Invitation to join the open course: Creativity for Learning in Higher Education, MMU

This autumn I am mostly joining in with Chrissi Nerantzi's open course: Creativity for Learning in HE. Like everybody else I am much too busy and have so much to do I daren't even think about it all... BUT if I don't make time for this - then what's it all about anyway?

So - I am sharing this invitation with you  whoever you are! And hope that you too will make the time - take the leap - and join us... Come on in... the water's lovely!!

Here's Chrissi's invitation: 

Dear colleagues,

The Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom will be offering the open course Creativity for Learning in Higher Education. I’d like to invite individual colleagues from across the HE sector and groups of colleagues from the same institution and their tutors to join this course as part of their CPD given them the opportunity to spice up their teaching.

We will explore the following themes:

·         Conceptualising creativity in higher education

·         Enablers and barriers of creativity in higher education

·         Learning through play, games, models and stories

·         The role of curiosity and other intrinsic motivations for engagement

·         Developing creative methods and practices

·         Evaluating a pedagogical innovation

This course will be used as a case study for my PhD research in open cross-institutional academic development, with a focus on collaborative learning and I would like to invite learners to participate in this study.

The open course site for Creativity for Learning in HE can be accessed at https://courses.p2pu.org/en/courses/2615/creativity-for-learning-in-higher-education/

The facilitated online part of the course will be offered over 8 weeks starting on the 28th of September 15 until the 20th of November. Participation is flexible and can be fully tailored to personal and professional circumstances and time available. Collaborative learning opportunities will be there as an option for those who wish to learn with others.

I hope this sounds interesting and useful for you and colleagues. Please share this invite with others who might also be interested and access https://courses.p2pu.org/en/courses/2615/content/5638/ to get started and connect with other learners in our online community at  https://plus.google.com/communities/110898703741307769041 Really looking forward to seeing you there.

Please note, ethical approval for this study has been granted by Edinburgh Napier University and further details about the project will be shared with group/course/module/programme leaders who are considering joining us with a group of colleagues.

Thank you for considering this.

Best wishes,

Chrissi (Nerantzi) from CELT, MMU

#ccourses - Leveraging our ‘why’ – reaching out to the #ccourses community

#ccourses has suggested that we ‘leverage our why’ – and Jonathan Worth said we ask others to help with the HOW.

So - HOW?!

We are lecturers in an institution that reaches out into our local communities. Our students are often described as ‘fish out of water’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992),  swimming in educational currents composed of regimes of inspection and the over-riding narratives of assessment, SATs, League Tables, OFSTED, moral panics about plagiarism – and the ‘dumbing down’ of education:

There are Mickey Mouse students for whom Mickey Mouse degrees are quite appropriate (Starkey in Brockes ‘Taking the mick’ The Guardian, [online] 15 January 2003).

They are re-territorialising tricky academic space (Deleuze & Guattari1987/2005) – and do not get an easy ride. More than ever they need to experience connection – engagement – inspiration – creativity and joy…

We’re sustained by our communities (of Practice, of Inquiry, of Engagement): ALDinHE, (#loveld, #studychat) - and #edcmooc, #rhizo14, #ccourses … BUT we know that many staff in HE generally are feeling pretty battered and bruised right now. As with the students, they, too, experience regimes of control and surveillance: targets and strategies; Performance Review; Academic Work Allocation Model. Every hour is mapped and measured and there is no time to ‘be with’ students. Overworked and under-valued, they do not feel trusted – they may not feel trust. How can we celebrate and sustain creative emancipatory practices …in this cold HE climate (Sinfield, Burns and Holley 2003)?

So we are experimenting with Take 5:

http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/epacks/take5/index.html

Take5 includes some tips on:

Role playing and simulations

Creative and visual learning strategies – using:

Drawing, collage, performance, poetry, prose

Object and Inquiry-based learning

Project Based Learning

Real research projects – from the first year

Academic & empowering literacies – with a positive twist!

Using the MOOCs - #edcmooc, #ccourses, #ds106, #rhizo14

Resource and artefact production.

At the moment we are planning to write fortnightly blog posts speaking of things that we have done in our classrooms and our MOOCs – in the hope of seeding conversations and re-engaging people in their own love of teaching and learning.

What do you think?

What should we do next?

Who wants to join in?

Tinkering to Learn #ccourses14

Boom! Another academic year – another load of too much to do and too little time – Soooooo... started another course – #ccourses14! (I have the feeling that *course* is an oxymoron in this context – but that is a good thing!) and for the next few weeks the focus of this blog will be co-learning and the co-creation of knowledge in a connected world.

‘Dear Reader’ alert!

Dear Reader,

If you are completely new to online courses and blogging to learn – don’t be put off by not knowing anyone else on the course yet. It is very easy to make friends in these spaces. The trick is to *like*, *Comment*, *re-tweet* and *favourite* the messages that people start to post on and about the course. This is the way that we touch base with each other and build connections, trust and dialogue. The knowledge emerges and develops through these very connections.

I am lucky because many people that I’ve seen on other happy courses (you know who you are #edcmooc and #rhizo14!!) are here – as are people that I have spotted on the almost mythical #ds106. I am looking forward to co-learning with these peeps.

The course proper starts next week, Monday 15^th September. If you are still in the process of joining – here’s the link to the one-hour video on the blogging part of this connected courses thing: http://connectedcourses.net/thecourse/pre-course/

To RSS Feed

My big first task is to try to connect this blog to the course list – with the appropriate RSS feed. I have never managed that before! I listened to the instructions on adding the RSS feed – and decided immediately to do the simple link this first time, that is, I will *only* cover #ccourses14 in this blog cos if you cover the course in a multi-topic blog the instructions were WAY too complicated for me!

#rhizo14: W3: Embracing Uncertainty

I’m really setting my own curriculum this week - too busy yet to engage with much of the course - except reading a few blogposts - and wrestling with my own version of uncertainty. So we co-developed and hosted ALDinHE’s Look-Make-Learn Visual Transformations in Learning, Teaching and Assessment Conference - and that was us embracing uncertainty. 

I couldn’t quite believe how nervous I was at co-running an event that was supposed to be *fun*… but perhaps that was the point. In these target-driven, league-table-orientated times; the notion of running an event designed to be enjoyable and inspirational – with spaces for participants to set their own goals, define their own learning, take away their own messages…suddenly seemed not only uncertain but quite literally foolhardy. Oh good grief – are we ready for that!!

So on Tuesday 28^th January we transformed our teaching room: tables were covered with sugar paper, there was plasticene, fat colourful felt tips, multi-coloured paper, collage materials – and beautiful golden toffees… The space was joyous, the people willing… the activities engaging (and – dare to say it – jolly good fun) … The day was joyful.

Prof Digby Warren opened the event making a pithy case for the value of the creative arts across the disciplines; to encourage deep inquiry and alternative modes of thinking and being. Pauline Ridley had us drawing on the table – and inspired me all over again with her arguments for visual practices. I especially love the account of the Community Arts Project where the overalls were the embodied Learning Logs – instantaneous and alive – and when mounted on mannequins a bizarre but beautiful exhibition of the learning that had taken place.

Debbie Holley and Phillip Howlett from Anglia Ruskin’s Education Dept. demonstrated a project they ran with trainees science teachers – where they made stop-frame animations of scientific topics… and had us making our own stop-frame animations to boot. I have never before seen so many adults having such meaningful fun with plasticene!

Tom Burns and I (Sandra Sinfield, that’s me) celebrated the cool MOOC learning (you know who you are #edcmooc, #artmooc, #artinquiry, #ds106 – and, yes, #rhizo14) that we’ve embedded in the deleuzian module (oh yes!) Becoming an Educationalist. Fun was hopefully had exploring the role of Collage, Cabinets of curiosities, Memory envelopes, Installations and Digital art - for teaching, learning and as creative research methods – especially when everybody got cutting, sticking, making, doing, looking and learning.

Chris O’Reilly introduced some of his reflective animations before prompting everybody to produce their group animation of the day – and Visual Scribe Raquel Duran in a coup de theatre recorded the whole event on the wall!

But as I’ve said before - those are just words! Check out Chris’s website of the day:

http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/epacks/look_make_learn/ It’s chock full of the animations, the wall art, the voices, resources, PowerPoints and PDFs… and links to a host of pictures that just burst with the energy that was there – and no – that wasn’t a kids’ party – that was what happens when academics do it with colour!

I started the day literally shaking with uncertainty: would there be confusion – revulsion – revolt – hostility? Worse – would there be laughter – derision – shame? I don’t know – may be somewhere there was – but you know what – it looked like a great day – it sounded like a great day – and I experienced an uncertain joy!