We interrupt this blog schedule to bring you some post #lthechat thoughts.
There was a lot of chatter!
Put Wednesdays at 8.00 on Twitter in your calendar. #lthechat is a synchronous discussion around selected learning and teaching in higher education topics. Check out the hashtag #lthechat or the accompanying blog https://lthechat.com/ and Twitter page @lthechat. #lthechat even has its own bird!
Started by Chrissi Neranszi @chrissinerantzi and Sue Beckingham @suebecks in 2014, the discussion has become part of the working week for hundreds of tweeters and I’ve been lucky enough to facilitate a couple of sessions. This weeks followed on from last week’s blogpost Bought to you by the Letter T which reflected on the similarities between Technology and Teaching brought about by our recent restructure at the University of Hull.
The letters TEL (past team) and LTE (current team) are T for technology and T for teaching. This weeks chat looked at using LTE to talk about TEL. Confused? Stay with me…
Warning, May or may not include Technology asked 6 questions:
- Please share your understanding of the term learning design
- Where do aspects of learning design fit in your role?
- Which models, tools, authors, have informed your thinking about LD?
- How have you evaluated the effectiveness of your LD interventions?
- How do you introduce the concept of LD to academics/how would you not talk about it?
- Name one thing you’ll take away from this #lthechat tonight.
With ten minutes on each one, the session kicked off a debate on the phrase ‘learning design’ – an example of the discussions we hoped to generate.
At Hull we’re developing an approach to teaching enhancement which we’ve called Design for Active Learning (D4AL). The approach is based on curriculum alignment; you have the learning outcomes and assessments – D4AL is about the activities students do. Conversations tend to be initially about teaching rather than technology and this chat aimed to provide opportunities for sharing LD/D4AL practices.
With over 800 tweets in total you could say #lthechat is becoming a victim of its own success. While you’re trying to keep up with multiple ‘live’ conversations, and swapping tweets between them, the rest of the chat is continuing. It’s becoming a case of continual catch-up and I’m still working my way through the Storify which can be accessed here https://storify.com/LTHEchat/lthe-chat-no-92
This is where I must say thanks to the ‘behind-the-scenes’ team this semester – Jenny Lewin-Jones @JennyLewinJone Rebecca Sellers @becksell2001 and Scott Turner @scottturneruon without whom the coordination and dissemination of #lthechat would not be possible.
No other hour of the week flies by so fast!
I followed Ale Armellini’s contribution with interest. With the University of Northampton adopting institution wide Active Blended Learning (ABL) there’s much to learn from their approach, outline in this report Overcoming barriers to student engagement with Active Blended Learning and the video explaining ABL to students.
However, it’s rare to find true pedagogical innovation e.g. flipped learning which was in all the media a few years ago is not so different to setting homework or seminar reading. The #lthechat showed is that for everyone who is new to the principles of activity based learning, there are those who’ve been doing it for years
What the chat also revealed was how much good practice is already happening. It’s all out there but often in pockets, but not disseminated outside teaching teams or even sometimes beyond individual practice. The scholarship of teaching and learning in HE remains a niche area with work to be done around the sharing of practice, knowledge and experiences.
Speaking of niches, #lthechat assumes an internet connection and a Twitter account for contributing. All that vital but virtual energy is restricted to the participants who in themselves demonstrate high levels of digital fluency making digital differences in practice another key area to be addressed.
One further question is should academics take courses on LD/D4AL or should teaching teams include LD/D4AL specialists to work in tandem?
As the tweets below indicate, there may be other opportunities to continue the discussions around these topics.
In the meantime, there’ll be another #lthehat next week so don’t forget – tut Wednesdays at 8.00 on Twitter in your calendar.
digital academic 