What will I be when I grow up?

I am at a Hilton Hotel in Detroit, Auburn Hills in between two days of a teaching and learning conference jointly organised by the University of Windsor and the University of Oakland. It is a really neat initiative that is in its early stages, but to be supported. Amazing how many Faculty members at both Universities have research into teaching and learning that they want to showcase. The bigwigs have gone to dinner so I have got a glass of wine have been reading an article entitled "The desire to learn: an analysis of knowledge seeking practices among professionals".

Whilst I can't claim to really understand the article - too many long sentences and big words for me - it has set me thinking about how I learnt to be a surveyor, and then a lecturer and now an educational developer. How does a degree in French and German prepare you to negotiate rents on large office buildings? What were the intermediate steps? Then when the practice no longer needed me (redundancy) I went on to teach surveying - I know I learnt to teach by trial and error and generous feedback from my students, and that, when I did the "Teaching for old wrinklies" crash course at the University of Northumbria, Dept of Built Environment, after teaching for 12 years, I learnt new things, but more importantly my trial and error results were confirmed as good practice. Now I claim to be an educational developer, what gives me that right? Experience, knowing the theory, being willing to engage in conversations and discussions about how to improve student learning and to think about the ways Universities can approach that problem systematically, being open to new ideas and being able to enthuse others to think about their teaching and get the pleasure from it.

The best bit I took from today's workshop was a comment from a retired faculty member at Windsor, (who said this morning on the bus as we came over from Windsor "You are never too old to learn") that it was much too late to try to educate students about academic integrity once they got to University, honesty should be an inbred value from childhood. He asked how we answer our children who ask "What do I do when my boss and my colleagues are claiming my ideas and proposals as their own?" I have just read a comment from Jo Tait about trying to measure student learning in numbers and her suggestion was maybe to grant bonus points to students who manage to ask questions that we can't answer. So George you get some bonus points today for your son!

The poster presentations at the conference were interesting and varied - in my mind the best one was done by a group of students who certainly demonstrated the concept of multiple intelligences in their use of visuals, numbers, words and actions in a poster which depicted the way in which a team developed itself and its skills to achieve a task. If there had been a prize, that poster would have got my vote. I also note that psychology departments seem to be disproportionately represented.

Sorry there are no pictures tonight - I did take some as we sat on the Ambassador Bridge this morning as the US customs were being hampered by crashed computers. But I didn't pack the required bit of kit to get them from the camera to this computer so you can see the view tomorrow.