2013: A reflection …and looking forward to 2014

A round-up of work I’ve been doing in 2013 …and what I’m hoping to do in 2014 

 

Haha! It’s been such a busy start to the year, I haven’t had a chance to finish this before now!

2013 was a frustrating and challenging year, but also a productive and interesting one. During it I…

• taught once more on the ‘Showcasing Cruising’ module for BSc Cruise Management Programme.
• started doing a MOOC (as a student) – unfortunately this was the infamous ‘Fundamentals of Online Education’ which failed spectacularly!
• researched and ran workshops for students and graduates around using social media for employability, introducing relevant tools to the University’s Careers Advisers and providing them with resources to adapt and use with students. I also wrote an accompanying article for the University’s Graduate Newsletter.
• did a poster presentation at the ALDinHE Conference around using Facebook for employability (unfortunately I can’t publish this as, despite contacting Facebook, I never received permission …or even a response!) This is also where I saw Dr Helen Webster present her experiences running ’23 Things’, an online CPD course introducing Early Career Researchers to social media tools – this impacted quite heavily on the rest of the year!
• started working (as an LT) for the Faculty of Arts & Humanities – I’m based in Room 112, Roland Levinsky Building on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
• led a workshop with 3D Design Lecturer, Alon Meron, resulting in students setting up a group project blog on WordPress – The Open Sauce Project. This worked brilliantly – after a brief introduction the students designed and contributed to the blog themselves.
• familiarised myself with PebblePad3 to help run workshops and provide support for Nursing Lecturers who use it as an e-portfolio with their students.
• became a member of the LD5D Team – a collaborative group set up by Dr Helen Webster to run an online CPD course for Learning Developers introducing them to social media tools. I supported the  ‘10 Days of Twitter‘ course in August and contributed to LD5D in October introducing participants to Google+ Communities.
• am leading a project, ‘DigiThings‘,  based on the LD5D (originally ’23 Things’) model, to run a similar online course for academics exploring presentation tools.

 

 

We’re only into the second full week of 2014 and already I have…

• run the first ‘Showcasing Cruising’ workshop for this year’s cohort of students
• worked with 3D Design students to set up a group blog, based on the success of last year’s WordPress site

…and ‘DigiThings’ has just started this week. At the time of writing we have 50 people signed up. I’m really pleased with this as we didn’t advertise it well in advance and I know everyone is really busy. It’s early days but I’m quite excited to see how this goes and what the take up is…

Other things I’m keen to explore this coming year:-

• I’ve been offered another Associate Lecturer post in Humanities teaching students how to use social media effectively – I love teaching students and am really looking forward to this
• Google+ – I know they’re considered to be ‘evil’ by many but I think this platform has lots of potential for learning. I want to do some more research into this
• more LD5D! I really enjoyed being part of the course and community. I also learned a hell of a lot!
• try another MOOC – I feel I’m missing out… Can anyone suggest a good one?
• creating another ebook – I was really into this but then got caught up in other things. So much you can do…
• experiment with creating interactive videos
• … and nailing presenting in front of a camera. My ‘DigiThings’ contribution is truly awful!
• investigating how Moodle can be used as a stimulating VLE. This is a relatively new platform to me but it looks quite interesting. Any tips and suggestions are very welcome!

So a belated Happy New Year y’all. Here’s hoping it’s a good one!