Even better than the real thing? What’s the point of authentic learning?
“Authentic learning is a sham,” an experienced academic colleague tells me. “How can we pretend that what happens in my class, and what happens within a university generally, isn’t real life in some way?
Enhancing student group work
Author: Mick Healey. “This timely and comprehensive report synthesizes key scholarship on group work, resulting in an essential guide for supporting students working in teams in higher education. The report provides staff and academic developers with a nuanced analysis of both the benefits and challenges of group work, as well as strategies for teaching group work skills and integrating teamwork pedagogies across the disciplines. It’s an invaluable resource.” (Jessie L. Moore, Elon University Center for Engaged Learning, United States)
Reimagining the curriculum as social enterprise
Author: Andy Pitchford. Two men with big bushy beards have had a disproportionate impact on my academic career. While I am grateful for their influence, for reasons that I will now explore, I am occasionally troubled by the beards themselves.
Reimagining the curriculum as a circular economy
Author: Andy Pitchford. One of the more depressing moments of my academic career was on a July Friday, in the midst of a long, hot summer sometime in the late 1990s. I had just taken the wrong door out of my department office, having had a very nice chat with the people there which had distracted me somewhat from my morning’s journey.
The modular curriculum – what to do with all the bricks in the wall?
Author: Andy Pitchford. One of the great challenges that face those who work in education is imagining alternatives to the way we currently work. We are all so acculturated to the norms of the education that are promoted by the societies that we inhabit that it can be very difficult to see which aspects of learning are inescapable.
Celebrating Multilingualism at Westminster
Did you know that in 2021/22, there were 350,325 international students pursuing degrees in the UK according to the Higher Education Student Statistics (HESA)? Surprisingly, international students represented 22% of the total student population in the whole country (Universities UK).