“Impact” has had a bad press from many working in higher education. To some, the intention to assess the impact of research is a crude infringement of researchers’ freedom to pursue truth, beauty and uncertainty, and as such is likely to corrupt and diminish the value of research. To others, it is yet another example of the sinister marketisation of higher education, where the “public” good is being sidelined in the headlong pursuit of “private” benefit.

However, now that the final panel guidance on the research excellence framework has been published, resistance seems to have melted away. An impact army has been mobilised in universities across the UK as people get to grips with the impact framework and begin to identify and draft their case studies ready for the submission deadline in 2013. In the process, do we risk moving seamlessly from a period of spirited resistance to one of slavish compliance with the new assessment regime?

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The HEA website offers more information on the Fellowship, awarded, in my case, on completion of the PGCLTHE:

Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, University of Winchester
The PGCLTHE is accredited by the Higher Education Authority (HEA), the professional body for higher education in the UK. The programme is built around the notion of reflective practice and offers a framework for reflecting critically on your teaching. It contains opportunities to put your learning into practice and encourages you to take responsibility for linking theoretical ideas about learning to the practical demands of the courses you teach. The PGCLTHE supports the UK Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Supporting Learning in Higher Education published by the HEA. Assignments: Innovation in IT; Reflective Practice; Examining Professional Practice.

Supporting Statement Dr Bex Lewis: 9^th May 2012

Person Specification

I have studied and worked in the HE sector for 18 years, in the position of lecturer for 14 of those, undertaking my first lectures alongside my PhD: ‘The planning, design and reception of British Home Front propaganda posters of the Second World War’. I have worked across a range of disciplines, largely in the Arts and Humanities, including two years with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts at the University of Manchester. I have particular expertise in History and Media Studies, with Education Studies in my first degree informing my continued thinking about learning and teaching. In 2011 I completed the PGCLTHE, and am awaiting confirmation of my HEA Fellowship.

My training as a life coach and mentor has equipped me with a set of skills and theoretical tools about change, encompassing a theory of change stemming from an action research model “that for change to be effective it… must be a participative and collaborative process that involves all those concerned.”[1] I am a regular reader of Times Higher Education, posting relevant story links on Digital Fingerprint since 2009.[2] All of the above has helped me to understand the range of responses to technology among colleagues, and to have credibility as an education developer in the growing field of Technology Enhanced Learning. For more detail check: http://drbexl.co.uk/career/

University of Winchester Community

As outlined in an assignment for the PgCLTHE, I have developed a strong Community of Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning at the University of Winchester,[3] in a role which I have expanded from 0.2 to 0.5. In discussions with Keith Mildenhall, I have recently restructured information on the Learning Network,[4] where we have over 170 participants, which we can redirect people to in other communications. I have developed relationships with staff through committees: Learning & Teaching Committee, Technology Enhanced Learning Working Group, and Learning Network Working Group, one-to-one meetings, and at events including Learning Lunches and L&T Days.[5] In 2010 I initiated a successful pilot of a ‘Drop-In-Day’, which has led to Faculty opportunities this year. I developed and undertook a significant CPD programme focused upon the pedagogic use of e-tools, built for staff, but adapted for students, including sessions through Student Services and an increasing number at programme level (Business, TRS, Art Management MA, Research Supervisors).[6] Sessions given so far have caused a good level of debate and discussion surrounding key issues, and I am regularly contacted by staff regarding technology options, especially the use of blogging for reflective practice assignments. I am working with the LTDU Team to enhance our communications strategy, raising the profile of the work that we are doing, internally and externally.

I continue to teach at an undergraduate level on ‘Manipulating Media’, a media studies module that emerged from TESTA, informing the innovative technology enhanced elements of the course, to positive student feedback. I have led the PGCLTHE module on ‘Innovation in IT’ since 2011, providing a mix of pedagogic theory and practical advice, encouraging staff to use appropriate technologies to enhance their teaching. I have worked with Kris Spellman-Miller and the Student Services team to develop SkillsNet, which allows students of all abilities access to skills materials 24/7. I work within a social constructivist model of learning and teaching, which emphasises participation, collaboration, democratisation, transparency, and student-centred activities. I have a particular interest in ‘the 21^st century learner’, their experience of technology, ensuring that they are equipped with appropriate tools for employability, which requires being at the forefront of technology developments.

The Wider National Community

I have developed a strong external Community of Practice with the e-learning community through social networking and conferences, both efficient ways to gain insight into the latest findings in the sector, but also spaces in which I contribute. I have raised the profile of the University through conference papers at significant E-Learning events, including the Association of Learning Technologists Conference 2011. I have extensive engagement with JISC, with whom I attend workshops, webinars, and was invited to become a member of the JISC Learning & Teaching Experts Group, and to be a regular super-delegate for its international online conferences. I was on the International Review Board for the Plymouth E-Learning Conference 2011.

I have editing rights to 10 Twitter accounts, with a potential reach of 10,000 followers across those accounts, including over 1600 on @digitalfprint, which consists largely of e-learning specialists, as evidenced in research undertaken with Dr David Rush,[7] I am known for my ability to create ‘buzz’ at events, including e-learning conferences, where it can be hard to stand out, and am attempting to do similar for Winchester events.[8] I am the author of a number of blogs, with combined visitor numbers over the past two years of 450,000, attracting invitations to guest blog, and a search for ‘Bex Lewis’ on Google links to my work for at least two pages. My (Winchester) PhD research alone has had over 300,000 visitors, which has drawn attention across the press, including the New York Times, the Independent and the Daily Mail, the BBC and speaker invitations on UCB Media and Premier Christian Media.[9]

In roles beyond the University, I am the Director of Digital Fingerprint, a social media consultancy that works particularly within the HE and Christian sectors, including digital literacy workshops for the Church of England. I run The Big Bible Project for the University of Durham on a contract basis, encouraging ‘bigger Bible conversations’, promoting digital literacy amongst Christians, a project extended to its third year because of the demonstrable impact on the Christian community. I have a growing profile as a speaker, including invitations to speak in Europe, at which my work at the University of Winchester is often mentioned. For more detail see: http://drbexl.co.uk/speaker/.

Funding and Publications

I wrote the bid, and am the project lead on a £10,000 JISC project to promote and embed digital literacies with the group ‘Organisational Development in HE’ (ODHE). I am also the Learning with Technology Specialist responsible for the implementation of programme-wide technology enhancements for assessment and feedback as part of the £190,000 JISC project, FASTECH. Previous funding has included L&T funding for SkillsNet, and co-leadership of the JISC funded BODGIT project with the ODHE which investigated institutional change, with a particular focus upon the issues we were having with the implementation of Wimba.

I have both populist and peer-reviewed publications. Specific to learning and teaching, I have two articles in Capture, a journal article on Twitter in Higher Education in the submission process, and have been commissioned to write a chapter ‘Programming Collaborative Learning’, in Marcus Leaning ‘Exploring Collaborative Learning’ (HEA). For more detail see: http://drbexl.co.uk/writer/

Future Plans

With the continuing interest in ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. I am working on converting my PhD thesis to a monograph, tackling that tricky ‘popular-academic’ text. My time within the LTDU is defined by the JISC projects until 2013, and continuing to develop internal resources, opportunities to share practice, working towards further publication opportunities, and contributing to the teamwork of the LTDU. I am in discussions with Stella McKnight with regards to offering social-media focused CPD to local Winchester businesses, on a consultancy basis. If awarded the Senior Fellowship, I would be happy to do this as a part of this role.

http://www.thesouthernreporter.co.uk/lifestyle/richard-sale-from-somerset-levels-to-arctic-ice-sheets-1-345730

Anyway, drew my attention to this page:

What kind of person writes a book about Arctic wildlife, 18th-century surgery or the byways of Elizabethan poetry? Most of the readers, one might assume, will be within universities, so who will the authors be if not academics? And in general, no doubt, that assumption will be correct. Yet, just as many 19th-century country clerics produced important work on natural history, one can still find examples of “independent scholars” – people unattached to universities who venture more or less knowingly into academic territory.

Take the case of Richard Sale. He studied physics, stayed on to do a PhD and then worked in the nuclear industry until 1996, when he began to focus his efforts on writing and photography. He has now written more than 60 books, the bulk of them travel and walking guides covering fairly familiar territory such as Dorset and the Italian Lake District.

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Writers have differing views of publishers. George Bernard Shaw once famously dismissed them all as “rascals…without being either good businessmen or fine judges of literature. The one service they have done me is to teach me to do without them”. My view of them, as an author of academic books, has generally been very different. I have greatly appreciated my relationships with several publishers and editors over the past 40 years. Almost without exception, they have been friendly, wise and helpful. It has been pleasant, too, to talk about one’s work with people outside the academy, who can bring a refreshing perspective to it. Authorship is a lonely occupation. We need help, encouragement, constructive criticism from people in the “real” world – and the occasional free lunch.

Read full story here.

As birds fly south in the winter, so academics feel an irrational urge to go to conferences where they can exchange knowledge, along with the latest virus to have leapt from chickens to man. Global warming scientists fly around the world to warn others against doing so. Literature professors cross frontiers to talk about trans-nationalism and visit former colonies to discourse on post-colonialism as their rooms are cleaned by low-paid women working for distant corporations.

Young American PhDs talk of hegemonic patriarchalism and go to sleep muttering the names of French theoreticians. Germans lie awake waiting for the verb. Others spring into consciousness, paradoxically remembering that they had forgotten their memory sticks – and this in a country where computer keyboards know nothing of QWERTY, so that urgent messages home arrive as though fresh from an Enigma machine.

I find this saying an interesting one. I’ve done plenty (and still sometimes do) of talks,etc. for free, and others have done similar for me … the return is not ALWAYS financial, but can lead to reputation building which can lead to future work, or just a feeling of buzz for helping someone.

Where possible, however, it’s important to recognise that the ‘worker is worth his hire‘, and ethically to pay where possible…

This thought was triggered by reading an article in @timeshigered on headhunters asking academics to fill in on information (and TV shows will do this with academics also).

o one expects anything comparable to happen now. Most schoolchildren in the UK and the US show – if we admit the facts frankly and interpret the exam results objectively – little appreciation of their opportunities. Typically, they emerge from school with lamentably low standards of literacy and numeracy, and no taste for prolonging intellectually strenuous forms of leisure. If they go on to further educational experiences, they are more likely to choose vocational training than lectures unrewarded, except for the sheer thrill of learning, on the Salian and Hohenstaufen emperors. How did this collapse of educational ambition happen? Why did ordinary people’s appetite for learning ebb? Why did excellent autodidacts disappear?

I’m sure readers will tell me that these changes are the effects of easier, cheaper access to competitive forms of pabulum, drivel, belly-laughs and mundane amusements; or that the fault lies with bad schools; or with a system that denies teachers resources and freedom; or with prevailing consumerism and materialism, which condemn children to share their parents’ and rulers’ dreary values and narrow aspirations. I suspect, however, that the real problem is deeper and more secret – so shocking that we barely dare think it, let alone mention it out loud: maybe the entire project of creating universal, compulsory, free education was misguided. And maybe the destruction of real, heartfelt demand for learning has been one of its consequences.

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You know me, I love my travel, and really think it has contributed much to the person that I am (becoming). ThirdYearAbroad.com is bringing case studies together of the value that studying abroad can have. I think it doesn’t matter what course you’re on, or if you’re past formal study… it’s good to get a different persecutive!

They may have gone on to work as everything from a brand manager at Boots to a human rights activist in Sumatra, a broker for a yacht company in Monaco, a researcher at the Dachau concentration camp memorial site and even an interpreter for the Miss World competition.

Yet all these graduates agree that the skills and confidence they acquired during a year abroad as part of their degree played a crucial role in their subsequent careers.

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In conclusion, the study – titled Academic Leadership: Changing Conceptions, Identities and Experiences in UK Higher Education - offers a series of possible ways forward.

For example, university managers “anxious to encourage high levels of performance” would be best advised to “step back from mechanistic managerial approaches, and to emphasise instead the values associated with academic excellence”.

Other concluding principles include the need to “engage with academics as professionals” instead of as a human resource to be applied in the service of students or “customers”.

Universities are also advised to “safeguard ‘membership’ of the academic community”, a principle that may be at odds with the changing higher education landscape, the study acknowledges. “Competition between universities will become characteristic of the sector, driving attempts by management to emphasise academics’ loyalty to the institution rather than their scholarly disciplines and networks,” it says.

“However, we should reiterate that we found little sense that academics generally identify with their employing institution.

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