Good Practice Blog

I began yesterday musing upon the underlying assumptions about the Ivory Tower metaphor: that universities and those who “reside within” are somehow passive, locked away and introverted and that this is a space available to only a chosen few. Perhaps this makes sense as university education was seen, until very recently, as something that a [...]

Reading through a recent book on assessment (the review of which I will post Monday), a strange idea came to me that I want to share with you and hear your thoughts on. It is an idea about the Ivory Tower and what it means. Let me backtrack, I’ve been reading a lot of pedagogical [...]

Yesterday I began a review of Diana Laurillard’s book Rethinking University Teaching: a framework for the effective use of learning technologies.
To read the Part 1 of the review of this book, go here.  It began with her theory of how education works best (especially with regards to undergraduate learning).
Diana Laurillard currently holds the Chair of [...]

Almost everyone agrees that technology for technology’s sake is not a good idea, especially not in the classroom. However, what is a sustained and coherent theory behind what and how you should be truly using technology for with teaching? What is an appropriate framework? For example, what do you do when presented with blogs and [...]

I’m Canadian. I’ve lived all over the world but am tired of moving and I like Sheffield. Why am I telling you this? Well, I think that there are a number of international faculty in the same position as myself:  you reach a point in your career when you are over the initial “settling in” [...]