wondering

Bart is the Programme Director for an undergraduate degree. He's been teaching for many years and has been very busy coordinating modules and courses, timetabling, and juggling lots of related paperwork, as well as having a full teaching load. He's just had another busy morning and is having a coffee break. As he stirs sugar into his coffee, he sighs a little, wishing that he could re-energise his teaching. He and his colleagues have been fairly traditional about how they teach their courses, building on the norms of the discipline and although he still feels they are doing a good job, he can't help wondering about whether there are other approaches and whether some of the technology that the place is bristling with could be put to better use than waves of emails and rather flat PowerPoint presentations.

Agnetha comes in to the cafe and sits down at the same table. She knew Bart from years back when they were both students and she hasn't seen him for a long time. They chat about old times and the craziness of the place they now find themselves working in. She tells him about the work she's starting to plan around digital technologies in teaching and learning and she sounds quite excited about it, now that she's discovered that there are tools that can help her take a systematic approach, such as DigCompEdu. Bart is a bit confused and thinks she was choking or stifling a sneeze when she said 'DigCompEdu', but she explains and he seems intrigued.

"When I first heard about it, I groaned a little," she admits, "thinking it sounded like another formal, dry Eurocrat policy. But then, when I looked at it properly, I realised that it's actually a helpful, practical tool and the biggest surprise was that it focused on educational issues and the work of the teacher, rather than specifying IT tools and technical standards." He raised an eyebrow at this, but was prepared to give Agnetha the benefit of the doubt. She'd always struck him as level-headed and quite perceptive.

Later that day, he downloaded the DigCompEdu document and skipped through to the section on teaching to see if it would spark any ideas for how he might revamp his teaching, and importantly, whether those ideas would be useful discussing with his colleagues in the programme team so that they could collectively enhance their courses and support each other.

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