...one's labours bear fruit?The Vancouver conference was one such. Amidst the chaos of a messy summer, I slogged away at my paper which was itself a fruit from a seed planted many years ago by the late David Lochhead's writings. I was still polishing it the day before I left, and by the time I got to the David Lochhead Memorial Symposium, I had it at my fingertips. I was surrounded by people whose names I know, and whose work I admire, people who had known and worked with Lochhead and in whose company I was overawed. It was especially wonderful to meet David's wife, herself a fine theologian and philosopher, and a formidably intelligent and delightful woman.
The conference was very much a working meeting, and the second day included seven substantial papers, or which mine was the last. People were tired and had worked very hard all day, and I was certain that the bad luck of having the last slot would make it impossible to get across the excitement of my findings. Leaving my pages on the desk, I delivered the paper substantially without the notes, engaging with the audience and using the slides to deliver the factual content as well as illustrations. It worked, and how! They laughed, engaged, sat up in their chairs and joined in, and it was all over in a blur of merriment. Delegate after delegate mentioned how much they enjoyed it, and as a direct result of the performance (for such is any conference presentation), there may be the possibility of future collaboration with some of the people there. If you want to see for yourself how it went, the conference archive is at http://www.virtualtheology.info , where you'll find the text of several of the papers and podcasts of all of them as well as a slide show of the event. Dr Gary Kush put a huge amount of effort into recording the conference and making it available online, and his own paper on accounting and QA in developing online courses has already provided some invaluable insights for work I'm doing here in the UK.
Meanwhile, over the summer and at the start of term, I put into place a more rigorous academic tracking system at work. Our modular courses have given us a few headaches because we don't always have records of students' modules, results or plans. This term, after producing some appropriate paperwork, I interviewed every student before the start of term and made sure that all our records were up to date. I'm accustomed to being on the receiving end of some tart comments from the administrator at the university, so when she rang to discuss students' records, I waited for it to start. She asked me if I knew what students had done, and what they were planning for the next year... and I was able to answer confidently for every student. For once, I knew more than she did. I corrected a number of errors on the university's records and gave a full account for every student registered with us. For the first time since I started, I had all the information I needed at my fingertips. That particular fruit was sweet indeed.
Finally, back to my research. Seven years of postgrad research and 18 months of undergrad project work before that has given me some accumulated expertise in my field. As a result of my discussions in Canada, I decided to set up some work with my students that used the insights gained to develop new ways of delivering courses.
I have a trial running now using a combination of web-based virtual learning environment (VLE), MSN and web resources, and on Friday my boss asked if I'd like to explore the possibility of developing this in a more focused way to draw in some church funding. Whilst this kind of diversified approach to delivery is qute widespread in the US and Canada, it is less so here in the UK, and my experience and expertise have now become valauable assets to develop and exploit. It's all good for my ego and career, and it's something I love doing: combining my role as educator with innovation in pedagogy and technology. It feels as if all that work is finally paying off, not only financially, but because I'm doing what I enjoy most as part of my job.
Tomorrow is bonfire night, and I stop being an educator and tutor for 24 hours to be Mum. We have sausages and buns in abundance, parkin for afterwards, and an awesome load of fireworks including some pretty big rockets
. We've always had our own fireworks in the garden, and traditionally the catherine wheels always either fail or set fire to something. For the last three years, it's also been tinged with sadness for me: the baby I lost to miscarriage was due on 5th November that year, and I now always light a sparkler to remember the child who would have been celebrating her third birthday this year.(photos linked from:
Vancouver School of Theology - http://www.vst.edu/about/images/IonaAbout.jpg
Sparkler - http://www.chemistryland.com/CHM107Lab/SafetyTutorial1/sparkler.jpg)
