By Cindy Vallance @cdvallance

Here we are, two days from week zero and everyone is frantically busy so I thought I would share just a few thoughts.

We had our first Change Academy meeting of 2012/13 yesterday. It certainly had the great effect of reinvigorating me and the rest of the group for the year ahead as we reflected on the purpose of Social Sciences Change Academy – to encourage a stronger community of learning through collaboration between students, academic staff and professional services staff.  A few highlights include:

Meetings

BAD news – since everyone is so busy, we only had six of our twelve group members who were able to attend the meeting.

GOOD news – we managed to still have representation from our full complement of academic and professional services staff and students.

SOLUTION to BAD news – we will have two meetings a term since we know that given the group’s diverse composition, it is nearly impossible to get everyone together at the same time. We will also continue to have sub-group meetings and informal caffeine breakout sessions.

Communicating

BAD news – my Blackberry blasted the song “She Wants to Go to the Seaside” by the  Kooks in the middle of our meeting.

GOOD news – the disruption did not affect the positive and productive discussion, plans began to be formulated and we all worked very hard not to interrupt each other and to ensure every voice was heard.

SOLUTION to BAD news – remember to set Blackberry ‘silent’ feature in future.

Time

BAD news – we ran out of time to work through our SharePoint demo.

GOOD news – we will take forward a number of specific ways to support Social Sciences and to work to continue to build momentum around our ethos over the coming year.

SOLUTION to BAD news – two of our members will arrange dates for the SharePoint demo and another member is on hand to provide further practical support.

We will continue to write more about Change Academy and change in general in our blogs. In the meantime, best wishes to all for Welcome Week and keep up by following some of the new University of Kent twitter feeds mentioned here. You might also want to consider how you’re working with social media regardless of your role at the University by having a look at the materials on Moodle from the Unit for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching’s (UELT) first E-Learning Summer School held last week at Kent.