Personal Blogs

One of the concerns of strikers at traditional universities is that if we lose the battle for secure pensions, the employers will seize the opportunity to break the union and its national pay bargaining power. They will look to employ people on casual contracts instead of offering permanent work with proper benefits like ... pensions. 

As the UCU have been arguing for a long time, universities are already riddled with poor casual work practice. Research in particular is sustained by low paid insecurely contracted staff (see this blogpost). One tweet during the strike mentioned a passer-by's incredulity when it was explained to him that a group of science researchers looking into cures for a range of devastating illnesses were all employed on low paid insecure contracts. 

Teaching is not far behind, with postgraduate students scrabbling for hourly paid work, even though this only pays for the actual hour they are with students, not for any of the substantial preparation time needed. We are supposed to be gearing students up for better jobs - while on immiserating contracts ourselves. 

As so often, the Open University is well ahead of the curve here. Our teaching has historically been delivered on short term contracts, which have only gradually had some working rights attached to them. Our contracts are 'casualised' rather than casual. It looks like things may get better for us, but for the sake of those in traditional universities who wonder what casualised work might mean, I will explain. (NB teaching at the Open University is unlike that in traditional universities. A permanent academic team put together teaching materials with a highly qualified but casualised set of Associate Lecturers supporting student engagement through blended learning.) 

It is very difficult to deliver high quality teaching on a casual contract, and next to impossible to do this if you have to write the lectures as well. I have done that too - staying up til 3 am to write a lecture which I would deliver the next day, unable to give the students reading material until the day of the lecture because I was writing it the night before. Then the following year throwing all those lectures in the bin and writing a fresh set on a completely different subject. I wasn't needed to deliver the first set of lectures any more, but had found yet another short term contract to do something else which I always hoped would turn into a secure job. Every contract ended in praise and congratulations, never in secure work. It took me a long time to realise that for that, I ought to have spent as little time as possible on my teaching (or the public policy research I was also doing) and focussed on polishing abstruse research publications. 

Recently things at the Open University have improved. Previously, I used to get a redundancy notice a few months before teaching was due to start, followed by a surreptitious email from line managers telling me in vague legally restricted phrases not to worry too much. A couple of weeks before the allocation of student groups, I would suddenly get definite confirmation that I had the work.

One year I was hurriedly phoned up and verbally appointed two weeks before the start of a postgraduate module. I had to learn all the materials myself as quickly as I could, keeping just ahead of the students and constantly asking supportive colleagues (who were not paid for the kind help they gave me) 'stupid' questions about the assignments so as to be prepared to explain them to the students. I did not know if I would still be wanted the next year, so it was hard to motivate myself and carry on working on that module once the teaching had finished. 

I have colleagues who take on temporary management contracts in hopes of getting into a more permanent position via that route. They can't let their teaching go in case the management post doesn't become permanent. They are working themselves into the ground, but can hardly be expected to deliver as effectively on the quadruple hours they are having to put in. 

Even as I write this post, I'm thinking I want to do two big loads of marking work I have got in hand, check over my slides for a tutorial I'm giving on Monday - but that maybe I should prioritise applying for a new teaching contract which has just been advertised. It's not in an area I particularly want to teach, but I can't afford not to try for it. 

The National Director of Relate Cymru recently appealed to Welsh Government to review support for children's mental health. He linked rising demand for mental health support from children and young people to difficult family lives. The effect on my own family of my stressful contractual situation has been very severe. We lived for a long time with a sense of impending doom, fearing that at very short notice our means of living could be almost entirely snatched away. Ironically (yes, my teaching is so full of irony that I ought to set up a laundry!), my module materials include a film about people accessing a food bank near my home - which I have sometimes thought I might have to go and get food from myself. 

I did say the Open University is often ahead of the curve. They have been in negotiations for ten years to move Associate Lecturers like myself onto permanent contracts. These negotiations had foundered, and when he arrived at the university our Vice Chancellor Peter Horrocks made them a priority. As well as negotiating over pensions, the Open University union branch and the university have continued to work on this as well as other major issues of employment and working conditions. The last announcement was that they still hope we will get our permanent contracts this summer. 

This may be a Pyrrhic victory. Proposals are being put forward to slash our contact hours with students and restrict us to giving them written marking feedback. More on why the union and ourselves feel this would spell the end of the Open University soon. First I want to talk about support staff and the way we in the Open University work as a team to deliver student learning. And before that, I thought I would talk about why this could be the best job in the world. 

In my previous blogpost I began listing some of the problems which face academics - as well as being asked to swap a 24 carat secure pension for a chocolate teapot because a) USS can't do sums properly and only a few years after assuring us it was very secure, have found a huge hole in it, or b) USS can't do sums properly and failed to predict there would be this huge hole only a few years ago.

Here I look at some life-work (im)balance issues in academic work. Next I'll give a quick overview of 'neo-liberalism' in education, before looking at casualisation and how this undermines academic performance. 

Universities risk their reputations by failing to value teaching staff. This FT article pointed to the business case for treating staff properly. It identified poor pay as well as poor working conditions as problems, and expressed no surprise that when our pensions came under attack, we finally walked out on strike. 

(On UCU Facebook page.) 

One estimate shows 40 million hours of public work contributed by UK university staff in 2015/16. 

(From twitter post)

This willingness to contribute freely to society is worth noting, given that academic pay has persistently slipped in real terms over the years. Academics are not in the business for the money. 

The figures here don't include the overtime teaching and research which staff routinely put in. (Support staff too, I bet.) People sometimes ask me, "Why do you do a part-time job, Anita? A part-time job is full time hours on part time pay." I say: "Yes, but a full-time job is time and a half. I can juggle full time hours and being a mum, but not time and a half." Full time teaching and research staff routinely work 60, 70 or 80 hour weeks - stumbling home late and exhausted. 

In this blogpost, an early career researcher talks about the debilitating culture of over-work and the impact she sees it have on herself and her colleagues. This can be particularly damaging in early career contracts of the kind Grace Krause is working on. Typically short-term and aimed at conducting a project as cheaply as possible instead of supporting junior academic staff into a career, these are desperately sought after by PhD students anxious to get onto the jobs ladder in universities. Grace describes how she was brow-beaten into accepting lower pay for work she had already done when the budget on the project she was working on proved not to have been properly costed. 

My first job after my PhD was on a one year research project funded on a small grants scheme by the Economic and Social Research Council - which was aimed at kick-starting research in new fields. I travelled the length and breadth of the United Kingdom to conduct interviews with a highly vulnerable community with whom I also had to secure trust and access (in just one year). In order to squeeze my salary out of the tiny budget, I was first put on a six month 'probation' so that I could be paid below the required legal amount. Desperate to get this highly regarded work onto my CV, I ended the project in considerable debt. There was no time to write follow-up applications and continue the work after the project, while also making sure I delivered it effectively and so it has sat on my CV in splendid isolation ever since. 

It seems we are no longer human beings, deserving of quality of life either at work or at home. We are not expected to want time to spend with family, friends - or on the public work we contribute willingly.

I am a School Governor. An expert on education and social inclusion, I want to put myself forward to be a Governor at more schools, in deprived areas which struggle to get people onto the Board. But even though I have a part-time job, I have no time to do this. 

I am really envious of the teachers at my school when the Head reports back on the training and support they get: INSET days to come together and discuss how to teach well, secondments to work with government on developing partnership programmes with other schools to disseminate best practice. If they are ill, a supply teacher is found to take their classes. Does anyone wonder why there are no 'supply' lecturers? If there is a system for colleagues to take over lectures when we are absolutely unable to get in to give them, it's an informal one between colleagues. We are made to feel guilty if we can't stagger in to sneeze and cough germs over our students. I have heard women uneasily boasting that they gave lectures with a sick child in a pushchair alongside them. That is not bad parenting - it's inhumane employer pressure and lack of management. How are they hoist on their own petard, if managers were in the habit of employing hourly paid lecturers to come in when permanent staff were ill - they might have been able to use them in this strike! 

One of the most fiercely protested parts of the proposal which came out of the ACAS talks between UCU and UUK was that, in return for lower paid junior staff not having strike pay deducted, staff might consider re-scheduling lectures which had been missed in the strike - without being paid ourselves. Some respondents were clearly close to breaking point as they wrote demanding how they could be expected to squeeze these into lecture schedules densely packed with contact hour teaching. The inclusion of this suggestion demonstrates how far removed the employers are from the intense overload of work at the teaching coalface. 

Academic staff are like parts in a machine, uneasily made to feel we are replaceable. If we won't work the insane hours which have become normal, our colleague in the next office will overtake us on the fast track. Someone-else can be found - new, eager to show willing - and slotted in to deliver. A neo-liberal system pits us against each other, working us into the ground for short-term outcomes in teaching or research. As academics, we continue to struggle to provide education and research dissemination in many ways outside the classroom. Very few of us ever bought into the neo-liberal approach to education. We know that education - whether developed through lecturing or research - is a 'good' that is more valuable when it's not being sold. 

(From twitter post: https://twitter.com/DrAdrianBlau/status/968830454563557377)

In the upcoming weeks, I and my colleagues in the Universities and Colleges Union will be striking for the right to a fair pension. Proposals are being put forward which ask us to put far more personal contributions into our pensions, and to invest that money in much riskier funds.

The Universities Superannuation Scheme, the universities as employers and the Union have been unable to come to an agreement and although the Union has offered to go to ACAS to resolve the matter, the other parties are not willing to do this. I believe that the government should intervene. Working in Higher Education, we are public sector workers. We provide the education support for the skilled workforce in the UK today. Many people we depend on in society: lawyers, doctors, physiotherapists, even MPs, have been trained by those of us working in universities. 

I call on my students who are affected, to write to their MPs - and here in Wales, their Assembly Members too - and ask for support in this matter. 

I see that the situation is not easy for any of these parties, but it is grossly unfair for Higher Education staff to have to bear the brunt of decisions about our pensions being made without our consent and against our interests. We have already seen our salaries sink dramatically in real terms as against other professionals, and a secure pension in our old age is not much to ask in return for the dedicated support we provide to our students. 

We are all reluctant to see an impact on our students, and I feel particularly unhappy about any effect my action might have in the Open University, where students are often from more deprived socio-economic backgrounds, lacking self-confidence and anxious about doing degree level studies. However I feel very strongly about pension rights. We have already seen large private pension funds like the ones for Tata Steel Workers run into difficulties, and I am highly concerned that our pension - which until a couple of years ago was regarded as a very desirable pension package to be part of - appears to be in sudden danger of going aground. 

The USS is in such difficulties that it has been hitting the front page of the Financial Times, where writers have pointed to the way that the value of its investments have sunk after these were taken over by an in-house team, instead of out-house fund managers. That we should be asked to continue to trust a team which has already made less successful investment decisions, who are proposing an even riskier investment strategy, is deeply worrying.

I have also heard it said that some of these investment changes were made because of recommendations by the Pensions Regulator. If this is the case, government has a duty to explain to us why this was done. 

The universities as employers say they won't be able to make up contributions for us into the fund. Some of us suspect this strike is also being viewed as an opportunity by hawkish employers to break the union, and get rid of national pay scales. This means of reducing costs of university fees by introducing cheaper, local and perhaps casual contracts for lecturing staff will only end in poor quality degrees in UK universities. There is already a motion in parliament calling attention to the significant problems for academic staff caused by zero hour and casualised contracts in universities. This situation should be looked at to improve our working conditions, and therefore the quality of teaching we can offer, not to worsen them. 

Universities are in a tough place. Brexit has meant not only that we lost access to European research funding, but also to many European students who used to come to study in the UK. The call for lower tuition fees does not take into account that those fees don't even now cover the full costs of delivering a good quality degree. (NB It's having to borrow for maintenance costs that puts student debt up so high, not tuition fees.) Universities have tried to square the circle by supplementing domestic student fees with higher overseas student fees, but crackdowns on immigration have always made this difficult. 

I have a very small pension myself. For the whole of my working life, I have been on fixed term and casualised contracts, and much of my life I have been a mum on part-time work. I am still working on a set of small contracts, with a variable income and a child to support. Losing strike pay will hit me hard, so you can see how seriously I take this issue.

My small pension is vitally important in securing decent provision for me as I get older. However if I am asked to contribute much more into it, I will have to cease paying into a workplace pension. I am already struggling to keep my daughter in decent school shoes, while maintaining and replacing my own computing equipment - absolutely necessary in order to do my job - and keeping up many other necessities of life. Like many women, my pension is going to go down the list of priorities if the price of it rises much further, even though I value the additional contributions made into my pension fund by my employer. 

Employer contributions to a pension will be of no use if the pension fund is invested in something so risky that I never get it in the end. 

If others like myself lose confidence and pull out of the USS, it will fail as a pension fund. 

This will be catastrophic not only for those in Higher Education who depend on that fund, but for confidence in the pensions industry. We all need a pension to support us in our old age and successive governments are increasingly anxious about those of us (many women) who have not been able to take out a private or workplace pension to support ourselves as we get older. 

For that reason too, I would call on the government to look very closely at this situation, and make sure that we in Higher Education get our fair rights to a decent pension, which we work so hard towards. 

In last week's Unit of studies, my postgraduate students (EE814: Addressing inequality and difference in educational practice) were offered a reading by Bree Picower (2009) which for me is axiomatic in our studies.

Picower's article describes a study undertaken with white student teachers doing an anti-racism course. These students were uncomfortable on the course, constantly defending themselves against its anti-racist thinking. They were unwilling to view themselves as being in a position of power over others, to admit they might sometimes act in a way which asserted their normality as against others' difference. They could not get to grips with what thinkers on identity often refer to as an 'invisible' or 'unmarked' privilege.

In line with thinkers on critical race theory like bell hooks and Gloria Ladson-Billings in the States, and David Gillborn in Britain, Picower suggests the teachers relied on 'tools of Whiteness'. She argues that they didn't just passively resist the idea that they may be part of a White supremacy. They actively protected hegemonic social narratives about race identity.

Picower is a tough read for anyone who wants to tackle issues of inequality in education. It's dispiriting to think that it might be that hard for liberal teachers to understand how racism is inbuilt, not only into our systems ('discourse') but into many ways in which we interact with each other - and therefore between teacher and pupil. But Picower rings important bells for me; not on issues of racism, in terms of the struggle I had with the main equality issue on which I am in a position of strength and power: social class.

Drawing on the Hegelian concept of the Master/Slave, standpoint feminists highlight an unfortunate paradox in gender politics. Hegel suggested that the 'Master' has power, so he (everyone in Hegel is 'he') doesn't need to know anything about the 'Slave'. However the Slave needs knowledge not only of his own condition, he must also understand the Master so as to service him.

Standpoint feminists argue that men have power, so they lack knowledge of how gender politics is enacted. Only women have the knowledge with which to set up an egalitarian, non-sexist way of working. (But we have no power to do this.)

Dorothy Smith, seminal standpoint feminist thinker:

On most issues of identity, I have plenty of 'knowledge' However I come from an intellectual upper class background. I have an accent that can cut crystal (I try to soften it in tutorials!), I can talk about fine wines, high art and where to get a brace of grouse (pronounced 'grice' ).

It took me a long time to understand that it is not right nor fair to casually talk about these things in a way which makes people around me feel about two inches tall. (Except young bar tenders who attempt to put ice in my whisky ) It was hard to face up to the fact that I do it without even thinking about it, and that instead of pretending I can't help it, I must think about it and not do it.

That was my Picower moment. It didn't come in a moment, but slowly and painfully. I didn't want to admit that I had sometimes made shop assistants wince and cry just with a look - but in order to stop doing it, I had to learn to see the invisible 'tools of class prejudice', and realise that I am an unmarked expert at using them to take other people down

(NB Thanks to Gill Duncan, for finding a newer and highly relevant article by Picower - 2013.)

Reference

Bree Picower (2009) 'The unexamined Whiteness of teaching: how White teachers maintain and enact dominant racial ideologies', in Race Ethnicity and Education, 12:2, 197-215, DOI: 10.1080/13613320902995475

Bree Picower (2013) 'You can't change what you don't see: Developing New Teachers’ Political Understanding of Education.' in Journal of Transformative Education. 11(3) 170-189, DOI: 10.1177/1541344613502395

As the holiday season approaches, students come to one of two realisations - usually one after the other:

1. Hey, it's the holidays! I can catch up on my studies while relaxing over a plate of mince pies;
2. OMG! I've only done half my shopping, how will I get my work sorted in time for the holiday - never mind all this reading I'm meant to do for my studies!!!

I know this, because those are the thoughts which went through my mind.

('Tis the season for coughs, colds and flu too - so many students are also having to take time out to recuperate.)

Dreadfully behind on my own studies - as revealed in my previous blogpost - I panicked and began to think I should defer til next year However I did the following things and now I am happy to announce that I'm back on track (and have done all my shopping )

1 - Get back on the website.

It doesn't matter what you do to get back on. You can post in the Forum to say 'I'm so behind! Anyone-else feeling worried?' You can just watch one of the videos or read one webpage. Don't look at the dates and start worrying about how far behind you are. Get yourself back on your Study Calendar so that you feel like you are back in the saddle again.

2 - Look at the dates

Strong cup of tea in hand, have a cautious look at where you actually are. You may not be as far behind as you fear. (Being one or two weeks behind is very common, BTW.)

Don't keep your worries to yourself. Have a chat with Student Support Team or your Tutor. Talk to your study buddies on the module Forums, Whatsapp or (if you must!) Facebook groups. Get support and advice. In particular, ask the Tutor if they have an overview of that part of the module - can they give you a steer about the upcoming work. Is there a week where not so much is expected of you? Are there parts you could skim over? Which exercises are essential?

4 - Ask for a one to one support session

If you need help, the university can sometimes pay your tutor (or another tutor, if your tutor can't provide this) to give you an extra support session. If you are feeling worried, ask about this. If you don't ask, you won't get! And it would be far better for you to have a little extra support, than drop out of the module - and perhaps your whole degree

5 - Read to write

There is far too much knowledge in the world for anyone to cover all of. Therefore, grownup academics do what we call "read to write". We only read what we need to, in order to write our article or book chapter.

Look at the upcoming assignment question. See if the Student Notes have guidance on essential material you should cover. Focus on reading that, and skim the rest.

You're probably enjoying your studies, and reluctant to skip over parts of it. However remember that you can access your module website for a couple of years after you finish, so you can go back to bits you missed when you have caught up and passed the module.

(If you have to do this, make sure you keep up on any study skills exercises supporting your developing academic skills.)

6 - Remember: If a job's worth doing ...

it's worth doing badly.

Sometimes we just have to take five on part of a task in order to get the whole thing done.

Get something written, submit what you can, ask for an extension or find out if any of the assignments on your module are 'substitutable' (means you can still get a few marks for them). You may not get the Distinction grade of your dreams, but you will have practised writing the assignment as you were meant to, and you will get good feedback to build on for the next piece of work. You may surprise yourself. Don't throw away 'good enough' just because you wanted 'practically perfect in every way'.

7 - have rest, and eat nice things.

When we are tired and stressed we work more slowly and get more anxious, so keep well rested. You don't have to eat chocolate - but I often find it helps

In my previous blogpost, I proudly set out what I called my 'project life balance plan'. Naturally, this attracted the attentions of the Gods and Goddesses, who promptly threw the divine equivalent of poo at it

• I had planned for two loads of marking, I managed to acquire a third load.
• I noted the workshop I had to attend, but forgot about the five loads of laundry I would have to rush through in order to ensure that my child had enough shirts and PE kit for school the following week, as I would not be there over the weekend to do this.
• One of our cats went AWOL , and turned up at 5.30 am the day before I left for Glasgow (After I had spent hours sticking up posters round the neighbourhood - of course.)
• The workshop didn't quite go as I had thought it would , in fact it took me about a week to recover from it and figure out how to write up the notes
• And there was a family emergency which led to me having to spend the afternoon driving to a nearby city, then back in the middle of rush hour - narrowly missing a three car pile-up off the motorway and screeching into my personal parking space with just 10 minutes to go before the first of the two tutorials I had to teach that night was due to start

In fact, this part of my plan originally looked like this:

And now it looks more like this:

Yes - time for working through the second block of materials and preparing TMA02 (which we are supposed to share in draft form with our fellow students) has been severely truncated.

At this time of year, I keep a sharp eye out and circulate my students gently enquiring if they might be a little more behind in their studies than they would ideally like to be? They usually say: "Yes, but there is the Christmas break coming ..."

I know that in spite of their good intentions, they are very unlikely to switch off Mariah Carey or It's a Wonderful Life, and log in to their study calendar. I suggest we do a session identifying what they could skim and what they really need to concentrate on, then they can have a break - and start the New Year all set up and ready to go.

I'm not sure I can skim any of my own study materials  I get the impression most of it involves going online and sharing my ideas with my fellow students. Plus, in my own TMA01, I didn't properly define one of the key terms (stop laughing DD103 students! ), and now I'm going to have to scrap my intended project and write a whole new one.

So-o-o, I am at that crunch point which many of my own students are at: Withdraw, Defer, Stagger on?

I'm not going to give up on this thing. I enjoy it too much! I might have to defer, if any more divine poo hits my plans. I will give it a good go first, though

First thing to do, is sign onto the Study Calendar and check out how far behind I actually am I put this off for a while, but eventually I get my courage up with one of the mince pies a student brought to yesterday's tutorial. (Yes, that is how messy it is round here - sometimes it's a choice between studying and tidying.)

Phew! that's not so bad. I do have to tidy round now, so the kiddo and I can put up our Christmas decorations some time before Easter. But if I can get a couple of hours in tomorrow morning and some time on my 'day off', I might get back on board in time

(If I struggle, I'll have a good chat with Student Support before making any final decisions.)

Golly, I feel like a real student today!

Not because I sneaked up early to read an article for my studies, and have managed to cram in an hour or so's studying with one eye on the bedroom door of my torpidly slumbering teenager, the other on the clock so I get onto cooking Sunday lunch in good time and a third eye on the Student Forums in case any new students are posting and I can chat with them (All new parents develop this useful body part shortly after maternity/paternity leave expires )

Today's exercise in the Study Calendar involved posting on OpenStudio. My own students can have a go at this if they want, but I have eschewed it til now because

1. There is no time/payment allocated for it in my contract, and I am working overtime as it is;
   
2. It looks like a clunky Instagram, I couldn't see why the students couldn't use Instagram instead.
   

However it is a compulsory part of my own module so I must get on with it. (I can see really that it's helpful to have a dedicated and protected web space in which we can explore doing this stuff, rather than being let loose in the wonderful world of Instagram. Anyway, my daughter has forbiden me to join Instagram and said she won't Friend me on it if I do - makes me wonder ...)

Another reason I don't like OpenStudio, is that as soon as you open it you see a sad face and it says you have 0% participation. Well, like - I just got here! Give me a chance! I can't participate, anyway, because in a bid to get ahead before my own students start handing in assignments I need to mark for them, I have raced ahead on my own module and nobody else has posted anything on OpenStudio I can participate in. So! Yah boo

Honestly, I just felt like shutting it down and going away again as I wasn't sure where to post my material or what to call it, whether I was allowed to create a new 'set' or what.

However, I suddenly remembered - I am a student I am not the all-knowing Tutor who is supposed to know everything about life, the university and everything (42, in case you were wondering - Adams, 1979). I can get it all wrong, post material by mistake in the completely wrong box, and my all-knowing Tutor will go in and put it right. She will probably even send me a soothing message saying "Great work, good to see you getting on with things in good time, by the way - you shouldn't put your work in that box, you should put it in this one."

And I will have learnt how to do it properly. After all, that's what being a student is - learning stuff. As I often say to my own students, the post-postgraduate module ZZ999 I am Already Perfect has not been written yet.

PS, I let my daughter go on Instagram without my supervision because adult friends of mine are Friends or Followers or whatever of hers on there, and I will hear about it almost before it happens if she is getting into any trouble on there.

Reference:

Adams, D. (1979). The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Pan Books.

As I progress my Masters' studies (see my student blog), I have not forgotten my Welsh I mean ... I have forgotten quite a lot of what I learned, but I have not forgotten to keep learning. Little by little, it starts to stick in my mind - as long as I practise.

I started on the OU's free course Discovering Wales and Welsh. I keep my Welsh up by listening to Learn Welsh with Will videos while I make the packed lunch and breakfast in the morning. The side benefit of this is, my daughter can see me learning.

The main reason most children in Wales resist learning Welsh (which they are obliged to do by law), is that their parents, and also peers, are openly scornful of them having to do so.

I want my daughter to be positive about learning Welsh because:

1. She will have to do a GCSE in it anyway, so she might as well do her best at it.
   
2. It's good practice for her other GCSEs, to do the one in Welsh.
   
3. Welsh is a fascinating and beautiful language.
   
4. It's spoken all round us, and so it's easy to practise it - one of the most important things in learning well, and especially in learning a language.
   
5. It's good to learn any language, as this encourages your brain in maths and logic processes. One that is markedly different from English, like Welsh or Latin or Mandarin, is particularly good for stretching your brain rather than something only a bit different like French.
   

_{(By UnknownVector graphics by Tobias Jakobs - Open Clipart Library, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=355609)}

When I was a kid, my mum stood up in school and asked why we were not able to learn Latin, and as a consequence I got to study Latin at O level. I have really enjoyed knowing a smattering of Latin. I have a better chance of eventually speaking Welsh properly, as it's hard to find someone to converse with in Latin.

I practise with the waitresses in my local cafe, and also with a friend on Facebook. (I know that if you chat about your studies outside class, you are likely to do better.) I am proud to announce I have been able to sustain a conversation in Welsh on Facebook (partly with the use of Google translate).

• My friend posted: "How are you today?" in Welsh
  
• Me: Gwych! Mae'n braf heddiw in Cymru. (Great! It's fine today in Wales. Luckily I had just done the video on 'weather'.) 
• My friend's friend posted: "Where are you?!!!"
  
• Me: Caerdydd (This is the Welsh spelling of Cardiff.)
  
• My friend posted a GIF:
  

• I wrote: Ffasiwn Cymreig! (Welsh fashion - Welsh is phonetic so if you just say the first word without thinking about it, you won't need my wonky translation )

This autumn I am starting a module on the Masters in Online and Distance Education. I do, of course, have substantial practical experience in online and distance education - as I have been teaching for the Open University for over ten years. While doing professional development (on the e-LATE(D) and Tutor Moderator courses), I enjoyed reading up on the pedagogic theory behind my teaching and even writing up some of my work.

If I am not careful, the ironing, washing the floor, playing with the cats, watching cat videos on Facebook and ferrying my daughter to her after school clubs can take over my life. Like all of us, I need a community within which to find support and challenges so that I can continue with this scholarly activity. I hope that the Masters degree will provide a learning community within which I can further develop my thinking and practice in online and distance education.

To begin with, I have been getting into the swing of learning by doing a less important subject over the summer. I started doing some Welsh courses, with the OU's free short Open Learn module: Discovering Wales and Welsh. I used some YouTube videos on Welsh too, and have learned to say: "Great!" and "Interesting", and some other handy phrases. I wasn't very good at signing in to do my Welsh studies every day but I started to get myself into the habit.

Now I'm setting aside time each morning to study. Once I have made sandwiches for my daughter, and breakfast, fed the cats, done any necessary floor washing, I have decided to put in an hour or two on my studies every working day. There isn't very much to do yet, so I just sign into my StudentHome page and explore for ten or twenty minutes, check out the Forums and then do some other learning activities before getting on with my day.

Many of my own students are New to the Open University. I sometimes think that the main lesson they learn on the Level 1 modules I teach is how to learn. They come to a better understanding of the amount of time they need to put aside for their work, and when is the best time in the day for them to do this. Many of them start by putting aside a whole day for studies, but find that this lovely large block of time can quickly get colonised by other activities. I recommend them to do their studies in a 'little and often' way: short bursts of time every day, rather than one whole day in the week.

At a recent Day School, one of the students was someone who herself advises people on time management. She gave us a good tip: the best amount of time for most people to do work is 90 minutes: that is the optimum time for humans to concentrate. I mean to do good bursts of focussed study, but not to let these drag on. It can lead to shoulder and back problems as you crouch over your computer for long periods of time, and if I do 120 minutes today, and get tired, I might be put off from doing any studying tomorrow. If I do 90 minutes today, and 90 minutes tomorrow, I will do 180 in total.

For several months I have had to put aside my application for Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (being conducted through the university's Applaud programme), owing to a sudden upsurge in work.

I have felt just like my own students! pleading a mixture of work-related, family-related and medical reasons (I had a chest infection as well), as I explained to my students that I would not be quite as quick as I usually like to be over marking their assignments. My HEA Fellowship application was actually delayed because my two referees were put under pressure at work too, and didn't have time to do the references.

In the meantime, I felt I should bump up my mostly drafted application with some fresh reading so I did a desultory Google Scholar search for relevant articles. One of my colleagues also mentioned a highly relevant article she had written in a powerpoint presentation. I put these into a list 'for later'.

Much later! I realised that my plan to do my application and other personal development work on Thursday was just not happening. I am always telling my students that setting aside a special day for studying is not a good way to manage time, and I have found this out the hard way myself. I am switching to trying to read an article per day instead.

That habit also takes time to get into! Today I had to rush off to the supermarket at first light as my daughter revealed late yesterday that she had forgotten she would need a pepper, a courgette, some sweetcorn and frozen peas for her Home Economics class. However, mindful of setting a good example to my students, I did try to do some reading a bit later in the day.

I spent about fifteen minutes trying to track down my colleague's article. The internet link she provided in the powerpoint took too long to download. The OU online Library disclaimed any knowledge of the journal in which she had published. I guess I will have to ask her to email me a copy!

I moved on to one of the Google scholar articles (one of the few relevant ones I managed to pick out of a big list of irrelevant ones!). When I looked it up in the OU online Library, I inadvertently found out that their search engine will throw up all articles with relevant terms in their titles and key words, so I found a few more articles that way

By now I was a bit tired and time was pressing on, so I just carefully put the details of a couple of the articles in my newly formatted Annotated Bibliography (more on this soon). I think I will have a cup of tea after all that!

At our regional staff development event, I had the opportunity to talk to an advisor about getting Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) with the university's support. I have been trying to figure this out for two or three years, with various life events preventing me from getting on with it, so I was delighted to hear that a new fast-track system has been set up to support Associate Lecturers (ALs) in doing this. Applaud provides us with a mentor, forums and other means to discuss how best to go about this.

Chatting with an advisor first was very helpful. She was able to tell me that since I have a ready-made dissertation which I can edit and put in for my application, I should go straight for Fellowship of the HEA, not hang about doing an Associate Fellowship first

I found getting onto the Applaud programme very easy. Unfortunately, you need two referees for the Fellowship application and the university were just starting what proved to be a monumental task of changing over the way we organise our tutorials. Both my referees were snowed under with work. I was actually also quite busy, so I pretended that only because of the references, I wouldn't be able to put my application in quite yet and deferred to the November presentation.

I did do a Google Scholar search for articles about 'teaching referencing' and 'online forum teaching', to bump up the literature review section of my dissertation and came up with a few (about which more soon).

I was very busy making sure my B presentation students (start in February) finished off their final module assignment, and then setting up for my J presentation (starts in October). Also coping with some 'interesting' problems thrown up by the new ways of organising our tutorials . I had an opportunity to apply for a peer support programme to work with other ALs. I was disappointed to be knocked back - especially on the grounds that I hadn't yet done the 3 week Tutor Moderator programme. I explained that the 10 week eLate(D) programme, which I have done, is generally regarded as more rigorous, but it was too late by then, I was just on the reserve list.

When I saw that there were some spaces in the Tutor Moderator programme, I decided to go for it, so that I couldn't be knocked back for not having that qualification as well. It's true that I am so busy I didn't even have time to clean up the cat sick on my kitchen floor last night but I'm sure I'll fit in the studies somehow. How hard can it be? My students do it all the time.

Awww, we are nearly at the end of the e(LATE)D module. I'm really going to miss going on the study calendar, checking in with people and reading about e-tivities and online pedagogy.

When I started the module, there was a questionnaire to fill in designed to help you see if you had time to undertake it. I didn't have time to fill that in so I just signed up anyway . In retrospect I see I probably shouldn't have done the module at this particular time, when I am in the middle of teaching a brand new module, my daughter was just finishing primary school and going up to secondary and I had my nephew (with profound special needs) staying on his annual holiday with me. I am so glad I didn't put it off, though, because I would have been sorry to go another few months without the understanding I've gained from the course.

I was done for speeding once, and sent on a speed awareness course. I grumbled that the course wasn't for good people like me, who only occasionally tipped over the speed limit. When I got there I found it was exactly for people like me as it was designed to help good drivers stop the occasional over-enthusiastic use of the accelerator.

e(LATE)D was like that. I know a fair bit about the internet (not as much as my eleven-year old of course), and am a regular user of forums. I thought e(LATE)D would just be a way of rubber-stamping my knowledge. What I found from the start was that it was a great opportunity to reflect on my teaching online and provided many many opportunities to think about my academic praxis as an Associate Lecturer. 

(The E-Learning Mum)

Although I've been a mature student and know from the inside many of the anxieties my students experience, I haven't been a student on a distance learning module myself. Going on the course helped me see e-learning through the student's eyes. I became quite sad when I fell behind a couple of weeks and felt I was missing out - how often have I complacently reassured some student that it's OK to skip a couple of things. When I was in the situation of having to do so, I really didn't want to!

The module is well designed with the inclusion of pedagogic literature. As usual with OU modules, building blocks for writing assignments are set out for you, interspersed with activities which develop skills. e(LATE)D was a great opportunity to consider how to teach, and the principles around which to design teaching. I have a better understanding now of how the modules I'm teaching have probably been designed. I am keen to go and read Ken Bain's work in more depth, and explore further the distinction between social constructivist and critical learning pedagogies.

Of course, there was nudging towards using online applications which I had always meant to get my head around but not quite done yet. I will master the RSS feed one day! I am nearly there with it now, LOL. (I'm wondering if I can use it to make a list of e-learning academic journals, and what has come out in their latest issues. Or would de.licio.us - now 'delicious' be better for that?)

Writing out my e-tivity (see blogposts below) was an excellent opportunity to reflect carefully on a teaching activity I had always wanted to incorporate into my modules. I got great feedback and support from the others on the module.

I also got to read their write-ups of e-tivities, and this was very helpful to me in considering how I write and how I can improve my own academic writing. I got some excellent ideas from their e-tivities, which I hope to translate onto my own module next year (duly referenced, of course!).

I did think I would get my head around the key technologies (apps?) which are 'trending' in the academic e-world right now. But what is 'hip' today in e-learning is no longer 'bae' tomorrow. (At the time I post, the adjective 'bae' meaning 'cute, adorable, my bae-by' is so cool you can't even google it but by the time you read this it will probably have been overtaken by something else.) I learned more about a lot of apps I'd wondered about, and I found out about new ones. Most of all, I learned to keep looking and exploring in the internet world.

I was inspired by the opportunities e(LATE)D offered to develop my understanding of e-learning and of pedagogies in general. It was an entry point to the literature in my professional field. I mean now to look for opportunities to join communities where I can continue the conversations I have begun on best praxis in e-learning.

Perhaps that is the best end result of a course, that the student emerges not with a body of dry knowledge, soon to be outdated, but as a 'deep learner' (HETL interview with Bain in 2012). Someone who has been able to access 'learning [that] has a sustained and substantial influence on the way they will subsequently think, act, and feel'. 

Personally I have never got on with mind-mapping. Spider diagrammes make me want to get out my feather duster and clean that mess off the paper so I can write. I know that the livelier minds of my students can be visual or aural rather than textual so I always pretend to draw one in order that they understand how visually mapping out their ideas could support their thinking, but secretly I just write a list. Grocery shopping, To Do (cat to vet, rake lawn, don't forget to pick up child from school), Report on Social Deprivation and Education, it can all be done by The List. And then you can use the list as your Contents. Although not for the To Do tasks.

However, using mind mapping online tools was part of the game on e(LATE)D so I heaved a sigh and got on with it.

First we were to try out FreeMind. I felt very much welcomed as there is a large note at the bottom of the FreeMind instructions already saying "Did FreeMind make you angry? Write a complaint." I put my ideas into FreeMind, while telling the cat to stop complaining, I would take it to the vet in a moment, and it looked like this: 

Well, that is not even pretty! What about some colours and stuff, chaps? Sorry, but that really didn't do much for me.

On to the OU's own mind mapping software: CompendiumLD. My mind map there looked like this:

OK, at least it has some colour, I suppose.

I did find CompendiumLD had value. It is designed not just for free-thinking mind mapping but for planning teaching. I found it helpful that it suggested I make particular nodes for Tasks and Outputs. It enquired tactfully who was supposed to complete these Tasks: Tutor or Student?

I don't really think using these tools used up as much time as I felt, I think they were actually quite speedy. I'm just very impatient with mind mapping, LOL, whereas if I have a chunk of text in front of me I will sit there all day, ignoring the plaintive cries of my hungry cats and child. ("Just have some crisps and sweets. And feed those damn cats.")

CompendiumLD is not valuable for presentation purposes, IMHO. I expect you can see that some of those Nodes have notes attached, but these don't readily open up for others to see. If I was going to seriously mindmap and present, I would use Prezi. Although I hate mind mapping, I adore Prezi. That shows you how super duper good it is. It is intuitive and for very little effort, you can make a set of presentation slides which look stratospherically amazing. You can muck about with all kinds of designs for your Prezi slides, and I do like that. It feels like being back in the sandpit at kindergarten - but with Einstein and Newton making models of time and motion. (I said it feels like that! What you actually produce in there is between you and your conceptual framework.)

OK, now I better take the cat to the vet. Back at you shortly with more reflections on my e(LATE)D TMA e-tivity development process!