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CETL Conference 2010: For the debate motion

Page history last edited by Alex Buckley 13 years, 9 months ago

Debate Motion: “This house believes that continuing the work of the CETLs should be a priority for HEI’s teaching and learning strategies”

 

The case in favour of the motion

 

By Anna Newell, Artistic Director of the Centre for Excellence in the Creative and Performing Arts

 

I think the argument is very clear for this motion and I’m thinking also that I’m probably preaching not simply to the choir but to the very people who made it happen.

 

For me, it’s about three things – the moment in time that we’re at, what has been achieved over the last five years and, most importantly and, I believe, irrefutably, the concept at the very heart of the CETL vision.

 

 

 

In a rapidly changing world, in a difficult financial climate, in an uncertain political climate with a demographic that is, in the short term, against us – I believe that new thinking is needed more than ever before.  Creative thinking is needed. New and creative ways of working, new and creative ways of talking and thinking about education, new and creative ways of delivering education and new and creative ways of attracting students to education.  And not simply retaining these students but inspiring them and transforming not simply their learning journeys but the very institutions within which these journeys take place.

 

And for me, creativity is what the CETLs are all about.  Both the concept of the CETLs  and the specific successes of them that are the stories that you carry with you to this conference.

 

And I know for every story I have to tell, each of you who has been involved in the CETL programme will have one to match it.

 

And I know that for every student voice I have to quote, each of you who has been involved in the CETL programme will have one singing the same song.

 

“It was brilliant.  I’ve never really been involved in any project like this before”

 

“With every new day, I became more and more overwhelmed; at times I felt I was going to explode with enthusiasm”

 

“without a shadow of a doubt the most stimulating, challenging and enjoyable experience since I started university”

 

“the greatest final semester I could have wished for”

 

“tough… and unbelievably worthwhile”

 

“I’m definitely going to be doing more of this – this is what I want to do in the future”

 

“I was really inspired by the great sense of potential felt within the group and the endless possibilities we encountered.”

 

“a lifestyle more than a degree”

 

“an amazing journey”

 

“totally inspirational”

 

“liberating…terrifying…mindblowing”

 

And this is the work of just one CETL amongst many – transformative results that you’ll know are replicated all over the country.  Some of this work will continue post-CETL.  But without making continuing this work a stated and a funded priority, much of it won’t.  And, more importantly, new initiatives that elicit these sorts of responses will not emerge and this is the key to this argument because….

 

although from my experience, whilst huge numbers of the CETLs were enormously successful, what actually matters much much more than the specific and extraordinary successes is something very deep and conceptual at the core.

 

It is no coincidence that this morning saw a whole set of parallel sessions on institutional change, on paradigm shifts, on the potential for transformation not simply at an individual level.

 

Gweno Williams from York St John CETL introduced me to a concept from the world of business which perfectly mirrors the vision behind the CETL idea. And it is the attractively-named skunkworks

 

Skunkworks are:

A typically small and loosely structured group of people who research and develop a project for the sake of innovation.  A skunkworks very often operates independent of a company’s normal research and development operations.  A skunkworks is a group of people who, in order to achieve unusual results, work on a project in a way that is outside the usual rules.

 

Skunkworks  famously produced the first apple mac

 

and now googlewave

 

skunkworks are about recognising, respecting and investing in

SPACE TO BREATHE, TO INVENT, TO IMAGINE, TO INNOVATE

 

Space to create something that is different, exciting, transformational

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A microcosmic specific example from my own CETL

 

In our interdisciplinary arts MA experience we have, much to the chagrin of my Head of School….

Modules called Adventures and Further Adventures

Calling the MA modules “Adventures” was a very deliberate move – to create that sense of an exciting and enriching journey into the unknown and is highly resonant of Barnett’s urging for educators to

“hang onto a language of delight, wonder, care, excitement, fun, engagement and love – the language in which a student is caught and even entranced” (Barnett, 2008).

 

One of my students said…

 

“There are few things more exciting than travelling to a place you have never been before. I knew that after the Adventure I would not be the same as I had been two days previously.”

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For me, CETLs are educational skunkworks and as such have a unique ability to provide new lifeblood to the institutions within which they operate and to provide extraordinary adventures for  the staff and students that they engage with and to make a difference not just at a personal level but at institutional level and even higher, even broader.

 

There was a startling clearly and loudly articulated imperative at the beginning of the CETL programme to take risks.

 

Making the continuation of the CETL idea a priority would reiterate this imperative and would be a bold clarion call in times of uncertainy and financial hardship where the kneejerk reaction is to play safe, to batten down the hatches, to be conservative.

 

Not prioritising the skunkworks principle that is the CETLs is reneging on the commitment to teaching and learning made 5 years ago or is relegating it to a box-ticking exercise rather than a genuine, meaningful long-term ambition to make a designated space to make real changes, to imagine, to innovate, to make the journey from the University of today to the University of tomorrow. It is not over.  It is a dynamic and iterative process that needs space, time, money and status in order to ceaselessly reinvent, re-question, re-discover.  This is the work of the CETLs that I am fighting for and WE HAVE ONLY JUST BEGUN.

 

Five years ago, a few weeks into this job, I chose a quote to nail my colours to.  I still stand by it.  It’s how I strive to work and how I continue to work and it’s a fire that all of us have lit again and again with our students and, for me, it’s why an articulated commitment to continuing the visionary thinking and doing of the CETLs absolutely should be a priority

 

Whatever you dream  you can do

Begin it

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it

Begin it now.

 

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