Academic Development
Building skills and confidence, renewing passion, transforming learning
Blended Learning Consultant, ELT
CUP, Higher and Adult Education, International
In English Language Teaching (ELT) at the Press, my role was entirely focussed on helping teaching staff in universities worldwide to incorporate digital elements into their teaching in a pedagogically sound way. It was important to recognise their existing skills, show them how to ‘make the machines work’ but also to address feelings of stress or being threatened by these novel inclusions in their work and help them to use the tech in a way that made lives better for their learners and for themselves.
I also created training courses for sales staff in the publishing sector to help them speak about digital educational materials in a more meaningful way that speaks in a more connected way to their customers’ and students’ actual learning needs.
Online Teacher Training Courses
Cambridge LMS, learner focus, problem solving
After some years of travelling to campuses, I created a series of online teacher training courses to help support or replace these visits. In a move away from listing product features, the courses were focussed on the learner (i.e. teacher) and the challenges they faced in incorporating the new technology and methodologies that they had adopted with their course books from Cambridge.
The courses could be accessed for free and completely independently but could also be a core part of supported online discussion which I led. They could also be used as part of a blended training offer, either before or after a campus visit. They gave teachers a taste of what their students’ experience was like, building confidence and empathy.
Instructional Design Partnership
Higher Education, University of Cambridge, UK
As lead course designer and later as Head of Learning Design and Development, I delivered several initiatives (both face to face and online) consisting of overt training and workshops around blended or online teaching [seeSpeaking page].
In addition to this academic development naturally comes about through the faculty – instructional/learning designer interaction throughout a course creation project as faculty become more attuned to the learning experience they want to provide for their students. Many members of faculty report a new more structured approach to how they think about their face to face teaching as a result of having worked on a course design project. There can also be a transformational shift from content to learner as the focus of course planning work.
Deirdre’s understanding of how learning works shines through everything she does. We benefitted hugely during the difficult times of the early pandemic by her learning-centred approach in designing and running a series of webinars for staff working out how to teach online at very short notice — with great feedback from staff who came away inspired and reassured in equal measure!
Dr Meg Tait, Head of Cambridge Centre for Teaching and Learning