Learning or teaching – where do we begin?

Welcome to the Leicester Learning Institute blog. Over the coming months, members of the LLI and associates will be contributing ideas to inspire deeper thinking about what it is that we do in Higher Education teaching. Our intention with the blog is to provide a regular short input on teaching and learning matters, delivered direct to your inbox – so please do subscribe!

As a group in the LLI, we work collaboratively with you, with students and with partners, to improve the quality of our learning and teaching provision. Our view is that changes in practice can only emerge through dialogue, and this blog is one of the ways you can engage in this conversation. During the Focus On… events in April, our attention was on Lecture Capture (Reflect), Assessment, Pathways and the nature of the Maths Core Curriculum (for A Level students not studying Maths). Our first set of blog posts will draw out the implications of these topics for our teaching practices.

We must acknowledge that we are entering a new phase in Higher Education in this country – the Government’s White Paper opens the doors to many newcomers to the HE marketplace, and sets significant new challenges for existing providers to address, including measurement through the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). What do we think this means for the sector? It is difficult to predict, since the changes promise to be far-reaching, but you may find the WonkHE regular, edited summaries useful in following the debate; the most recent is http://wonkhe.com/blogs/repainting-higher-education-the-he-white-paper-and-bill/.

Institutionally, we are already responding to this changing context. We have a bold Strategic Plan, a new Learning Strategy and other associated strategies, all of which are steering our attention in a new direction. We are generating major new projects, many of which will have direct impact on how our students negotiate their learning and, similarly impact on our teaching. For me, as Director of the LLI, I welcome the opportunities to be more creative with the curriculum and to inject scholarship and research-mindedness into teaching developments. I invite you to join us on this journey.