2020: Reflections on my year

Towards the end of 2019 I saw Maren Deepwell’s post ‘2019 – The Year On My ‘I Love Me’ Wall‘ and thought what a great idea it was to reflect on the year. It’s so easy to forget positive recognition and personal achievements, especially after a year like 2020 . It’s a familiar issue, when you sit down to update your CV and then spend forever looking back through emails and calendars to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

So, building on Maren’s post, I though I would try for a full year to highlight something I’m proud of for every month of 2020. The first few months started with using my office pin board to create a physical ‘I love me’ wall, but when we switched to remote working, it turned into this digital format, which has been in draft since March, adding the various things as and when they happened.

January

Lecture Capture & Video event

I kicked off the year by hosting a nationwide event discussing the pedagogical uses of lecture capture and all things video for learning. Sharing an event like this with colleagues was a great way to start the year. https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/centre-for-innovation-in-education/blog/conference-event-reports/video-lecture-capture-learning-event/

Advance HE Teams Workshop invite

Off the back of our successful SocMedHE 2019 workshop in December 2019, myself and colleague Rachelle were invited to London to deliver the session to AdvanceHE leaders, prior to their uptake of Microsoft Teams.

A huge thank you to @LivUniCIE @rachelleeobrien and @scottfarrow88 for facilitating a brilliant ‘escape room’ training session on #MSTeams for @AdvanceHE senior management team. Great way to get people engaged in new software #gamification pic.twitter.com/RYMy5QxqSU

— Michael Parker (@MParkerHE) January 14, 2020

February

ALTNWESIG lead

After a number of years as an attendee, then committee member of ALTNWESIG I took on the convenor role of this regional ALT group. I was excited to share some new ideas with the learning technology community. Little did we know what the following months would bring.

March/April

Remote working

March saw the majority of higher education switch to remote working and teaching. As well as adapting to this as a team, we successfully implemented a plan to train and support staff to use MS Teams for work collaborations and delivering synchronous and asynchronous teaching.

May

ALTNWESIG Event Online

May saw me convene my first ALTNWESIG network event, which was originally due to be hosted by Keele University. The newly formed committee did a great job at pulling together a great agenda for the first of many online sessions.

Super online session this afternoon from the @altnwesig #ALTNWESIG team! Thank you! pic.twitter.com/dc8ikyJFjm

— Dawne (@belld17) May 22, 2020

June

L&T Conference

University of Liverpool’s annual Learning & Teaching Conference was delivered completely online for the first time ever. Our team delivered day 2 of the conference, which was a mystery detective game based around a theme of students as partners, using our brand new VLE, Canvas.

July

Hybrid Active Learning Support Site

July saw CIE launch our Hybrid Active Learning (HAL) Support site for University of Liverpool staff to access examples, frameworks and case studies to guide them through their preparations in delivering our HAL approach from September.

August

Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert

In August my application to become an MIEE was successful! To view my Sway application, visit my post on it here.

September

Implementing Hybrid Active Learning

The start of a very different academic year for Liverpool staff delivering Hybrid Active Learning, which included lots of digital education support for CIE’s Educational Developers.

October

CIE Podcast

In October I hosted my first CIE Podcast talking to four lecturers from around the University about how they have found the transition from Vital (Blackboard) to Canvas.

November

Senior Fellow Advance HE

Senior Fellowship had been something on my radar and in my personal development discussions for the past 12 months, so I was pleased to get my submission to panel in before the end of the year.

December

SOCMEDHE journal

Finishing off the year where we started, with the SocMedHE2019 workshop. This was written up with Rachelle into an article for the first ever addition of The Journal of Social Media for Learning https://openjournals.ljmu.ac.uk/index.php/JSML

After what has been a challenging and very different year working in higher education and supporting digital education, this post has been a great way for me to reflect on a successful year and start 2021 with some hope of what could be achieved.

Stay tuned for next years reflection post and happy new year!