I was fortunate this month to spend a few days in Glasgow at a training event on NVivo Qualitative Data Analysis Software. I have been a user of this software for some years, but there is always more to learn. This was a very useful couple of days where I not only learnt more about the capability of the software, but gathered ideas about different ways that it can be used and had the pleasure to meet a number of new colleagues. Another high point in the month was the news of success, with colleagues, on a bid to the Arts and Humanities Research Council to undertake a scoping review under their ‘Connected Communities’ call. Our review will explore the notion of ‘community’ and what it means in the lives of children and young people who are looked after by Local Authorities – there is lots of work to do now on this, but it is an exciting project. My weekends and evenings this month have been largely filled up with working on the indexing for my book on Interprofessional Collaboration in Social Work Practice for Sage Publications. I chose to develop the index myself as a learning opportunity, this being the first time I have undertaken such a task. I have been surprised how time consuming and difficult this has been – I just hope it turns out to be an index that is helpful and useful to readers.
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.
October has had its ups and downs – it has also been a busy month.
On the ‘up’ side, at home, we had a good time celebrating my son’s birthday, these are always precious family times to be enjoyed – so another year older and another year wiser … well maybe! 
On the ‘down’ side, as the University develops and consolidates, there is increasing awareness of the impact of national funding changes (cuts!) to structures and practices in the institution. A key example this month has been the confirmed decision to sell the campus building in Hull. It is pleasing that all current students from the campus will be supported to continue and complete their studies before Hull based activities are consolidated at the main Lincoln campus; however, change always has its challenges. At the same time, nationally students and colleagues are protesting about financial cuts to higher education, the whole picture is very worrying.
I have been pleasantly distracted, however, through my involvement in some interesting research projects that have required a good deal of activity this month. I have been in southern Ireland gathering data, which has involved some really interesting and enjoyable time spent with school children and professionals. The research project I am leading, that is funded by the Social Work and Policy subject centre of the Higher Education Academy, has also ‘taken off’ this month, with the first tranch of data collection with students and key stakeholders; for details of this project click here. My teaching this month has centred around supporting delivery of a doctoral study school and individual work with students completing their final undergraduate independent study work.
