Ed/Tech must-reads 261124

UPDATE: Oops, I popped in to put a quick one together for this week and noticed that this post was sitting unsent. Scheduled, but unsent. Scheduled to be sent on Nov 26, 2025. (That will do it). So, like, double issue I get. No spoilers for the football.

Well I’ve been having a ball exploring the many many contributions to the Third Space Slowposium and that has pretty well entirely occupied me this week. (Other than the North Melbourne women ‘powering’ their way into another AFLW Grand Final. Who ever knew that I’d get into sport). The discussions in SlowPo have been coming along nicely, with the full diversity of this broad community on display. Probably with a lean toward the teaching and learning focused 3SPs because that is the community that the organisers comes from - but there are still plenty of others helping to build our big picture.

A handful of contributions have definitely leapt out for me though.

Learning Design: A case for theory (before technology) from Jeremy Stothers (Monash)

This is a very straightforward video in some ways and a handy quick watch (11 mins) but it offers one of the best overviews both of a Constructivist approach to teaching and also of what it is exactly that learning designers bring to learning and teaching. I think that everyone who doesn’t get that learning designers (and EdAdvisors in general) work to enable better learning and teaching would be well served by watching it.

Thoughts on: Third Space Slowposium (Identity Pt 1 & Pt 2) from Screenface (me)

As I mentioned last week, I’m taking notes and capturing reflections of the various Slowposium contributions in my intermittently used blog. It took two posts to get through all of the content and activities related to Identity in the third space, which is probably unsurprising given how central identity is. I explored:

• Negotiating third space identity through the process of writing about it
  Carina Buckley (Solent) & Alicja Syska (Plymouth)

• The (in)visibility of librarians in the third space
  Heidi Butters-Stabb

• Abstracted selfie: Creating a third space persona
  Claire Bowmer, Flinders Uni

• Standing out in the Third Space
  Donna Murray, Uni of Edinburgh

• (De)constructing professional identities of third space practitioners through Zine making Kate Molloy, Atlantic Technological University

• Empowering professional identity and positive outcomes through Third Space collaboration: A subject lecturer and EAP practitioner case study
  Claire Toogood (AGCAS UK) and Katy Hale (Aston Uni)

• I’m in HE’s third space – who is with me?
  Zoë Allman (De Montfort University)

• What does the Third Space look like?
  Wendy Taleo, Monash Uni

• Hard pressed but not crushed
  Rebecca Kan & Eliza Yeo Hui, (University of the Arts, Singapore)

All of these contributions distinctly different and all giving me much to ponder.

(Re)imagining the future of faculty PD (Recording available) from Alexandra Mihai and Colin Simpson

Finally, I was also fortunate enough to co-present a small workshop about the nature of Centres for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education with someone that I’ve long admired, Alexandra Mihai (Maastricht Uni). We had a decent turn up (~25) and some rich discussions about this surprisingly hot topic.