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For some months now, I could see from my diary that July 2011 was going to be a very hectic month – it turned out to be more hectic than I could have imagined!  For two weeks of the month I was largely occupied teaching and supporting students through doctoral summer schools, one in Ireland, the other at the Lincoln campus.  These were both busy, but very enjoyable and interesting weeks.  In Ireland the study school was opened by the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, it was an honour to meet him – in his opening speech, Enda Kenny stated that it was a ’unique and special week in education in Mayo and nationally’ and that the study school was ‘creative and innovative’ – you can see the Lincoln teaching team with the Prime Minister in this photo -

As well as the study schools, I also presented, with colleagues at two conferences this month.  The first was the Higher Education Academy’s national conference in Nottingham where we presented on an innovative project to develop and implement our own Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Learning in Higher Educaiton at the University of Lincoln.  The second was the Joint Social Work Education Conference held in Manchester, where we presented on a SWAP (social work and policy subject centre) funded research project to explore students’ experiences of mentoring children and young people looked after by the Local Authority.  These are just some of the areas of work that made July such a busy month – all in all, I felt as though I was hardly at home all month!  So, I am looking forward to a chance to catch up and have some annual leave in August!

I seem to have been doing so much this month that it is hard to know where to start selecting key bits to make a note of here.  Workwise, as usual, a mixture of teaching, research and writing.  I have spent a good part of the month working with colleagues on a research bid to the joint research councils, but will have to keep fingers crossed for several months before we know the outcome.  I have also been pleased to be invited to become involved in an international collaborative research project, which although unfunded at this time will be the focus of some funding bids in coming months. I have spent a good bit of time this month on the analysis work for the Irish evaluative research to support the development of progress and interim reports.

The book that I have written about several times over the last year in this journal was finally submitted in its finished form this month, phew!  It has been a long haul, but a satisfying project to complete.  That being said, it is not really complete as there will be more work to do on copy-editor queries and proofing as the publishing process progresses – the plan is for publication October 2011. In the meantime I have been commissioned to write another book for the same publisher, so need to make a start on planning and writing again! 

I was also pleased this month to have been successful in my application for recognition as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) at Standard Descriptor 3 (SD3) - I have held SD2 for some years, so was pleased to participate in the pilot implementation of the University of Lincoln Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, following the HEA accredition of the institution’s framework earlier in the year. The HEA have now announced a consultation on a review of the recognition scheme, so I hope that the outcome will be that SD3 is given a distinct tier of recognition, rather than being titled ‘Fellow’ alongside SD2, but we shall see. 

At home, one of the highlights of November, was a trip to the grey seal colony at Donna Nook, on the Lincolnshire coast – this is the time of year when the seals come right up close to the shoreline to give birth to their cubs and when we visited, we saw over 1,000 seal cubs – it was amazing.  I felt priviledged to be so close and see so many seals in their natural habitat in the wild – wonderful.  Follow this link to see the photographs and video clips we took on our visit - Seals at Donna Nook.

Finally, I couldn’t make a journal entry for this November without mention of the weather!  I don’t think I can ever remember such cold weather, or the extremes of ice and snow coming so early in the winter. This picture was taken by a colleague and shows the frozen expanse of Brayford water in front of the University.

November has been another productive and busy month.  Many of the strategic aspects of my work have been making visible progress this month, for example the revision of the Faculty Teaching, Learning and Assessment implementation plan for 2009-10 is now being prepared as a final draft for consultation.  Additionally I have worked closely with colleagues to progress our institutional application for Higher Education Academy accredition of our professional development framework for academics.  I have also been busy working with part-time undergraduate students, teaching, assessing and marking work throughout the month.

A particular highlight this month was signing a book contract for a new text with the publishers Learning Matters, a book that will be co-authored with and led by my colleague Ian Mathews.  We both have a strong interest in the use of knowledge and evidence in professional practice and this will form the subject matter for this book.  The photo below was taken when the publishers commissioning editor came to the University to meet with myself and other colleagues who have authored texts for them. 

I am third from the left in this photograph with colleagues who have also written for the publisher Learning Matters