In the spirit of the THES #loveHE campaign and also because it is Friday thought a positive post would be appropriate.

The other week I had the most ridiculous week, but came out of it strangely positive and with a renewed appreciation of the benefits of working in HE in the UK.

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Constructive realignment? UK educational development from the outside

Opening keynote from the SEDA conference in Chester was given by David Green from the University of Seattle. David used to work in the UK so gave an interesting perspective on the differences between educational development in the UK and the US.

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Recently was asked to be a guest blogger for Women in Technology and my first blog post is on the lack of women on conference panels. Tried not to rant too much!

JISC e-Pedagogy Experts Meeting: Birmingham, October 2010

I went off to the JISC e-pedagogy experts meeting with a dual hat on, I am on the experts group but was also presenting with the cluster group from our JISC curriculum design project. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I have vowed to give up my tablet for note taking for 16 weeks (stifles sob). This is all in the cause of attempting to be a better note taker, sorry, knowledge gatherer, meeting planner, analyst and generally just make the hours that I spend in meetings more effective. Read the rest of this entry »

Day three is always a short one in order to let everyone get home on a Friday pm. Amazing the travel time of US based attendees, some had spent nearly as much time in the air as I had even though they had travelled half as far. Reckon LA is easier to get to from London than from say upstate CT etc. Read the rest of this entry »

Found day two a bit more difficult to find sessions at first as seemed a lot more technology focused and even the learning and teaching track sessions were around things like interoperability standards etc and the leadership track ones around infrastructure etc. Anyway I persevered and got into the session at 8am to hear more about the ELI initiative around measuring innovation and impact. This is something dear to my heart and was useful to find out more about what they are doing. More questions than answers at this stage but will watch this space. At least jetlag makes getting up for those 8am sessions a breeze. Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Roberts, LSE

Always good to travel thousands of miles to see speakers from your own city

LSE have been using lecture capture for a while, they have a strict policy governing the use of lecture capture Read the rest of this entry »

A Discussion for Current and Prospective Bloggers

Kenneth C. Green - The Campus Computing Project, Scott Jaschik - Inside Higher Ed, Joshua Kim - Dartmouth College, Eric Stoller - Inside Higher Ed

Joshua: Blogging enables you to get ideas out there fast and get good comments back - benefits of crowdsourcing your ideas. Talking to each other in an agile way is important when working with new technology. Read the rest of this entry »

Session about how to support women into IT careers particularly in HE.

www.ncwit.org

About collaboration, understanding academic positions, relationships

Susan E. Metros, Associate Vice Provost/Associate CIO/Professor , University of Southern California What is a nice girl like you doing in IT? Family conflicts for women. U of California research – over 70% of women felt made career sacrifices for family, only about 50% of men. Correlation between childbirth and lack of tenure – don’t have baby until reached tenure. “Trailing spouse” phenomenon – both partners work and one moves universities – what happens to the other one? Flexibility required to support families – both young children and elderly parents as well as relocation packages. If you offer these then better chance of supporting women.

Marilu Goodyear, Chair, Department of Public Administration, University of Kansas. Things helped promote career – leadership programme, support from upper levels of university management; mentoring from other IT women. Designed mentoring programme for women where women met regularly and most have gone on to achieve high roles. Some men complained but then didn’t feel comfortable in collaborative environment that mentored entailed so set up a different programme.

Deborah Keyek-Franssen, Director of Academic Technology , University of Colorado at Boulder. Diversity in IT good for creativity and productivity.

Also presenting on the panel: Kathy Bergsma, Information Security Manager , University of Florida, Tracy Futhey, Vice President & CIO, Duke University, Mairead Martin, Senior Director, Digital Library Technologies, Information Technology Services, The Pennsylvania State University

Mentoring important- be aware of your shadow.

Need more information on why women go into IT, often have diverse backgrounds, don’t know clearly skillsets needed and articulate these clearly enough.

See Educause ebook - http://www.educause.edu/cultivatingcareers for chapter on mentoring.

Fewer women are going into technology careers. Not always aware of complexity of IT careers and the interpersonal skills needed, which women are v good at.

This is not a women’s issue, it is a IT and higher ed issue – should be for everyone! Is title wrong? do we actually separate things out when issue should be of concern for everyone?