EDDG review - 24th June 2009

Before reviewing our EDDG meetings , and planning for next academic year, we heard from Katie Lee about opportunities for study/work placements abroad. Katie gave a very interesting overview of the different funded opportunities, which will appear on the blog soon.

We had an interesting review of the discussions over the past year, recognising the diversity of subjects covered. The blog has been very successful, due to Jerry's hard work and encouragement. He was able to let us know how world famous we are with many hits from across the globe. Hopefully we can continue to make links and encourage others to make comments. We hope to create links to the EDDG blog on the intranet home page and website page.

There were several areas identified for future development:
1. Everyone was keen to develop research within FE. We could use a sub-group of EDDG to discuss research, give support to staff undertaking research, and as a forum for disseminating findings. Jerry had been to research day at Stirling focussing on literacies , and this looks like a possible research project. More from Jerry on this shortly.

We will also be involved in a research project on the top 10 most irritating habits of lecturers ! This is being facilitated by FERRN and should be interesting.

2. We discussed how to involve staff more in EDDG meetings and in discussing/developing learning and teaching. It was suggested that perhaps framing topics as questions may entice people to meetings e.g. how to run groups, how to deal with disruptive behaviour.

3. We also discussed more creative approaches to faculty meetings - 'are you losing your faculites ?'
4. There was a general feeling that people in senior positions in the college should be more involved in educational debate. We need to think about how we encourage everyone to be more involved.

This has been a great year, with much more debate around educational issues, and I hope that like me, you feel that we have made some small progress towards making teaching and learning the first priority.

Many thanks to all who came to meetings, sent articles, entered into discussions and shared their practice so willingly.

Karen