My original presentation upon which this and the previous four posts have been based began with an introduction to my own academic, personal, and professional background, and ended by drawing together some of the key themes discussed with reference to these introductory facts. Much of that wouldn’t have translated well to a blog post format …
Category: Notebooks
The Need for Cohesive Educational Communities
The concept of a ‘cohesive educational community’ couldn’t sound more of a painful soundbite if it tried, but when I started to think about what I wanted to discuss in terms of an all-staff-all-student community, it was one of the better phrases I came up with (believe it or not). It’s more than a little …
Challenges for Professional Services Staff: Resilience
“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.” (Terry Pratchett) Working in a Professional Services role can be, amongst many other things, incredibly rewarding. The Higher Education sector is filled with many challenges, but that does not (always) detract from the positive aspects of a job well done and overcoming the latest challenges …
Challenges for Professional Services Staff: Resources
“For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.” (Douglas Adams) It is remarkable, given the current strangulation of resources across the entirety of the Higher Education sector, how little prominence is given to the impact this has on Professional Services staff (and, therefore, the wider staff and student …
Challenges for Professional Services Staff: Language
The political (using the term in the broadest possible sense) environment of Higher Education has changed substantially in the last several years, and there is a great deal of uncertainty about the future of Higher Education Institutions across the UK. This has been most recently demonstrated by the (entirely unsurprising) news that several education providers are …
Twitter Hashtags: Place, People, and the Internet
Back in November, I hosted a Twitter Hour on the subject of #OrkneySupernatural as part of my research into folklore and contemporary expressions of identity relating to Orkney. I chose #OrkneySupernatural (in discussion with my Director of Studies), because it was an example of what is broadly accepted to be an element of folklore, and …