It's all about the Twitterverse..really? How is Social Media working for you?

Went to an excellent exchange of experience event yesterday at Mimas in Manchester organised by Nowal (title above). This was a great opportunity to share stories with other library people about how they used social media in the professional lives, whether personally or for their service... and I crazily volunteered to speak about our experience at LJMU.

Lisa Jeskins from Mimas kicked us off introducing the day and explaining about what Mimas is and does. We all introduced ourselves and gave a reason why were were there. The was a mixture of experiences of using social media and a range of reasons for attending.

I was up next talking about what we've been doing at LJMU - we are at the very early stages having just set up a Facebook page and Twitter feed, with two blogs currently feeding both of these - the Electronic Library blog and the Customer Services blog which was set up by a colleague Simon Turner. I offered my 5 tops tips:

1. Get the boss on side - they can advocate upwards for you and on the whole makes it much easier to get things done
2. Preparation is everything - I showed the group our Facebook page drawn out on flip chart paper - we did this before we even went online
3. Listen up - we got good advice from others so I would recommend talking to others that have already done this
4. Adapt and overcome - be aware that things change in the world of social media so you need to be prepared for this
5. Strategy - make your social media presence part of your organisational strategy. If you have a strategy you can more easily move onto the next big thing when it happens. By making it part of the strategy you're not just relying on keen individuals - if you do this you run the risk that when they leave it all falls apart.

I was really pleased that this stimulated a lot of questions and discussions and it's really weird reading tweets after the event where you are quoted. No longer does what you say remain in the room but it is broadcast to a much wider audience without you knowing what is being said. Very scary and exciting.

Next up was Beth Ruddock who talked about her use of social media for professional development. Beth finds Twitter a valuable tool for making key contacts in the profession as well as for following events (like this one) that you have been unable to attend physically. Beth reads lots of professional blogs and blogs herself as it's a great way to progress within your profession. She received an award and being a modest person said she didn't know that she was necessarily doing more than others but that she was doing it publicly. This led to other things including an article in Update about her. Having a good Twitter presence can help your career. She also talked about the success of projects @theREALwikiman and @Woodsiegirl have been involved in that has come about because of engagement with social media.

Social media is a great tool to "grow" ideas and in her experience Twitter displays professional generosity - people are willing to help out. Through Twitter people have been asked to speak at conferences, be part of projects etc.

I thought what Beth had to say was really interesting and has made me want to be more active in my use of Twitter and other social media. I do post but not very often and am maybe not getting as much out of it as I could. I certainly use Twitter more for work than Facebook and get useful contacts and interesting links from others but maybe there is more... hmm something to ponder.

Next up was Sue Lawson from Manchester libraries. Her presentation was really inspiring, they seem to be doing so much. It seems that one area of developments leads into other things, sometimes by accident. The more engaged you are with social media the more opportunities seem to develop. I thought their Facebook page looked really good. Sue said she did used to spend ages get the boxes just right on the page but realised that many people only look at the news feed and never actually get to the page so she now spends more time writing interesting items for the feed - this is definitely something I will take away from the session. I was getting a bit hung up about what else we needed to put on our page but maybe we just need to focus on writing some more positive and interesting posts - it follows that I'll try to do this for the E-Library page too (this was my action point from the day).

I liked their use of flickr, which includes photos of central library before the refurb, much of this content is user generated.

Sue also showed us her "listening Wall" - this is a Netvibes space which collects what people are saying about the libraries and all the transformation team have logins to this - I thought this was a really good idea, bringing it all together in one space. Other things to investigate later would be Hootsuite and Issuu

After all that we needed some lunch and further sharing went on whilst we were eating. After lunch Lisa Jeskins talked about her experiences of using Twitter for work and how she's started a blog. Lisa talked about how tweeting at an event is a great marketing tool - the Mimas cupcakes - a few tweets to friends, spread and news of the Mimas cupcakes spread far and wide (Internet Librarian International 09)

Lisa also talked about the value and challenges of using twitter as a supplementary tool for training courses. You need to be careful not to alienate potentially half of your training course by providing information prior to the course via Twitter that those who are on Twitter don't get. She has set up a training blog herself and said that by using Twitter first this gave her the confidence to set up the blog.

After this we split into two groups for a very stimulating and interesting discussion. Rather than reinvent the wheel Beth summarised the discussion really well in her tweets on the day so check out them out for the main points - available here: http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/nmee

I have to say whilst writing this I've been re-reading the tweets to supplement the notes I made and that has been really helpful. So thanks to all those who tweeted and thanks for a great, stimulating and inspiring day.

Social Networking and libraries - MMIT event

Last Friday I attended an event held in our very own Aldham Robarts LRC, on social networking in libraries. Given that we are about to embark on this area it was timely. I attended with my colleague Pauline Smith and this post is based on both our notes from the session.

First up was Gareth Johnson from the University of Leicester who premiered his new weasel video all about social networking. At Leicester they started off with a library blog, with clear house rules for content to ensure style and purpose - it's very important to decide who your audience is. It started quietly but gained voice as it was inclusive for the whole university. It has now gained official recognition and is referenced in the new staff pack. The team (core of enthusiasm) support each other and prompt each other for articles.

Leicester also have a Facebook page, it's maintained by librarians but they don't post content directly to it, it all comes from feeds from other places. It's seen as providing information and there is very little interaction. In comparision the Graduate school at Leicester have a Facebook page which is updated much more regularly and is a good example of a two way conversation.

Twitter - this is a good way of finding community and encouraging professional awareness. It's also been used an another channel for support.

Gareth said that using such tools humanizes the library and that a lot depends on the personalities, ethos and culture. It is better to start small and often and be responsive to feedback from users.

Next up was Zelda Chatten from University of Liverpool. In early 2006 Liverpool had many many subject blogs but it proved hard to keep this going - eventually you run out of things to say. However the most successful blog was the e-resources blog, which continues to be updated. This blog now filters information into Facebook and Twitter. In late 2007 a Facebook page was set up as another way to promote new resources and services and does get a good response.

Twitter was set up for welcome week 2009 and was publicised in all library inductions. Relevant and interesting tweets are retweeted. They found it valuable to follow others as another source of information - I hadn't really thought about this for our twitter feed (about to be set up imminently) but I will now.

Liverpool Uni like Facebook and Twitter - it sparks interest and keeps users aware of the library as well as giving the library staff a more "human" face. Facebook reaches those who never make it as far as the web pages and its free. Zelda also said don't forget the "lurkers", you may be reaching many more people than those who choose to engage with you.

Dave Pulpett from London School of Economics was next talking about their experiences. They have a marketing and communications manager - which I think is key when trying to promote library services. Their motivations for getting involved in social media was a need to keep up, a feeling that they should be doing it and to fill gaps. The approach is very much experimental - see what happens, some things will work others won't.

They used Twitter as feed for discussion on their library catalogue but as it was so successful continued it to cover all areas of the library. Like others they also have a Facebook page and their page is interactive not just static. They use Delicious and have >1000 bookmarks. It has proven to be a good tool for both students and sharing with colleagues. Dave talked about the way forward being mobile - Mobile usage will increase and we need to develop support for this. LSE have LSE mobile for iPhone, soon to develop an android version - this is something that is under development at LJMU too. He also saw feedback and how we respond to this as key, what do we do with what they are telling us via Facebook, Twitter etc?

Last up was Andrew Walsh, who had the unfortunate task of being last as the presenters before him had talked about a lot of the areas in his presentation. As well as a Facebook page they have two twitter feeds, one for the main library and one for the digital repository @hudeprints - the second proving very successful for academics to promote their own work .The twitter feed has been embedded on library web pages as well. They have a number of blogs for different purposes, some of which have proved useful for internal communications e.g. Information Literacy blog has helped networking continue between meetings.

Andrew also talked about comments and star ratings - they started with the library catalogue but now have moved onto other pages - we need to think about whether this is useful. The university have also used other web 2.0 tools previously mentioned by other speakers but Andrew also spent some time looking ahead. Some tools to be aware of are location social networking tools like foursquare - these sites use GPS software on phones to tell you and other people where you are. Layering information on these sites could be a useful tool.

All in all the afternoon was very interesting, as it's always good to see what other people are up to. I am glad we are about to embark on some social stuff ourselves, as we don't want to be left behind. But it was heartening to hear that we weren't the only ones who hadn't created a Facebook page yet.... I say yet... watch this space..

Solstice 2010 - afternoon

So after lunch it was time for the second keynote, Peter Hartley from University of Bradford talking about "how far have we travelled?" He was very entertaining to listen to and talked about a number of ways in which we have travelled. He talked about the explosion of the myth of the digital native, referring to a paper he co-wrote with others from University of Bradford "Defining 'generation Y' towards and new typology of digital learners" - there are really four subgroups of students: digitally inexperienced, digital experienced, digitally reluctant and digital socialites. The digital socialites are probably what we mean when we talk about digital natives. We need to cater for all four groups



He asked whether we had evidence of major change? There are certainly pockets of interesting things going on but we don't yet have the consistent engagement across the curriculum. Technology has transformed and there are lots of really good examples of practice but the really big issues are still the same, like lack of institutional support.



He asked do we need to reconstruct the VLE debate - what do students leave with? How do we move from student dependence to student independence? Do we need to wean them off the VLE slowly through their life at uni?



Learning spaces - how many do we need? We need and archive/museum, a playground (somewhere safe/walled off), the saloon (open to the world) and private space (refuge)



After that it was time some fab fun playing with Yahoo Pipes with our own Jim Turner - this was great because it was interactive and I was pleased to have created my very first pipe - shame it was on the training account so I'll have to do it all again. This is something I definitely need to explore further and play around with.

After a break it was time for Jeffrey Lewis talking about delivering learning materials to the workplace. They wanted to change the delivery method of a course for dental technicians. The cohort of students were geographically dispersed and travel to campus once a week was time consuming. The delivery method was changed to using Adobe connect Pro, video conferencing - traditional lectures or practical demos were delivered straight to the workplace. Lots of images were also made available via Blackboard - I found out that PowerPoint does photo albums, which I didn't know, and it compresses them for you so that it loads much more quickly. Useful tip. Everything is recorded so they can be revisited by students as well. Students can access all the materials from work. They also have a mentor in the workplace.

Collaborating with dental hospitals and dental schools they can pool resources and students can use other organisations for practicals if they are not able to do what they need to in their own workplace. Students get support from their workplace as well as getting all the support from the university they would get if they attended in person. There is a need to support the employer as well, they need to be on board.

Students are performing better in practical and written work that those attending each week. So far feedback from the students has been positive.

The final session of the day was by Ulrike Zwiers talking about using EJS animation in an undergraduate engineering course. The courses are large with strong time constraints and mixed ability students. The curriculum is abstract so motivation is not high with the students. They used easy Java simulations to create learning units aimed to engage the students. Ulrike showed us some examples of simulations that had been created and whilst I have no knowledge of engineering I found them interesting as they were very visual and can understand how these can be used to increase motivation in their students.

Using this software doesn't require any programming knowledge as it creates the code for you. Student are then able to create simulations in workshops. Students found the workshops challenging - but that was the idea. They did rate them as helpful and encouraging although they complained about the lack of German tutorials for the software - this has been addressed.

After a quick summary of the day it was time to head home. All in all a very enjoyable event with some interesting presentations. It's good to see what others are doing and think about how you can apply them in your own work.

Solstice 2010 - morning

Arrived at my first Solstice Conference in sunny Edge Hill University and sat watching the ducks as I was very early. After registering, coffee and biscuits it was time for the first keynote - this was Gilly Salmon, from the University of Leicester, who I realised I'd heard speak before though I can't remember at which conference. Gilly talked about the tree of learning - the roots being the thousands of years of history that are behind us and that given this history it's no wonder that change is hard. She said from the roots the tree goes in different ways

• informal knowledge sharing from chained libraries to creative commons
• work based and vocational learning - she talked about a virtual oil rig they had set up and said that you don't need lots of money or need to do difficult things to get something really useful out of using technology. She talked about using E-book readers for distance learning courses, which I thought sounded like a really good use for them - all the materials the student needed was downloaded to the e-book so was in their hands
• Universities - we need to think differently for the 21st century - the old models won't do
• Schools - the "hole in the wall" experiment uses resources as a spark for learning

Gilly said we need to constantly evolve - what worked this time might not work next time so we need to be a position where we are flexible enough to move and change where needed.

Most new technology isn't built with learning in mind so there is no pedagogy attached and what this means is you have the opportunity to be creative and create the pedagogy. You need evidence to prove the value for learning in order to get the university to recognise the value of it.

University of Leicester have a Media Zoo where staff can go to test out explore and experience technology and how that can be used to enhance their teaching and learning.

The first breakout session I ended was led by Paul Lowe from University of Arts, London who talked about Open-i which is a virtual community of practice for photojournalism. They wanted a space to mix established practitioners with apprentices to share tacit knowledge (storytelling, dialogue, debate and discussion). By engaging in the practice individuals were able to move from being an apprentice to an expert. The community is a global network and was set up completely separate from the visiting lecture programme. The community mixes high level thought leaders, academics, practitioners, MA level students and editors (and other people who use photography) - its a horizontal slice through the industry. This feeds the curriculum, teaching the students what they need to know to work in the industry.

They use Wimba classroom for webinars discussing the key issues in the industry. The pedagogy that had been used for teaching and learning was used for the community. This is supported by a social networking group on the Ning platform with discussion forums and personal pages. Paul talked about how they tried to stimulate asynchronous discussion but it didn't really take off and the feeling was that this was because this type of activity takes place elsewhere. The unique element was the webinars so focus was placed on that. These now run regularly.

The feedback has been mostly positive with negative feedback only relating to the technology. All the webinars are archived and people who had problems with the technology or who were unable to attend live have used this. In terms of staff time, they used a community coordinator (a day a week), a project evaluator (about 10 days) and a project administrator (a day a week). Paul stressed that if funding was an issue and you could only pay for one post the administrator is key. As he pointed out many staff would be happy to be community coordinators as part of their role anyway. I thought this was a really interesting presentation and enjoyed it.

After coffee it was time to two presentations around the active learning theme. The first presented by Martin Jenkins of University of Gloucestershire. Martin talked about the motivations for encouraging and active learning approach across the institution:

• learner empowerment
• collaborative learning
• development of reflection skills
• employability
• student motivation

Digital storytelling was something that really took off in the institution. He asked whether it was active learning or active teaching and stated that active learning shortens the distance between student and staff. What is really important is an exploration space for staff and purposeful support - this includes management support as well as educational development support. I was a little disappointed given the subject matter that this presentation wasn't more "active" itself.

The second presentation in this section was better as it gave real life examples and with a number of presenters the change of voice helps to keep your focus. Angie Daly and Jo McNeill talked about digital storytelling. Students in HE who had been in some way involved in Aim Higher created digital narratives reflecting on their own experiences. They showed two videos, which were works in progress from students, who talked about their experience of deciding to go into HE, how the process was for them and what their future plans were. It was really good to see a practical demonstration of a digital narrative.

Collecting data in this way means that you give away some of the control and hand over some of the research to the subject of the research. However it is very rich data, there is something very powerful about the human/personal voice and you don't get the same impact with written piece of work.

Then time for lunch in the Garden Cafe which was very pleasant indeed

LJMU Learning and Teaching Conference 2010 - Wednesday pm

After lunch, which again was very nice, it was time for the last two sessions of the conference. The first session I attended was by Clare Horrocks from the School of Media, Critical and Creative Arts, talking about getting a verbal/visual mix in the Communication and Cultural Research module. Clare talked about a number of different resources she uses including 19th Century UK Periodicals which we have a subscription to at LJMU. She uses lots of digital sources and for her the visual layout is as important in teaching as the actual text.

The last session of the conference for me was Steve Moss and Paul Welsh talking about using Blackboard to support the foundation degree in police studies. This is a course that working off-campus I need to be able to support so I wanted to find out more about what they were doing with Blackboard, to aid with any queries I might get from these students. The course has a number of different cohorts, totally around 200 students in all, who start at 5 week intervals. They have set up sections for each cohort with an FAQ section that is continually updated. They used the blog tool in Blackboard for group blogs stimulating discussion around key topics and individual blogs for reflection. Forum engagement is 20% of the mark and currently they are trying to address problems getting the students to engage.

They have overcome many technical issues related to police firewalls as well as our LJMU firewall, but this is always something that needs to be considered before introducing something new. They asked staff who use Blackboard to feed in any good ideas for areas they could adopt for this course.

All in all a very interesting and stimulating conference as always. There are things to bring back to my area that we can use to enhance the student experience, particularly in relation to user education and I hope next year more Library and Student Support staff will be presenting at the conference.

LJMU Learning and Teaching Conference 2010 - Wednesday am

So it was back to a chilly Marsh for day 2. Coffee and biscuits on arrival helped a bit. First session was led by Phil Carey and Pat Eastwood and I liked the title of this one "Developing inclusive teaching and learning - a tortoise, mouse or dragonfly?" was interested to see what that was all about. They were looking at inclusivity in teaching and learning and certain metaphors kept reoccurring during the project, that of the tortoise, mouse and dragonfly. They were defined as this:

• tortoise - tenacious but slow (perhaps a little dull), ability to see the long game, willing to get things done - in some ways it reflected some of their concerns (especially in relation to speed)
• mouse - scurry around, very busy but not many people notice them, quick, adaptable - could the mouse frighten the elephant of the institution?
• dragonfly - captures you imagination but can be quite fleeting - was what they were doing sustainable?

Higher Education still excludes lots of people so we need to look at widening participation and enabling access for people with disabilities. We have equality policies, procedures, action plans, assessment principles in place already so we are demonstrating some direction of travel but how we progress this further?

They wanted to include all areas of inclusivity not just disability and raise awareness across the university. Their focus was on the faculty of health and they worked exclusively in the faculty - so it needs to be looked at how this can be disseminated across the university.

We then did a task taking one of the metaphors and considering the qualities that are needed for change in relation to those metaphors, which was interesting. Our group chose the tortoise and focused on the need to see the long game, be tenacious and stay on track, to appreciate that things can take time and not be swayed.

The next session looked at assistive technology and was run by Phil Bakstad and Max Fossard. They talked about technology that can assist students with a particular need but argued we should be promoting inclusion in a general sense. Many of these technologies can be used to help all students not just those with a disability. Inclusive teaching isn't just about satisfying legislation - we have students have individual needs and are from diverse communities and we need to take this into consideration. They demonstrated a couple of pieces of equipment, stressing that there was much more they could show us. We got to play with tablet PCs, drawing on screen with a pen, they could then display all four of the individual displays on the main screen split into four. It was possible to focus in on a particular groups work.

Throughout the presentation they used a microphone and there were speakers located at the back of the room as well as the front. This is really helpful in drowning out background noise for all students. I think we should have employed this technology for the whole of the conference and any future conference. I don't have a particular hearing problem but do find some speakers harder to hear than others. I know using a microphone is a bit daunting for some but to encourage inclusivity we should be doing this as a matter of course, rather than singling out those with hearing difficulties, which can cause embarrassment or make people feel uncomfortable. They also passed around a portable hearing loop kit, which was really discreet and I thought would be useful for staff in meetings as well as for students in user ed sessions. It can be set up in advance so is discreet. Multiple receivers can be plugged into one transmitter.

Recording sessions was also discussed as a really useful way for students who missed lectures to catch up.

I thought this session was really good and gave practical demonstrations of how this technology can be used to help everyone.

After coffee I went to a session by Carol Maynard and Claire Milsom "Great teachers: how shall we know them?". They said that we are not good at evidencing our excellence relating to teaching and learning. They talked about student evaluations of teaching and how we need to be aware of what they are judging good teaching . Student evaluations are important but we need to add our own ways of evaluating what is good teaching - to support and encourage best practice across the institution. According to the research good teaching is

• developing critical learners
• student-focused
• scholarly - researching your own teaching and your subject area
• set of virtues - teaching attributes like respectfulness, openness, pride etc.

We engaged in a task to look at what we should be doing to evidence good teaching as an institution, as a team and as a individual - I found the task quite hard not coming from a teaching background but it was interesting to hear what was already in place and what staff thought should be in place.

The final session of the morning was about teaching with twitter by Maria Barrett - Maria used twitter in to different ways for two off her modules. For Music Theatre and Entertainment Management, in the module The Producers she used the twitter community to gauge what the industry looked for in a good producer to bring this into her teaching. She found when she asked a general question she got no response. When the question was directed at specific people more responses were given. She got some responses from key figures in the industry thereby giving some authority/credibility to the answers. Graduates also responding, which was encouraging. the almost liveness of it was a big advantage, rather than refer to something written in a book 10 years ago this was what was needed now. The disadvantage of something like twitter is that's it a public space and views are subjective.

Maria then went on to talk about how she used the for the Contemporary Issues in Arts Management level 3 module. This is a speaker module where various external speakers come in to present to the students. The final assessment is presentation of a paper at the student-led conference. The presentation is 80% and continuous assessment is 20%. Maria offered the opportunity for the continuous assessment to be assessed by engagement with social media (including twitter). The students used twitter in lots of ways from general questions - help anyone got any ideas, to setting up study groups, providing moral support and sharing resources in a public space. The conference communication was also put out via twitter and it was used at the conference, with groups of students tweeting as the students presented their papers. A big advantage of using this was that there was much more awareness of what was happening across the college, others attended the conference from within the college and some "real" guests as well (this was unusual before). Also the Daily Post got in touch via twitter to ask if they could do a feature on the conference.

The advantages is that it allows students to contribute in their own time, in their own place., they could keep connected to the module whilst on placement and it makes continuous assessment more tangible. The disadvantages are that it can be distracting, time-consuming and does need some caution, with regards authority and veracity. Also its not a private site and there are ethical issued of privacy for students information, but we should be teaching them this anyway.

And then it was time for lunch.....

LJMU Learning and Teaching Conference 2010 - Tuesday pm

After lunch it was time for a bit of mind mapping - well learning about how mind mapping was used with English students. Kate Walchester talked about how mind maps were used as part of a staff research project and a Level 3 independent study module. Level 1 students were asked to create a map in groups exploring what it meant to be an English student. They could use text, symbols, pictures - it was completely open to them. What was demonstrated by the maps was that students have complex lives in which study is only a part. All aspects are integrated and we need to take this into consideration, we can't see study as a distinct aspect. The exercise allowed them to target some of the common anxieties

• making friends - created an English society
• huge assignments - led to some year long modules
• lectures and note taking - tried different lecturing strategies

The Level 3 students led the task with the Level 1s and they commented on how much more focused on particular careers the current first years seemed to be - more than they were when they were in first year. It could be the current climate that accounts for a more strategic approach to university but we don't know. The maps can be used to help students realise their expectations. Where there is a discrepancy between what their expectations are and what staff know English to be they can see where the student is likely to be challenged. For the Level 3 students, they have been thinking about thinking - thinking about their subject and what it means to study their subject.

The next session was led by Alex Irving from the Liverpool Screen School and looked at the harnessing the power of metaphor in HE. She argued that metaphorical language is generally valued less than the literal and yet we talk about the need to be creative. Creativity is seen as a way to manage and cope with the rate of change that is currently happening. Can we teach creativity and creative thought? In an attempt to unlock creativity in students leg serious play and labyrinths were used. Students built a metaphorical model of their own identity. It's argued that learning happens when we create something external to ourselves. Level 3 journalism students created models of their learning journey, past present and future.

The labyrinth encourages mindful meditation. It is different to a maze (something I didn't realise) as it has one path that meanders into the centre and then back out again - so it's a meditative walk. I thought we could do with one of these and wondered if it would help with my attempts at mindfulness, which I'm finding pretty hard right now.

Very interesting - I think we should ditch PowerPoint at the next officers day and get the Lego out.

More coffee and then time for more sessions. The first was Jim Turner showing us the innovative learning spaces that have been created around LJMU. He looked at how the different aspects of the Physical, social and cultural act together to aid (or not) learning. Rooms can be amplifiers amplifying the social and cultural aspects, whether good or bad. The aim was to create spaces that aided learning. The students interviewed gave positive feedback on the use of the new rooms. In general space can improve the well being in the group which affects the level of learning. It looks like we have some really interesting spaces in LJMU that provide more opportunities for different ways of learning, than the traditional lecture style. I think we need more of these spaces and I hope the work of the group continues because some rooms across the university are incredibly difficult to work in.

The last presentation of the day was led by Martyn Stewart and Sue Piddock Jones looking at the forgotten students - the 2nd year students. They talked about the "sophomore slump" phenomena which students grades dip in their second year and then rise again in the 3rd year. They are aiming to research whether this happens across disciplines or whether some areas are bucking the trend, thereby giving possible solutions to the problem. Sue talked about the Sport Development course where the sophomore slump doesn't happen. They take a different approach:

• a 5 week transition period in year 1
• personal tutor - pdp module, focusing on learning at your best, goal setting and reflection
• problem based learning module at the start of level 2 (transition again)
• worked based learning at the start of year 2 for 4 weeks
• options modules in year 2

Other things to consider are:

• assessments in year 2
• marking in relation to level "twoness"
• expectations at level 2 (staff and students -do they match?)
• transition to more independent learning
• curriculum content and delivery

The other question to ask is: is it all about level specific strategies or building bridges between the levels?

An excellent first day - day 2 report coming soon