A (lot of a) Little Bit About Me
This is, for me, the most challenging part of the
site to assemble but, here we go . . . . I am Welsh, born in
From an early age I have liked to learn new things and this
has led to a (so far) life-long relationship with education
systems of one sort or another. Following a thoroughly enjoyable and successful experience in school, my own first venture into the
nether regions of higher education was when I went to
Manchester University straight from school with very
good A level results to study Medicine. This was something
that seemed sensible, had an obvious "good" job at the end of
it, had the potential to become a Forensic Pathologist just like 'The Expert' on the telly and everyone else thought it was brill. The one downside
was that you had to learn a lot and it was BLOODY hard and I didn't actually like it when
I got there! My head is happiest when it is able to work things out and when you have to learn a body, you just have to know it. The result was fairly predictable and painful,
but character-forming. I am now convinced that studying something
that you love to do, whatever it is, is more of a pleasure and
more likely to yield excellent results than studying something
that seems like a sensible thing to get you where you feel you
need to be. The ideal is when both of these things coincide I
suppose. To some extent, I found this myself when I
transferred from Medicine to study Physics, also at Manchester, to degree level.
I spent many years of my working life, in the commercial
sector. Firstly as a research and development engineer, using my physics in
the field of infra-red instrumentation, then as an Industrial
Engineer with Michelin
In 1995 I moved into the Higher Education sector as an employee, rather than "just" as a student, going to Staffordshire University to manage the then School of Computing's publicly-funded Centre for IT in Industry. In 1997 I spent a couple of years working with Staffordshire Careers and CEBP (Birmingham Careers) to manage the development and implementation of "Aspire", a bespoke CRM system. This was a very interesting and challenging time in many ways. The fruits of these labours, and those of many other people who shared the voyage of discovery and, indeed, have travelled yet further, is now available as a commercial product from a commercial organisation (more on their web site at www.aspire-uk.com).
In 1999,
the initial Aspire development and implementation being
complete, I returned to the School of Computing in a much more
traditional academic role, still with some responsibility for
external work, but much more heavily involved in the students'
Learning and Teaching, particularly in the Systems Analysis
and Design and System Modelling area that was studied by all computing students in
their first (and now also their second) years. At a ripe old
age, entirely through happenchance and with a fine disregard
for planning, I discovered what I wanted to do when I grew up! It has been a joy to have been able to do this until I retired at the end of 2018.
I still talk to students and alumni with fondness about the mad case studies upon which their assignments were based at that time. The antics of Lentils Are Us (LARUS), the Staffordshire Snail Racing Federation (SSRF), the Transylvanian Blood Service (TBS) and Blunderbirds (here) still cause me to smile. September 2004 was something of an end to an era for me as a much more sensible case study was adopted for the SAD module. We managed to squeeze in SqueeziJet and The South Hesslich Heritage Musem and then, at very short notice, in January 2008 I was asked to look after the module again so had the pleasure of writing a case study again. Connie and the Confectionary Factory hit the streets. I still have the (real) Hovercraft Club of Great Britain up my sleeve that I am sure will be used one day. Jim Lynne, the past president of the HCGB has even given his permission for it to be used. In 2009, SAD became SM (System Modelling) and, after a couple of years of Connie and the antics of her confectionary factory staff, it was decided that a case study that bore at least a passing semblance to relevant real life for the people studying it would not be a bad idea so Heavenly Homes appeared in early 2011. In 2013 System Modelling then became DSSD (Data Storage and Software Development) and Yorkshire's Got Talent was the story to torture the students - inspired by the Uxbridge English Dictionary broadcast often on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. Until I retired, I was constantly considering new possibilities for case-studies - perhaps Gig Grother, Cop Gear, Glove Island or some other barely disguised icon of modern culture might appear to torture the students.
I had, until I retired, had a role in the Faculty that involved recruiting students to the awards that are studied in the Department of Computing and Digital Technologies. I felt privileged to talk of courses of study that I really believe can change the outlook and the lives of the people who are looking to study them. In 2013 I became the award leader for the school's then (relatively) new Foundation Year in Computing award. A year that is specifically designed for people who have either been out of education for a while but will be able, for one reason or another, to study computing at degree level or who had not attained the level of qualification needed to start on a BSc award directly so that they can experience learning in Higher Education and explore themselves whether university is for them. If it is, and they show this by completing the foundation year successfully, they can indeed start to study on a computing award at degree level.
It was only after I retired from my role in the faculty that I
realised how much of my time and very existence was spent on ensuring
that students had the best learning experience I could provide. This has many facets:
- being constantly alive to the news and how it might relate to students' learning
- spending most evenings, when at home, with a laptop on my lap in the lounge ensuring that learning materials
for the next day were in the best possible state and available to students
- ensuring that students' queries were answered fully as quickly as possible after they were posed
- pProviding formative feedback on students' work
- carrying out a myriad of communication and updating tasks to support students' learning.
Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed doing what I did and did not resent a moment of it, it is only when it
stopped that I realised how time-consuming and all-absorbing it was. I do not miss this aspect of my
previous work one iota. It is actually a great joy to hear something relevant in the news and think to
myself "That's interesting" rather than automatically thinking "That's interesting and relevant to students
on this module or that module so we can weave it in to ther learning in this way or that way . . . . . . .
And now the scary bit:
The cat
was placed very firmly among my personal pigeons on November 18th,
2001 when I suffered, and was very fortunate to survive, a
sub-arachnoid brain haemorrhage and subsequent infections.
After an interesting few years (amongst a lot of other things,
having to relearn inhibition and risk management as an adult
is a VERY interesting experience) my recovery has been
miraculous and, a full six years after I was first ill, the
NHS agreed that my recovery had been as complete as possible
and discharged me with glee. I am moved to say that, having
been given a five percent chance of survival on Christmas Day
2001, I am very aware of the boolean nature of statistics for
individual cases (in my case, I was the individual). If
something happens to you, or you are considering doing
something, anything, and there is a 95% chance of a poor
outcome, as long as you are in the 5%, it is ok.
Coming
within a hair's-breadth of meeting my maker somewhat earlier
that I had thought I might has had, and continues to have, a
significant positive influence on my life. I am constantly
suffused with joy at simple things that I, for one, used to
take very much for granted. Not only did I spend long enough
unconscious (six seeks in all) to be able to give up smoking
without any (other) hassle, but having the ability to remember
a phone number for long enough to dial it all, to be able to
stand unaided, to be able to walk across a sandy beach
bare-footed without falling over, to cycle to the shops,
to work and even to Amsterdam (for charity) on roads that are also used by other cars,
to be able to stand on one leg without having to hold
onto something to keep my balance, to have voluntary control
over my own bowels (sorry about that one!) and many, many
simple things are now sources of great joy and thankfulness.
Gill Bolte-Taylor has experienced a similar experience
and speaks eloquently about it here .
Well,
that's turned out to be something more that it was intended to
be! Sorry if there's too much detail for you but I
suppose if you are going to bare your soul, you may as well
make a thorough job of it!
Having
been blessed to have experienced the things above, and more, I
feel that I have learned a lot. Here
you can see, written down, the things that I wish that I
could definitely say I have passed on to people who are very
close to me.
This page was created on, or about, November 1999 and was last updated on 5th June 2024