Author: Paul Maharg

  • HEA conference, day two, Panel

    Quality was the agenda for the Panel session.  What sort?  Quality based on diversity, of students and institutions was Aaron Porter's answer.  But, he warned, if students are going to be paying more for that experience, there needs to be a better experience.  They can't be expected to be given the same at a higher…

  • HEA conference, day two

    Attended session by Sue Watling on 'Gutenberg to Google: access denied'.  Interesting points on disability and access to digital data — she compared access to physical access, lowered kerbs, etc.  One basic point was that the shift to a Windows GUI was a setback to access because of the visual cues it introduced to the…

  • HEA conference, day one

    Am at the Annual HEA conference, this year being held at the U. of Hertfordshire, de Havilland campus.  On budget day.  Folk are checking the plasmas in the breakout areas, not for the football/tennis results, but to see how bad it will be for education.  Subdued atmosphere, in spite of the blistering weather.  Keynote by…

  • Relax, focus, shoot: the Altman approach to legal education multimedia

    Hugely busy so this is the first post in ages… Recently I was reading a review of a book on Robert Altman, one of my top ten film directors of all time. As an Arts student  in the seventies I was affected by his films more than most others – to this day I’ve never…

  • OER10 Conference

    Spent 2.5 days at the OER10 conference, Clare College, Cambridge.  Fascinating collection of papers and demos.  I was there discussing the UKCLE Simshare, with Patricia McKellar of UKCLE — slides here.  Highlights for me included Tom Browne's session on The Challenge of OER to Academic Practice.  Tom outlined some of the problems that he encountered…

  • JISC Learning & Teaching Experts meeting, Birmingham

    Great meet-up, as always.  Dizzying number of fascinating projects.  The day's slides and resources available here.  Too fast & furious to live blog, too busy taking it all in and applying to my own practice.  Most were not cutting-edge applications, but they were imaginative, carefully-planned implementations of technology that can inspire you to adapt and…

  • Doors and windows: simSHARE – OERs in Simulation Learning Workshop, Cardiff

    Live-blogging bits of this posting re the above workshop, which is part of the dissemination activities of the UKCLE OER project.  For a summary of the day's activities, see here.  Slides for my presentation on why we might want to use sims are up on Slideshare.  There were 20 or so folk present — what…

  • LILAC: Visions of Legal Education

    The panel discussion, chaired by Avrom and responding in part to the film produced by UKCLE, started with useful contributions from Chris Maguire, Melissa Hardee and Roger Burridge.  There were spirited responses from the floor but the debate resolved yet again into an either/or, between versions of the liberal law school and versions of the…

  • Dealing with new technologies in higher education: the analogy of road design

    I guess that, following on from my last rather downbeat posting of 2009, this is a much more upbeat appraisal of what technologies do to/for us.  I cycle pretty regularly to work, and on a variety of bikes — mountain bike, recumbent trike, folder, occasionally my trusty Mercian roadster.  Apart from the occasional bout of…

  • LILAC: Andrew Cook, James Faulconbridge: The firm as a new actor in legal education: implications for lawyers’ identity formation.

    [Again, no access so this is being largely written and uploaded much later]  Their study was funded by the ESRC – analysed the training & education of solicitors, including LPC & GDL and traineeship – the role of the university vis a vis the sociology of the professions.  Interesting on the issue of transnational ‘universities’ hosted…

  • LILAC: Keynote, Aaron Porter.

    Aaron Porter's keynote was good — very fluent, very political (he's vice-president (HE) with the National U. of Students), nicely balanced and with a great last line.  What he said about induction and feedback (re the NSS) was undeniable — Michael Bromby has summarised some of it over on Directions.  I can’t resist joining the…

  • LILAC: Andrew Francis, Hilary Sommerlad: Access to legal work experience — lessons for legal education

    [Not quite live blogging — room had no wireless access…]  Arrived late: too much talk and coffee.  Initial focus was examining students in their second year of an undergraduate law degree.  55.4% had some form of legal work experience; 45.9 of post 92 students had had work experience, compared to 66.4% of pre 92 institution…