Goodbye and Hello

 

I let folks know on LinkedIn that I was finishing up my shift at City of Glasgow College at the end of August and moving back into world of educational consultancy. My association with vocational education and educational technology is continuing into its 38th year. I was overwhelmed by all the good wishes from friends past and present and job offers.I am really going to pick and choose I already have some irons in the fire, but looking forward to some me time too.

I've had a busier than anticipated September, my first month on the loose. 

Happy to say I arrived and left smiling from COGC. I am grateful for the opportunity to ride off into the sunset. I don't intend to be competing in the full- time job market again and a mix of paid and pro bono work will see me into retirement comfortably. Special thanks to Joanna Campbell who hired me initially with a clear vision and to all the learning technologists, IT team members past and present and the team of the Learning and Teaching Academy who helped roll out Canvas and much more at City of Glasgow College over the last seven years. Thanks too to all of the staff and students who in this period had to engage with learning technology more than at any other time.

Reminder -
It's not the end of learning design and blended learning - it is just the beginning.

I think we've transformed a lot and I'm sure there is more change to come across the College and the tertiary sector. Thanks too to the commercial sponsors and funders that trusted us over the years with lots of money and kit to push on our digital projects and capabilities and to all our educational technology suppliers who smoothed the way.

I leave behind a great team and robust learning technology platform for someone to write the next chapter.

I'm now looking forward to pushing on some things that were simply not possible in an institutional setting. 

Turkish Vocational Qualifications Authority Exchange Ankara

It was an amazing privilege to be invited to make two presentations, chair and  participate in a series of workshops in Ankara following catching up with the Turkish delegation in Scotland some seven months ago.

I was on familiar ground around talking occupational standards, national awarding , accreditation, credit and levelling and quality control at national and centre level, but my talk was about how centres can use technology to support innovative delivery  and personalised assessments which is my current day job, reflecting the work of our team. 

I know we as a centre can support centres and training staff in Turkey to innovate their practice. I hope a partnership can grow around that. 

Interesting opportunities too with a large centre in France for learner and staff exchange and with a centre in Italy keen to figure out portfolios, microcredentials and digital badging with us. I'll take these back to our international team. 

It was great to hear the progress that has been made in Turkey where they have broadly adopted the Scottish Vocational system. Like many other countries. Unit based awards with clear approval criteria for centres and a sensible sampling quality assurance process is a sensible option. Well done SQA who were along to support event and great to catch up with Roderic Gillespie and Donald Paterson two former SQA colleagues supporting the developments in Turkey. Well done too to the SCQF partnership who were truly european trail blazers around setting up a national qualifications framework. 

We visited a really well equipped training centre and sampled their processes. These would be familiar to any training centre or College in Scotland. One thing stood out, when assessing candidates on solar panel installation or working at height on powerlines, all of the practical assessments are videoed as evidence and kept for later sampling. At moment evidence is required to be kept for 100 years. In Scotland we just need to hold evidence for around 12 months, though we do keep records of resulting for 3 - 5 years.

It was good to hear too the progress that has been made in France, Italy and Germany who made presentations on their own systems. 

All have clear employer levies that support employers and trainees. France and Italy have perhaps the most flexible system to support employers and employees upgrade their skills.  Germany is looking to modernise their established system - the delegates knew that many countries look at their system as leading.  It was interesting to hear them describe their own system as like Sputnik - a world first but now in need of upgrading. Their system is creaking a bit in terms of it ability to innovate and on the ground they are having challenges around recruiting and retaining assessors. 

My own reflections - 

• I think we need clearer line of sight in Scotland between the employer levy and where money is then committed to the vocational system. It is clear that is an essential element of a successful vocational system. 
• Ankara is a modern metropolis of 6 million people, it's very cold in winter - but with warm friendly people and amazing food. Turkey has a population of 84 million. 
• I've encountered the massive success of Scottish vocational system all around the world. It is easy to forget for a tiny country, we have always hit well above our weight on educational exporting, developing global thinking not at institutional but at national level, this around our vocational system - not school assessments nor the Scottish University system. I am still concerned this will be seriously disrupted or even lost when reforms come to SQA. 
• Other countries are making strong progress around digital certification. In Turkey you can request your certificate in any major language. 
• It was great to meet again colleagues from the European Training Foundation and from GOPA  and great to hear that expat Glaswegians in their ranks  follow my wee brother's Lost Glasgow Facebook and Twitter pages. 

Here in full flow speaking and chairing and  presentation linked to this blog post.  The work here is a reflection of work across the Learning and Teaching Academy at City of Glasgow College. I'm taking some Turkish delight back to my team. 

 

Year in Review 2023

A quick year in review - next post will be looking forward.

I managed to fit in a lot of personal and business travel in this year.  Thanks in the main to external organisations who are interested in what we are getting up to at City of Glasgow College. From Cupboard to Keynote - our work around AI has been picked up on a number of fronts. 

That combined with some of my friends' big birthdays and some major sporting events. It's  been quite a year.  Tinged with sadness as I lost one of my big cousins and just before Christmas my 88 year old uncle. 

Had lots' of nice nights out with old pals down the pub , combined with St Mirren and Scotland having great football seasons and caught a number of great gigs including Pulp. 

Venice was great fun for the Carnivali in February, Barcelona was great en famille as was short return to Ile De Re at the start of the summer. 

Our big escape was a tour of France for the Rugby World Cup. Which was just superb - Rheims, Lyons. Bandol , Marseille , Villefranche , Nice and repeat on homeward leg, just great. 

Made even better that our family came out for different legs of the tour and we had a lot of old rugby chums to meet up with along the way. 

That combined with speaking in London (BETT) , Amsterdam (Edutech) , Liverpool (Instructure/Canvas) and Inverness  (#OER23) among other places made for a busy year.