Professional Development and Higher Education in the UK

This year's ALT-C conference in Nottingham proved, as usual, a highly engaging conference. The theme, "Beyond Control", generated some very interesting debates around user behaviours and digital literacies, and I was lucky to be present at Dylan Wiliam's stimulating keynote on Tuesday.

Dylan's background in assessment and evidence-informed policy and practice led him to focus on raising achievement in the classroom by creating "learning power environments", drawing on a rich vein of educational research. He looked in detail at the potential afforded by increasingly sophisticated response systems, that are capable of delivering rapid, aggregated, feedback and information on whole-class performance to instructors. He calls these systems "teacher-mediated classroom aggregation technologies". Such systems can help teachers to create excellent conditions for learning, by boosting feedback loops and promoting learner engagement. Dylan emphasised throughout that students' motivation and engagement is essential: "Teachers don't create learning: learners do".

Workshop notes and resources from the session I ran on Wednesday, "Runaway Objects: Preserving Our Digital Belongings", are now available on the Runaway Objects wiki.

I've included the list of proposed research projects compiled by participants, and a bunch of references and resources. Creating an account at the wiki will enable you to edit pages and add your own comments and suggestions for relevant research techniques, "methodologically interesting" projects to check out, and further reading.

The workshop was aimed specially at new researchers. We discussed issues around the proliferation of "digital belongings" (personally meaningful digital artefacts) in our lives, looked at some relevant qualitative / quantitative methods, and brainstormed relevant issues and research approaches. Despite the 9am start-time, we had a good group (with a diverse background in HE, FE and healthcare / social care) and an excellent session. Thanks to everyone for generously contributing your thoughts and ideas!