Category: Uncategorized
May 17th, 2014 by matthias
It’s only 24h to go, and I’m packing for Manchester tomorrow, and then #placenet14 for next week. So here my last reminder – please sponsor my run.
Posted in Uncategorized
March 22nd, 2014 by matthias
One of my favourite blogs is Epiphanies by Terry Burridge. As someone who identifies as a cyclist myself, this is one is close to home.
Posted in Reblogged, Uncategorized
January 16th, 2014 by matthias
Our regular job updates for @regentsuni students are back
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January 9th, 2014 by matthias
Reminder for our @regentsuni students: @regentscareers is back, and our weekly job updates are coming in again.
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May 14th, 2013 by matthias
We are doing a mental health awareness week at work this week. It has a special focus on physical activity and its positive effects on your mental health. As readers of my earlier posts will know, I am very much a proponent of non-competitive physical activity, and I am very aware of its impact on my well being. So, I did a stress test to assess my current stress level – and I was surprised to see that I’m only a 15 out of 40 – couldn’t find a proper explanation unpacking the score (so much for online tests), but basically I was pleased to know that my head wasn’t at danger of exploding just yet. But what a difference a day makes – I had a complicated day at work (in addition to running up to the annual www.placenet.org.uk conference, which I will chair – check #placenet13 on Twitter), and left feeling deflated. I timed out for letting steam off in jiu jitsu practice, but used another tried and tested coping mechanism – weeding my garden. So on the train this morning, I’ve retested – and let me put it this way: I’m not a 15 anymore. I consider myself fairly resilient – powered by my extensive patience (I’m not exaggerating – I’m just completing a four year lobbying effort), which is I think is the one key attribute I need working in academia. But I’m human after all, and in the spirit of mental health week, I’m sharing that I had to do some recovering, and still do. I’m glad to have a great team at work – and my focus is often to look out for how they feel, as it will strongly affect the way they work. Performance comes from having the capacity to perform – and if you don’t feel well, it won’t happen. You can only soldier on for that long, and I see it as a key management responsibility to enable people to perform, rather than trying to make them. What’s my lesson, besides recognising yet again that I don’t have super powers? It’s admitting it in public, and reminding ourselves that we’e all only human, and that we sometimes struggle – and that that’s alright. So there.
Posted in Education & Employability, Uncategorized Tagged with: management, mental health awareness week, patience, performance, stress
March 6th, 2013 by matthias
Employability has moved into focus recently, with a number of articles here and here, looking at the concept more critically. I’ll leave finding a definition to another day (maybe we should give it a crack at the PlaceNet conference in May – I’m declaring an interested here, as I’m the chair). What I repeated learn about the term is that it invariably invokes strong feelings – feelings of anxiety among professionals (who are supposed to ‘deliver’ the employability strategy of their institutions), frustration with an alleged lack of work place skills in young people (as bemoaned by employers – often in the face of little evidence), and a ranging from a decided ‘meh’ to outright resistance from students. I’ve repeatedly shared my thoughts about reductionist approaches which I think have a negative influence on academia, specifically outcomes based learning – and the obsession with simplifying what is a complex matter (the skills, attributes and attitudes influencing someone’s chances of securing employment, holding on to it – or developing their own business) into a set of numbers: 6-month destination and salary figures as exemplified in the KISS statistics. I’m not sure what I’m learning from this at the moment – perhaps its just a review of my past year trying to make sense of the developments in my field – besides that ‘employability’ as a concept needs to be scrutinised and analysed more thoroughly than I’ve done so before, and that institutional efforts are often just as uncoordinated as the approaches of those in need of learning about employability.
Posted in Uncategorized
February 3rd, 2011 by matthias
I’ve had an experience of receiving an immeditate benefit from using social media. When attending the recent Rate My Placement Awards (by the way an excellent example for the usage of technology and social media), I decided that I wanted to cover the events on Twitter. It was a bit of a lonely experience at first, as the room itself was a bit of a wifi black hole with only few people tweeting. Hooking into a BTFon hotspot though enabled me to be online and I got going. A student panel was telling the assembled employers that if they wanted to get their attention, freebees were still the way to go. I tweeted on that and got into a bit of banter with one of the RmP guys about the value of freebees – and how much students like them. Having just finished my green tea – which in my world means an urgent need to get the next one immediately – I tweeted that I would be very pleased about a free green tea. And as soon as there was a break – they guy whom I was exchanging tweets with walked up to me (we never met before), and handed me one! What’s the lesson? Social media can indeed help connect you to real people, pretty instantly. They don’t replace interactions in the real world – but they might help to establish them. The offline world still rules the online world – and a cup of green tea is an artefact of the offline world. Yet the gesture – and the gratitude for the act of kindness bridged both.
Posted in Social Media, Uncategorized