Flexible learning

I’m a massive fan of our Teaching & Learning Showcase events – informal, bring-your-own-lunch gatherings with three speakers presenting on a topical issue and plenty of discussions, questions, sharing of ideas and experiences – so I was sad to miss last week’s session on ‘Flexible learning’. I was there in spirit though, and, luckily, one of my colleagues recorded the event – short individual clips are linked from the speakers’ names below.

First up was Richard Frazier, Director of the Food Advanced Training Partnership (Food ATP), who spoke at our July event, ‘Digitally Ready for the Future: Sharing Good Practice’. The Food ATP is a BBSRC-funded initiative to deliver postgraduate-level skills training for the food industry, using a blended learning approach of online delivery coupled with intensive study weeks to provide high-level training for food industry professionals. This approach is designed to allow training to be accessed in a flexible way alongside workplace commitments.

Anupam Nanda spoke about the School of Real Estate & Planning’s flexible/part-time MSc programmes which are modelled on corporate training methods. Courses are based around relatively short periods of intensive study which are reinforced by students’ experience in practice and online training materials.

Last but not least, delegates heard from Kim Watson who heads up a project to design a blended learning framework for Biosciences, and to embed global employability Bioscience skills into the curriculum here at Reading.

Kim and her co-conspirator Tee Nadan have received additional funding from the Digitally Ready project but I won’t say any more about it now, as they will be blogging about their project soon. In the meantime, here is a link to their own blog at http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/bioscience-skills. You can also find out more about the internationalisation aspect of their work on Reading’s Engage in Teaching & Learning blog.

This entry was posted in Dissemination, Meetings & Events and tagged , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *