Dr Nicola Rivers and Dr Dave Webster. Enabled by technology, we were discussing assessment feedback in Higher Education, while watching an episode of The Apprentice*. Although neither us of us are entrepreneurs, or teach business, or retail, courses, what initially struck us when watching the Apprentice was that it offered a certain jouissance of judging others. TheContinue reading “Higher Education is not The Apprentice, and neither is the ‘Real World’.”
Category Archives: Challenge
What is academic challenge? Vulnerability, resilience, grit, stretch, toughness and the student experience.
Next month, Ros O’Leary and I will be attending ICERI2017, the 10th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation. The title of our contribution is What is academic challenge? Vulnerability, resilience, grit, stretch, toughness and conceptualising the student experience. This will draw on our Model for Academic Challenge, that we have began to develop here, as well on the concernsContinue reading “What is academic challenge? Vulnerability, resilience, grit, stretch, toughness and the student experience.”
Academic Challenge and intellectually Stimulating Teaching: 5. Becoming the subject specialist
Ros O’Leary & David Webster “Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” Paulo Freire We propose that we take learners backstage. That they are actors in the drama of learning, and not the audience. As notedContinue reading “Academic Challenge and intellectually Stimulating Teaching: 5. Becoming the subject specialist”
Academic Challenge and intellectually Stimulating Teaching: 4. Developing community and active citizenship
Ros O’Leary & David Webster The implication for thinking about learning as reconstitution of self (or transformation), puts emphasis on developing cooperative learning and learning communities. Drawing on Vygotsky , action theory (Bredo, 1997; Lave, 1996) and the idea of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991) becomes important. Here a novice, or our student,Continue reading “Academic Challenge and intellectually Stimulating Teaching: 4. Developing community and active citizenship”
Academic Challenge and intellectually Stimulating Teaching: 3. Developing Engagement and Harnessing Uncertainty
Ros O’Leary & David Webster We know from research on effective learning that active engagement is a vital element in enabling students to learn – therefore activities and assessment which promote analysis, evaluation and the synthesis of ideas – across a course and beyond – will support effective learning – including discussion in class, groupContinue reading “Academic Challenge and intellectually Stimulating Teaching: 3. Developing Engagement and Harnessing Uncertainty”
Academic Challenge and intellectually Stimulating Teaching: 2. Leadership
Ros O’Leary & David Webster The most powerful driver on student attitudes and behaviours is not what we tell them, not how we structure our sessions, not the content, but how we model our engagement with the enterprise of learning and teaching. What are we like when we stand amongst our students? We may or may notContinue reading “Academic Challenge and intellectually Stimulating Teaching: 2. Leadership”
Academic Challenge and intellectually Stimulating Teaching: 1. Cultivating Autonomy
Ros O’Leary & David Webster The first of the five areas of our Academic Challenge and intellectually Stimulating Teaching model, is Cultivating Autonomy. While not wishing to overly stress the Kantian notion of the autonomous agent, potentially atomised in neoliberal isolation, and being hostile to discourse about student resilience for related reasons, we still want toContinue reading “Academic Challenge and intellectually Stimulating Teaching: 1. Cultivating Autonomy”
Reflections on Academic Challenge and intellectually Stimulating Teaching: Our Model
Ros O’Leary & David Webster This blog emerges from our roles, as part of the University of Gloucestershire’s Academic Development Unit, working with academic teams to help them reflect on what Intellectually Stimulating Teaching and Academic Challenge might look like for them. While we intend to formalise this material, in a formal academic paper, bloggingContinue reading “Reflections on Academic Challenge and intellectually Stimulating Teaching: Our Model”
De-weaponising Academic Challenge. Let’s lionise Vulnerability, and Leave ‘grit’ to the Self-help Gurus.
Ros O’Leary & David Webster In another post, we will reflect on the pedagogical responses that Higher Education practitioners might make to an atmosphere where ‘challenge’ is suddenly (partly due to a shift in the National Student Survey questions) a hot topic. There is a discourse, which we are seeing more of, related to theContinue reading “De-weaponising Academic Challenge. Let’s lionise Vulnerability, and Leave ‘grit’ to the Self-help Gurus.”
Dave Webster 