Writing

Stephen (there is a link to his blog on the sidebar of this blog) returned from a few weeks away in New Zealand a few days ago and we had a chance to catch up today and do some more work on a paper we have been working on forever.. well for a couple of months at least. It feels like we have written about four papers as each major redraft has taken us off on a slightly different vector. Yet again we worked our way through word by word from the start deconstructing, rejigging, shuffling, honing etc etc and got through the first couple of thousand words after a couple of hours and some more hours. We ended up pretty much at the same point we always get to but this time we really know where we are going with the rest of it. Hopefully Saturday morning I will rebuild our vignettes and Stephen will sort some of the theory then we will meet to finish the beast off so it is ready to send off for some peer review on Monday. It is a painstaking process honing writing and seemed rather appropriate that we should be doing this on the same day Cohort 10 of BA LTR are finalising their first assessed work in time for their hand in deadline tonight. Writing papers to a deadline is as near as I can get to gaining an experiential insight into the student experience; its easy to see why students sometimes feel like giving up when they are so near the goal; there is a lot of stress and some of it comes from the sort of baring your soul to the world kind of feeling also a bit like hanging Art work on a gallery wall - exposure and vulnerability are two key words underpinning my own stress at such times but there is also quite a buzz kicks in about two thirds of the way to finishing...strange mix of emotions I am really looking forward to seeing the completed artifact at long last.

back in the UK

Life has been full recently hence not a lot of action on here. I am back in the UK again at Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford for a series of team meetings. The team I work with have been working together on a range of projects since 2000 and on the BA LTR http://www.ultraversity.net/ since 2003. We spend all but a few weeks of the year working from home using skype, FirstClass, Adobe connect etc and occasionally even the telephone to carry out our daily business. We are spread across England, Scotland, Ireland, I was in Cornwall and now I am working successfully from the NW of Spain. It is always a little disorienting for me to walk through the doors of the University buildings and work in the same physical space together. I see the need to meet particularly with other members of the University and it has been really informative and exciting hearing about new developments and meeting impressive new staff members. We have also been engaged in a lot of rich dialogue about work, our individual research agendas, life, the universe and all that jazz as well as carrying out some practical tasks too. I can't be certain but it does feel more efficient to work on the practical tasks from home; being physically present in the same space causes distractions - often very valuable ones, but non the less they can distract from the task in hand. I used to think that maybe we were missing something by not being able to see those physical cues that reinforce dialogue, we rarely use video conferencing, I think that developed in the days when bandwidth was a real issue and we realised that the voice or text is where the important messages lie and some of us find the video actually a detraction from the focus on message and meaning. This week I found myself often looking away from people I was speaking or listening to; looking at them was often distracting enough for me to lose the thread of my story. Reflecting on this I think when I am talking to team members via voice or text there is no need at all for visual cues to interpret the feelings of others who I know well, maybe the years of immersion in this way of working have changed something a bit like the idea that people who have lost their sight find other senses eventually becoming more sensitive. ...Any way I set out talking about the UK - I found it quite traumatic walking through Chelmsford even at 8 am there were lots of young people about and they all seemed to be using mobile phones often shouting into them and a fair few being quite rude to whoever was on the other end. In Galicia people are loud in conversation but I don't recall anyone doing that thing where they talk loads louder into the phone than they would to a friend walking with them. I couldn't really pin down why but I did not feel safe, something about the way young folk walk, their body language..not sure what it was I might have been over reacting but even some of the people working in shops had a cocky attitude. When I walked into a shop a few mins before 9 it was a sort of what the hell is he doing look and a less than polite message about not being open yet despite the door being wide ajar, I thought about asking why the door was open then thought better of it. For me the UK is no longer home, I don't belong, so much so that I have hardly slept since I got here on Monday evening I can't settle. I don't yet belong in Galicia either, its a kind of limbo time and even harder being here without my family....I was asked about what it is that makes 'home' for me recently - Home is my family I am certain of that, however it is more than that but what that moreness is I am not sure - it is not belonging to place though. We are holidaying in Cornwall soon I wonder if I will still feel like I don't belong in the UK when my family is here with me. That was a simple but deep question Hamish; I will be chewing it over for sometime.

Olympic volunteers

A cohort of our students have just finished their final year and all sorts of stories are emerging about the impact the degree has had on their lives. The students all study totally online so I have never had the chance to meet them, even so in the online community environment we have strong bonds develop and they often stay in touch for many years. Dawn is part of the cohort that are just about to graduate and mailed me recently to say the degree and her final year inquiry were influential in her being selected as one of the first 23 (300 applied) trailblazer volunteers on the London 2012 Olympic organising committee. It really is wonderful to read the impact stories that are emerging and makes me feel proud of the students and of the course we have developed. The Olympic blog is here http://www.london2012.com/blog/2009/01/08/meeting-the-trailblazer-volunteers.php

Rercruiting students

We are now recruiting students for our 10th intake ready for a February start; if you can't or don't want to give up work but do want to get a degree in three years this course lets you do so because it integrates your study with your work activities. You apply reflective practice and action inquiry as a means of systematically improving your own practice and that of others in the workplace. It is a great way to move up the ladder without having to take time out of working or spend many years studying part time. All of your study is directly relevant to your work role so you are embedded in authentic learning on a daily basis rather than disappearing onto campus for three years and returning to an employment world that has moved on without you. We have seen a huge range of students through to graduation - dinner ladies, TAs, charity workers, people in small businesses and large businesses, some from the Health sector, some from LEAs and many other contexts too numerous to mention. Double click on the poster to enlarge or check out the information on the web-site http://www.ultraversity.com/ Like any good degree it is hard work but it really does pay off.

Pattern languages

Stephen and I have been trying to articulate our approach to online work-focused inquiry based learning as a pattern language - in a nutshell architects sometimes use pattern language to support the design of buildings- you can see how a library would need a set of toilets, somewhere for books, a quiet room or two etc etc and how each element could be seen as a pattern, all of the individual patterns that go to define a library are the pattern language for the library and this language or variations on it would be identifiable in most libraries. Each pattern articulates a problem, poses a solution, reflects on its implementation and shows how it links to other patterns. We have applied this strategy to define our practice and it has proved a valuable experience so far in that the patterns provide an analytical framework and reflecting on elements like 'defining the essence of each problem' really made us think deeply about the rationale behind our approach. We are as yet less sure about the use of the patterns as a vehicle for disseminating our practice. We have put them on a blog and invited comments from anyone with a knowledge of delivering education at HE level or having experienced education at HE level. http://inquirypatterns.wordpress.com/ Please take a look if you are interested.