6 December 2010 Showcase

Post-event reflection by Professor Paul Bacsich, Sero Consulting and Matic Media

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The following message was received from our consultant, Paul Bacsich. He provided a wrap-up at the end of the Showcase event on 6 December, and this message summarises his thoughts at the time:

"I was very impressed with the quality of the learning interventions presented by our speakers - good examples of "learning design" in action.

Their work was firmly based on their subject expertise but not imprisoned by that - all examples could be applied more generally.

They exemplified the adage that practice makes perfect - polishing the interventions with each iteration of the course. Too often in universities managers expect results right away - some results will take years to be evident. Lord Dearing might have been more right than we thought when he said that change would take a generation.

It also helps that they had stable underlying systems - nothing is worse for lecturers than the IT people changing a key system under their feet.

All the examples could be adapted for use beyond the institution, making them excellent examples for wider dissemination via  Nexus  and at SIG meetings.

A good feature of Aberystwyth University is that it is small enough for innovations to be able to percolate yet large enough that academics can get stimulus from like-minded colleagues.

All in all, excellent work for which I thank the presenters."