Sad news first of all. My principle supervisor Anna Fletcher has had to pull out due to some very serious health issues. It does not look good at all and I think Stuart, my remaining supervisor and I are both in a bit of shock. It has all happened quite quickly so no doubt Anna is too. She’s only young, probably early 50’s so it’s all rather horrific. I am trying to focus on the positives. Recently that has been the NAEEA conference!

The picture above is my with the Self-Efficacy SIG poster. I had feedback from a couple of colleagues but most of it was my work and I’m quite proud of it. I have had other posters but in the past I’ve been only one person in a team and haven’t actually had that much input into the overall feel of the poster. This was my baby though!

All 6 conference presentations went well. The one on trauma and self-care was a bit rushed at the end. SOOOOoooo much good has come of that though because I’ve now realised that Amy C, one of my favorite FedUni people works in that area and WE can do research TOGETHER on this! My pilot study only had 3 students BUT they explicitly explained how a past trauma had impacted their journey to university AND (more importantly) their self-efficacy. It is a huge gap in the enabling literature and Amy and I are going to fill it! Very excited about that… I DO need to get permission from my now solo supervisor I think.

Another good thing to come from the conference was that it introduced me to a few teaching techniques. First is Mechano where one person makes a statement and then others can connect to that (physcially) by standing behind them (to back them up) or beside them to agree etc. The other they called snowballing where you write your idea on paper, scruntch it up, throw into the middle of the room, grab someone else’s and add to it… repeat! Both of these came from a workshop on the 4CTL Learning Disposition Wheel which is based on self-regulated learning.

I think in enabling education where we like to explicitly teach it might be of value for me to use it exactly as they did in the workshop. They introduced it, then the activity was conducted and then we were asked which slice of the wheel we “used” the most in that activity. In other words which skills we needed, used, drew on etc. Different people choose different parts of the wheel because multiple were used in each activity… and that was the point! Use multiple wherever possible.

Here is the wheel for reference – I got it from here (sorry it’s after 4pm I can’t be bothered to reference correctly!!!) https://www.4ctransformativelearning.org/the-learning-disposition-wheel

I’m not sure what else to add about the conference. It was excellent all around. It had a great warm and friendly vibe to it. All the speakers were excellent, especially Sarah O’Shea. I felt like I knew a few people, from FedUni and CQUniversity of course but also Murdoch and other places too. I made a great contact with one of the folks from Macquarie University as well. I hope to get in touch with their senior teaching staff soon and welcome them into the Self-efficacy SIG.

As I mentioned, after 4pm so that’s all for now. In summary great conference. Loved it.