileen (who should be sainted) was an inspiring speaker and she made the whole application process seem achievable and also positive in terms of our own career management and self-development. A clear structure for the FLAIR programme was outlined and Eileen explained the number of writing retreats we could attend and the support that was available to us. A time frame was provided, and also an expert summary of what kind of material we should consider including in the various sections of the application.

Reconsideration

My procrastination stopped here. As soon as I returned to my office after the briefing event, I sketched out potential case studies and began to penetrate the mysteries of the UKPSF (UK Professional Standards Framework) that turned out not to be  ‘mysterious’ at all. Over the weekend that followed, I put flesh on the bones of the draft, began to complete the forms and to gather my evidence and references for my application for ‘Fellow’ of the HEA.

Reflection

The drafting task proved surprisingly compelling, not least because the body of work I had accumulated surprised me; I had lost sight of the range of activities I had undertaken and of their significance in terms of T & L effectiveness. I realised that all the work that I had been doing over several years was not merely ‘routine’ but was full of T & L innovation, and I began to develop a new sense of the value of my work as I wrote. My self-confidence had taken a battering over the years (such is the lot of a female academic managing the work/children juggle) but completing the forms made me realise that this state of depressed self-esteem had potentially been generated by never having the time or the space to reflect fully on the quality of the contribution that I had been making. Applying to the HEA creates that time and space for reflective self-evaluation.

Retreat

Because I am used to writing independently, I decided to reserve my writing retreat allocation for the discussion of my draft application (other colleagues prefer to use the retreats to produce their case studies). Armed with my first complete draft, I attended the retreat in early June 2016, the time of year when such mornings ‘out’ look impossible (particularly for Exams Officers). However, I was determined to create the time and, whilst there, I had a long and fascinating conversation with Eileen who read my draft and told me approvingly that it looked like the profile of a Senior Fellow rather than that of a Fellow. My self-confidence leapt another notch.

To all those tempted to skip the ‘Writing Retreat’ part of the application process, think again: advice and guidance at this stage is vital and the three hours I spent at the retreat were enjoyable, relaxed, and crucial in terms of the development of my application. The advice I received prevented many mistakes that I could have made, and corrected others that I had already made.

Following the retreat, I again returned to my office and began typing new sections to draw out areas of activity that I had under-played (not having recognised their significance), and amending others that were not UKPSF-friendly. Once again, inspired by Eileen’s positivity and encouragement, the work was swift and actually rather enjoyable: it had been a long time since I had worked on something exclusively for my own professional development.

Reward

I submitted my application shortly afterwards and was soon rewarded with a certificate, a silver pin, Senior Fellowship of the HEA, and a thoroughly enjoyable celebratory Christmas party attended by the Vice Chancellor. Since then I have become a fully trained member of the FLAIR ‘College of Assessors’, working with Eileen and several colleagues across the University who I never had the opportunity to meet before. This work has been a great pleasure and it is an unanticipated bonus of my HEA application experience.

Rejuvenation

It is not an exaggeration to say that my application to the HEA marked a turning point for me. It gave me a new appreciation of the work I had done and that I continued to do and I began to realise that I could be successful in other applications too. Since then, I have submitted bids for funding, placements, fellowships and promotion. All of this had seemed beyond my reach before I applied to the HEA, and there never seemed to be enough time for it anyway.

Following my experience on FLAIR, I now make time for these bids and applications because I have a renewed sense of the worth of what I have to share within and beyond the University. I have generated new initiatives (including a ‘Gender and Identities’ Student Forum and the SLL Resilience Masterclasses), applied for a Collaborative Award, co-organised a conference, and engaged Jess Phillips MP to come and speak at the University in June. I am doubly active in attending research events, outreach events, CQSD training sessions, and in participating in research networks.

Success breeds success. Looking back, I had fallen into a pattern of under-valuing my work and of not feeling that achievement and recognition were possible for me outside of the seminar room. Eileen’s support, and the FLAIR Scheme as a whole, lifted me out of this and helped me to develop a new perspective on my work and career. I am particularly grateful to Eileen for urging me to apply for Senior Fellowship because I would not have had the confidence to do this without her.

Recommendation

For any colleague who needs help in appreciating the value of what they do, and who needs a shot of confidence, I urge you to embrace the FLAIR Scheme. Apply for Senior Fellowship if Eileen sees the potential. Yes, it takes some work, but it is work that repays you ten-fold.

Inaugural Writer’s Retreat for finding your FLAIR by Dr Sam Weston

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On 4th June at London Road, CQSD ran their first writing retreat for UoR staff embarking on the pilot FLAIR CPD programme, to document their previous teaching experience and apply for HEA recognition at Associate Fellow, Fellow, Senior Fellow and Principal Fellow status.

The day began with a tag-team presentation from Clare and Nina outlining the plan for the day and reminding participants of what they were expected to do over the next few hours. The session included short warm-up exercises reminding us all of UKPSF descriptors and suggestions of examples for each of  the Areas of Activity, Core Knowledge and Values – more of a challenge than expected – and revealed a competitive nature in some participants! It did, however, help to explain the cross-over nature of many of the participants’ evidence samples.

Once the workshop and presentation was over, participants scattered across Building 22 into dedicated writing rooms, allowing them to really spend quality time working on their submissions, with drop in access to CQSD experts all day.

The day was a huge success for staff from CQSD and participants; the ability to come and talk things over with experts, who made themselves available for the whole day, and spent dedicated time talking the anxiety out of many of the participants was an invaluable resource when trying to complete the template for submission.

I can honestly recommend this writer’s retreat to anyone embarking on the FLAIR route for HEA recognition. The process was both light-hearted and gently teasing whilst reflective, reassuring and supportive in equal measure.

Mobile Technology – Changing the Learning Landscape – a HEA sponsored conference by Dr Natasha Barrett & Dr Samantha Weston

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On Thursday 18th April, the HEA hosted a conference in Bristol, showcasing some innovative uses of old technologies as well as demonstrating the cutting edge of new tech used in the delivery of teaching materials to undergraduates in medicine and dentistry. We attended in the hope that some of these ideas might be adaptable for teaching the increasingly tech-savvy undergraduates of UoR’s School of Biological Sciences and School of Pharmacy. The focus of this workshop was the use of mobile devices, social media and open practice in medicine and dentistry but was applicable to many disciplines.  This was an intense day, packed full of interesting sessions including:

  • Twitter for forming networks
  • Blogs to support reflection
  • Digital curation
  • Augmented reality
  • Apps for mobile devices e.g.  Reflection app, Learning Suite app (MCQs), Clinical assessment app (tutor feedback sent straight to your eportfolio), Dr Companion app (5-6 searchable textbooks).

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A summary of my experiences on the PGCAP Course by Dr Samuel Laryea

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When I got appointed as a Lecturer in 2010 I found that I had to do the PGCAP course as part of requirements for my probation. Initially I did not feel happy about this. I had quite a heavy teaching workload and also the pressure to develop research papers and grant proposals. I certainly felt the PGCAP course was a distraction to the ‘core’ aspects of my work in the university and unfortunately, I had no choice but to do it. Today, my view of the PGCAP course is completely different.

By the time I completed the programme successfully in July 2012, I found that participation in the course had helped me to develop greatly in all aspects of my career and academic aspirations. First, participation in the PGCAP course helped me to learn new ideas about teaching and learning and my role as a lecturer – including personal tutoring, supporting student learning, classroom teaching, assessment and feedback. One word I quickly became familiar with was ‘Pedagogy’. I began to develop a better understanding of the purpose of teaching which is to facilitate learning. I found the workshops extremely useful and by the time I was through a few of them, I felt that the course was right and very beneficial in terms of my own personal development as a lecturer and my understanding of the higher education environment and engagement with students. In short, the whole PGCAP experience was very developmental and I could feel its positive impact on my teaching, research, administrative duties and relationships with people across the university.

Participation in the course helped me to meet other new lecturers across the university so I made friends and this enabled me to share ideas and experiences. The course was clearly time-consuming but certainly worth every bit of the time invested. It is professionally useful to have the PGCAP qualification and Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Perhaps the two most useful aspects of the course for me were the project and portfolio. I learned much from my T&L project on feedback provision and use and fortunately the work was of significant benefit to my School. I enjoyed both project and portfolio equally – but I found the process of writing my reflective teaching portfolio very developmental, in that, the process enabled me to give more serious thought to my routine activities as a lecturer, reviewing my personal development over time, and identifying new ways to improve. The portfolio and project have helped me so much to develop in my understanding of pedagogical issues – and generated in me a permanent interest to engage in teaching and learning issues.

Today I am based in the School of Construction Economics and Management at University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. I serve as Director of our undergraduate programme and the ideas and experiences gained on the PGCAP course are serving me extremely well. I fully understand pedagogic issues in a higher education environment and this plays a central role in the development of an effective approach for teaching and supporting student learning. The PGCAP experience has been hugely useful, making a difference, and providing an advantage not only for myself but also for the 400+ students I teach in my new university.

The Enhancing Fieldwork Learning Project by Dr Alice Mauchline and Professor Julian Park

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Fieldwork is an important component of Higher Education in a number of subjects. As a Learning Space it provides good educational opportunities for students; including the teaching & practice of skills such as observation, data recording & analysis to report writing and teamwork.

Two University of Reading staff members, Julian Park and Alice Mauchline (together with colleagues from Chester & Sheffield Universities) have received HEA funding for the Enhancing Fieldwork Learning project which aims to develop and share ways to enhance fieldwork learning using technology. Incorporating appropriate technology into fieldwork teaching can be enabling, fun to use and can be cost effective. Importantly, it gives students problem-solving opportunities in the field and provides a vehicle for the development of a variety of subject-specific, generic and employability skills.

An important aspect of this project is about reaching and engaging fieldwork practitioners in Higher Education and creating a community to share ideas and good practice. The team regularly attend both subject-specific and T&L conferences to engage people with the project and run workshops to demonstrate the potential transferability of technology into practitioners’ own teaching.

Additionally, the team run their own events. A two-day ‘Transforming Fieldwork Practice Workshop’ has just been taken place at Hornton Grange, University of Birmingham. Four teams from different institutions each came along with their specific requirements and were supported in finding ways to develop, facilitate & sustain change in their fieldwork practice. Also, a Showcase event is taking place in September 2012 at which there will be demonstrations of a number of simple technologies which can enhance fieldwork learning e.g. how to shoot and edit videos using only a smartphone & applications of iPads in fieldwork.

The website for the EFL project contains a wealth of resources including literature on fieldwork learning, case study reports on the use of technology to solve pedagogic issues encountered during fieldwork and a blog & social media streams.

Therefore, we invite you to engage with the project; use the resources, attend a talk/workshop or come along to the Showcase event in September 2012. Enjoy!

#HEAdayC21, or, A wonderful sharing of ideas

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I mentioned in my last post for this blog that I’d attended some Higher Education Academy workshops in order to develop my teaching practice. I’d like to share a little about my most recent outing, Teaching Post-Millennial Literature (University of Brighton, 2nd July 2012) [http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2012/seminars/disciplines/DW238].

Attending this one-day symposium was thoroughly invigorating. The presentations ranged from provocations on the organisation of English studies to practical suggestions that were firmly rooted in the realities of the classroom.

In keeping with the twenty-first-century focus, I decided to engage with the symposium using new technology. Along with a few other delegates, I gave live commentary on the day’s proceedings via the social media website, Twitter, using the hash-tag #HEAdayC21. You can see the full collaborative Twitter commentary on the symposium here [https://www.martineve.com/2012/07/03/teaching-post-millenial-fiction-conference-archive/].

The relationship between creative writing and critical practice was a hot topic. Presentations by Helen Pleasance and Mark Slater convincingly challenged the separation – and hierarchisation – of the two:

This conversation is timely, as AQA introduce Creative Writing as an A-Level option from September 2013. Hopefully this cohort will find a cross-fertilisation of creative and critical practice when they arrive at University. In fact, the Department of English Language and Literature here at Reading is already well ahead on this, with rigorous Creative Writing options at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

The symposium showcased a number of new kinds of text, such as gaming narratives, technotexts, and graphic novels.

It’s curious that this digital age should produce literatures as profoundly material as graphic novels. Such physical fictions can be hard to access, and so difficult to teach. Zara Dinnen offered some thoughtful solutions:

In the final session, Nicole King reminded delegates to make connections across disciplines, be it through guest lectures or the informal sharing of solutions to pedagogical problems.

Using Twitter throughout enabled me to test the possibility of using new media as a pedagogical tool. It has real potential to encourage students to engage critically and dialogically with their lectures. After this workshop I’m newly excited about harnessing the technological skills of the digitally native generation, through strategies such as e-Learning. I’ve seen that the post-millennial isn’t just a textual object of contemporary English studies: a category of literature. Instead, it’s an interactive way of relating to the world that has the potential to shape the very methods of teaching and learning.

Nicola Abram

PhD student wins 2012 Teaching & Learning Support Programme Portfolio Prize

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I’m surprised and thrilled to have won the University of Reading’s Teaching and Learning Support Programme Portfolio Prize! I’m looking forward to attending the Teaching and Learning Awards ceremony on the 18th September, where Professor Gavin Brooks, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning), will make the presentation. Let me explain…

I’ve had the privilege of contributing to the BA English programme during my PhD, by leading a seminar group on the Part One ‘Researching the English Essay’ module in 2010/11. I was keen to get focussed training and feedback as I took on this new responsibility, so I enrolled on the University’s Teaching and Learning Support Programme (TLSP). This 20-credit Master’s level module is accredited by the Higher Education Academy, and designed for postgraduates and staff involved in supporting student learning.

Throughout the year I attended a number of TLSP workshops run by enthusiastic and experienced trainers; I was particularly inspired by sessions on pedagogical theory – ‘how students learn’ – and on creating synergy between research and teaching. I also attended various Higher Education Academy events across the UK, which offered a valuable opportunity to learn from other teaching professionals on more specific topics like teaching performance poetry and post-millennial literature. I took part in reciprocal teaching observations, and was even filmed giving a practice presentation. I reflected on these many activities in a written portfolio, where I articulated my student-centred approach to teaching and learning.

I was delighted when my portfolio passed with Distinction, and honoured when it recently won the annual TLSP Portfolio Prize for the best portfolio submitted in 2011/12. This recognition is especially encouraging so early in my career, and I’m thrilled to receive £1,000 towards continuing my professional development.

So, big thanks to those students in my first seminar group, for their willing participation and thoughtful feedback. I’m grateful, too, to my PhD supervisor and teaching mentor, Professor Alison Donnell, for her constructive observation of my teaching practice. Many CSTD staff, faculty members and fellow graduate seminar leaders have shared creative suggestions for seminar activities with me. It’s great being part of a University that’s so committed to enabling effective learning and rewarding good teaching. I’m hoping to be back in the classroom – as both teacher and learner – again soon!

Nicola Abram