This week each of our faculties has a Learning & Teaching conference. I've attended the Technology one before but I don't recall hitting any of the other ones. Not that they're not intersting, it's just fitting them in.

Well I've missed the last couple of days thanks to leave, but today was the Science Faculty's turn and particularly because I'd been asked to present something, I thought I'd attend the whole thing.

It was very good. Aside from the usual complaint of having to choose between two sessions you wanted to see both of. Twice. Full marks to the organizers for keeping the day nice and tight. (Starting at 10.30 finishing at 3 and always on time.) Nice slot in the afternoon about the similarities between stand-up comedians and lecturing - and what lecturers can learn from the former. Good slot in the morning on using more interaction with students even in big classes. You can improve retention of the material from something dire like 20% to around 50%.

My slot in the middle of the day seemed to go well given that the three of us hadn't really rehearsed beyond a quick sketch of what we thought we might do. People seemed interested and I even managed to tout the article that S from TheOldPlace and I wrote about alternative libraries. Good to be an interloper with the Science Faculty and be able to point to some research and peer-reviewed material in support of the 'fun' stuff.