Higher education: sunk at the end of history?

A reply to Justine Andrew. ‘The Strategic Imperative: Planning for a Post-Covid Future’. Wonkhe. Justine Andrew in Wonkhe (6 May 2020) sets out a strategic approach to the big questions facing higher education: sector, institutions and their governors. She, at KPMG, uses the structure: React, Resilience, Recovery, Renewal and New Reality. I want to suggest … Continue reading Higher education: sunk at the end of history?

A hidden curriculum

Published on: Jan 18, 2018 I examine two related concepts: hierarchised identity formation and the enclosure of desire as a hidden curriculum. A hidden curriculum is, I suggest the collection of assumptions, often about power (Brookfield 2017, chapter 2) that is communicated alongside and through the practice of overt curricula. A hidden curriculum is conveyed … Continue reading A hidden curriculum

Where risk lies for HEIs: the conflation of regulation, reputation and enhancement

I had a conversation with our head of QA about the consultations current in HE regulation. Her pragmatic approach is refreshing. I thought I might share the gist of my side of the conversation. I am working through documents at a more leisurely pace than the folk at Wonkhe. And I did read David kernohan's A game of … Continue reading Where risk lies for HEIs: the conflation of regulation, reputation and enhancement

Tinkering with algorithms

I read Franklin Foer's Facebook's War on Free Will the Guardian's "Long read" for Tuesday 19 September 2017. He recapped a familiar argument: you are Facebook's product. But when he hit "data science" I turned up my sensors. He says, "There’s a whole discipline, data science, to guide the writing and revision of algorithms". Then he … Continue reading Tinkering with algorithms

Backpacks, badges and epistemology: an interesting conversation that leads to happily ever after

Grant (2014) asks in the title to her book about digital badges, "What Counts as Learning?" This succinctly expresses the question of higher education and explains the continuing interest in badges, and in learning technologies in general. The fact this is less explored, gives me an opportunity to explore both learning technology and epistemology. I have developed … Continue reading Backpacks, badges and epistemology: an interesting conversation that leads to happily ever after

A week of academic multimedia

It has been a week of academic multimedia . Semi-successfully simulcasting a face-to-face workshop to remote participants using Adobe Connect. Creating a series of short audio posts about academic multimedia, continued here. Using a learning object (collection of videos and text) “Philosophy and Policy of Higher Education”, to introduce a flipped teaching session. And using … Continue reading A week of academic multimedia

Dialogic multimedia

What kicked me off on this audio exploration of academic multimedia? Two things. First and proximal cause: when I reported that my colleagues and I had been asked if we could give workshops on technology enhanced learning (TEL) the suggestion was scoffed. Why give workshops when you could do a series of three minute talking … Continue reading Dialogic multimedia

FSLT16 Week 1

Week one has flown by like a simile. There are 58 participants on the course of whom 22 are doing the module for academic credit (10 credits, level 7) towards a PG Cert in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PCTHE). Sixteen (16) of the assessed participants are from Brookes and six are from other … Continue reading FSLT16 Week 1

FSLT16 Kicking off

It has been a lot of work this year getting FSLT ready to go. Partly this is because as ever, I start too late. We also pulled the starting date forward from last year by two weeks so not only am I late the course is early. There were several reasons to do this, but … Continue reading FSLT16 Kicking off