On Friday night, Dave and I met up in the Nowhere for a couple of drinks before heading off to the bus station to see The Bus Station Loonies and The Subhumans at Maggies. Whilst in the pub we started chatting about various things regarding MBERC, students, teaching, PALS, etc. It was a really great conversation, but I still need to do a lot of work to convince Dave (and the others) that we really do need to consider change in our approach to teaching.
The age old question was asked, do I want to be a full-time learning development advisor? And the answer remains the same... having a foot in both camps is mutually beneficial as I can incorporate best practice from both worlds into each. Dave agreed with me. I also told him that MBERC really needs someone like me within the group, someone that continue to create and develop opportunities for our students, someone that listens and helps them find what they are looking for. I think he agreed with that too. I made it clear there is a lot of stuff that I do is sight-unseen and went on to explain working with John & Cat at the Wembury Marine Centre to give our students an opportunity to present their research to a wider audience, considering how you address an interested public. These are crucial skills for graduating students to have today and our students aren't being pushed as hard as they could be to perform even better.
Dave said that there was data on what our graduates are doing post-qualification. I would like to see that data and explore what's there. It could be a real eye-opener for me. I did tell Dave though, even if our graduates are doing well in getting jobs and into postgraduate degree programmes, that is still room for improvement. And that we need to move from 'good' to 'great' as Maureen Powers says. I told him that he should meet her... he rolled his eyes.
We talked about the PALS programme and I said that it was coming into our degrees whether or not anyone else liked it. I told him how excited the students are about having this programme, how many of them said that they wished that it had been in place this year for them to take advantage of that knowledge, how some of them even want it to be between 2nd and 3rd year. We talked about how we will implement this into the marine degrees. I am going to set up a meeting with Dave, Kerry and Mark (all programme leads). I will put together a short presentation about what PALS is, why it is important and what can be achieved. We can then discuss what they would like the PALS leaders to focus on initially and then let it develop and become student-driven. I think it will be a very good meeting and I am looking forward to getting it underway.
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