Structured Creativity

I recently delivered a session on the University’s DELTA (Digitally Enhanced Learning, Teaching and Assessment) Strategy at our SES Department Away Day.

We talked about where the Strategy fits in with the Road to 2030 and Education Strategies, with the main focus on our current approach to Flexible Active Learning.

It was amazing to see the broad spectrum of Active Learning approaches that we use within the department. We discussed areas where we can do even better and established some barriers that we can look to break down. In order to establish any blockers to the implementation of Active Learning, we worked through a “painstorming” activity, where colleagues thought about what learners ‘say’, ‘do’, ‘think’ and ‘feel’, when Active Learning takes place.

The next step is to analyse the ideas we captured, and to make plans for the department’s DELTA strategy for the new year.

Over the last few months, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what really interests me in Higher Education. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with our Degree Apprentices on their Project Units. What has really caught my attention is the process of how the themes for work-based projects are generated. My colleague Dr Vicky Nowak came up with the idea that there should be more of a focus on ‘intrapreneurship’, with the aim of our degree apprentices generating more creative and innovative ideas. Working with Vicky has really sparked my interest in this area, and inspired my journey of discovery into the world of innovation and creativity, particularly within organisations.

One of the highlights of this journey was Vicky’s session using a Design Sprint simulation, where students followed the steps identified by Google, in order to design a solution to a real-world problem. In this case, developing a workplace wellbeing solution.

Students had the opportunity to experience:

• teaming
• divergent and convergent thinking
• root cause analysis
• rapid prototyping
• pitching

Industry expertise was introduced to the session, with Marcia Fernandes from the Association for Accredited Learning providing the latest insights on the topic for our learners. You can read more about the session from Marcia here: https://www.associationforaccreditedlearning.co.uk/260124-2

For the majority of my career to date I have been a secondary school teacher. Since completing my PGCE in 2007 I have held the positions of Head of House, Head of Department and Head of Year. In September this year I was lucky enough to start a new chapter and try my hand at teaching in Higher Education as a University Lecturer.

In this Blog I aim to explore how my existing knowledge and skills have travelled into HE and hopefully also reflect on how my experiences in my new role could shape the role of a school teacher for the better.