PACT week 1: Typology of Professional Development Activities

You probably haven’t noticed that Pathway to PhD has been on an unscheduled sabbatical for a number of months now but that’s okay, I won’t take it personally! I recall at the outset of my PhD programme being told that ‘life events’ may get in the way of our studies. Little did I expect the event that would hit me with force on 1 June, 2019….

Fast forward almost 6 months, this week seems like a good opportunity to resume posting activity as it coincides with week 1 of a short course from the National Forum for the enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education that focuses on professional development for all staff who teach in higher education.

So what is the activity? Or homework might be a more familiar term?

We are asked to position professional development (PD) activities that we have undertaken in the past 5 years (and can recall!) into a typology that consists of 4 categories, one of which is accredited and formal, the others all non-accredited and either collaborative, unstructured or structured. As I reflected upon my teaching years that go back to 2004, I was drawn to the formal, established activities I had undertaken in that time eg. workshops, online courses, reading etc. The examples provided for the activity prompted me to think far more broadly in this regard and while the list below is by no means exhaustive, it’s a solid start on the pathway to the development of my professional teaching and learning portfolio.

Accredited and formal: 2019-2023? – PhD in E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning at Lancaster University; 2017/2018 – PG Cert in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh.

Non-accredited and structured: Summer 2018 – Academic writing summer school organised for postgrad students at the University of Edinburgh; 2017/2018 – A variety of MOOCs on Coursera, EdX and FutureLearn platforms including but not limited to Learning to Teach Online, Social Research Methods, Discovering your PhD potential, Learning how to learn, Digital Footprint; 2012/2013 – Carpe Diem short courses on e-moderating and e-tivities organised by my department, 2-day course on setting up an online module using the Carpe Diem approach and learned to use GarageBand for podcasts and QuickTime for videos; 2007 – 2-day professional development workshop organised by my department.

Non-accredited and unstructured: 2017 – Academic Twitter profile set up; WordPress blog set up (this is it!); started following persons and topics of interest on both these platforms; exploration of tools to introduce in my teaching practice for example mentimeter for polls and word clouds, MS Forms for quizzes and not forgetting Evernote and OneNote for organisation and efficiency (well, that’s the idea).

Non-accredited and collaborative: 2019 – Joined a WhatsApp group with two of my colleagues to share items of interest; Ongoing – Coffee with any teaching peer who might be available when I occasionally visit campus, teacher meetings (one per semester); Retweeting items of interest to likeminded individuals.

Goodness, looking at such a list, is it any wonder I want to structure all these development opportunities into a portfolio, identify the gaps and develop a plan to bridge them. Roll on PACT week 2!

Until next time,

Sandra

Featured image courtesy of teachingandlearning.ie