My School of MACE colleague and Director of the Project Management Professional Development Programme, Callum Kidd has written this guest post on how context is embedded within the DNA of good professional development programmes. He argues that
“Professional Learning differs from traditional approaches to learning in that it encourages us to reflect on what we already know and understand, framed in a given context. It is the context itself that will determine whether or not our actions are successful, not the ideas or theory. Once we understand the context, we are better placed to critically evaluate those ideas and determine appropriate actions. However context is an ever-changing framework. We need to develop PM professionals that not only understand the context of today, but can plan ahead for the changing context of tomorrow “ Continue reading Context – The DNA of Professional Learning→
Despite improvements in recent years, there is evidence that there remains general dissatisfaction among students in the UK HE sector, with regard to the feedback they
receive (HEFCE 2014). Reasons for this dissatisfaction are diverse and not always clear, despite there being much anecdotal evidence that teaching staff already believe they are meeting students’ needs by providing plenty of feedback.
This project was an exploratory study into student perceptions of formative feedback in two schools from the faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Manchester. The aim was to gain a better understanding of student preferences as to the function, content and mode of delivery of formative feedback. Continue reading Student perspectives on formative feedback: an exploratory comparative study→
Once a year myself and a colleague deliver a session to participants in the New Academic’s Programme at The University of Manchester entitled “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL)”. Our aim in this session is to spark interest in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning as a valuable and legitimate scholarly activity. The slides, which are available in Slideshare here, provide an overview of what SOTL is, how it is similar and yet subtly different to pedagogic research, and tools and techniques for getting started. It is a resource that I wish had been available when I was starting my academic career and I hope it is useful to you as a means of reflecting on and improving your teaching practice in Higher Education today.
Another colleague of mine Professor Andy Gale (@AWGale) has recently reflected on the potential for blogging and microblogging in teaching. Here is a link to the article which includes suggestions for developing good habits in relation to blogging and microblogging ( Potential for blogging and micro blogging in teaching ) I post it here with his permission and hope it may be useful to those of you considering similar changes to your teaching practice . Andy also blogs at andy gale.
In safety-critical organisations such as civil-nuclear and aerospace, managing uncertainty is of particular importance as the consequences of failure can be potentially catastrophic. The challenge facing project managers in these complex, socio-technical environments is how to better understand the sources of project uncertainty and how to navigate a path through them in pursuit of successful project outcomes.
My Exploratory Study, just published in the International Journal of Project Management (Feb 2015), drew on interviews with project management practitioners from several large-scale projects in civil-nuclear and aerospace companies in the United Kingdom to identify four conceptual approaches that may be adopted by project managers to manage project uncertainty.
