ICED Salt Lake City

How lovely it is to be among hills, in clear air with bright blue skies and meeting up with friends and acquaintances from around the globe. The ICED conference (International Consortium for Educational Development) is held every two years, and this year is hosted by Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City. It is actually being held at the University of Utah and we are all staying in and around the Olympic Village of the 2002 winter Olympics. What a location!

The conference as ever produces a mix of the interesting, the very interesting and the not so interesting, with the conversations on the side about all manner of things educational development and otherwise. My theme for this conference is international so I am seeking out presentations and workshops from places other than UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. So far I have been to presentations from people from Estonia, Germany, China, Turkey, also supported Billy in his workshop with a US colleague and done my own workshop with Ranald. The audience for our workshop was 16 strong, there were two or three people from the USA, then UK, NZ, Spain, Estonia, Australia, Denmark, Canada, and other places that I don’t remember.

Ranald and I are perplexed at the end of our workshop as it seemed to cause the participants angst “I don’t know what he wants”, “please can you explain again?”. A detailed debrief with one of the participants said “I’m not sure what it was really about but I enjoyed it” – what does that mean? In discussing the workshop with some other friends over dinner and wine, we noted that when the educational developers (or any one else for that matter) come to a session where they are required to sit in rows and someone stands at the front they revert to student mode and adopt the characteristics of students. Perhaps the discomfort we had created with some of our participants resembles the feelings that our students often have in class and that we may not give them the opportunity or the safe environment in which to explore those concerns. Or perhaps we were too ambitious in what we were trying to achieve in 45 minutes and did not give the participants time to get the background for the exercise and therefore really understand what we were hoping for. Or perhaps we had just created an exercise that was too simple and then I confused them inadequate instructions. But who says all workshops have to be comfortable and have a clear answer to their activities.

I have also made connections with people who are coming to Windsor for the STLHE conference so some more familiar faces.

Some photos today to demonstrate Billy in action and a wonderful learning space at the Red Butte Gardens which I visited yesterday.