Summer Puddings

 I have been finding it really interesting both reading other blogs on the MAPP this week, but also draft AOLs.  Picking up on Adesola's blog this week, looking at how we work, I find it really interesting to see the different approaches we all take, not only in our learning and teaching, but in how we approach documenting that learning.

Finding your personal narrative has been the first step in putting pen to paper and writing your first AOL, for some of you, for others, thinking of the specific area in your practice and delving right in with what that stands for professionally, what that encompasses for you now, and then working the process back through a more historical account that embraces your learning journey along the way.

Both approaches (along with others) are fine.

Some of you have been questioning your AOLs along the lines of 'is this right?'.  One of the (many) aspects of teaching and learning in HE which excites me is the diversity it can embrace, the room for finding your own way through the pathways you choose.  The MAPP not only allows for, but really promotes this independent journey, and embraces the different routes you have all taken in teaching and learning at its core.  Equally individuality in your presentation of these AOLs and your ROL in general is embraced.

There is no right or wrong as such, and our role as advisors on this programme is really to support your journey, encouraging and guiding you in reflective practice and writing with an understanding of expectation in academic contexts.  Please remember that in addition to your advisor, you should be referring to your module handbooks when approaching written work.  The handbooks are written to support you within an academic framework of learning, and act as a starting point for resources and literature which you should refer to in order to further your understanding and your writing through each module.

Do make reference to your research, beyond you.  Whilst you are the source of much knowledge and experience and are at the core of your learning through the MAPP, there is a wealth of information around you also, offering support to your learning and allowing you the possibility of contextualising what you have learnt through experience within an academic framework - what the MAPP is all about.

As you really get into the writing part of your modules now, and are heading towards assessment of your learning through this writing in the form of your RoL essay, try to integrate theory with practice.  Refer back to the Introduction to Module One handbook at this point, how have the tasks helped you to identify different areas of your learning and develop an understanding of knowing how you know what you know?  How might theories on learning support what you are now observing of your practice through reflection?

Begin to blend your learning and the presentation of it.  To draw on Hopal's cooking analogy from an earlier blog, try to produce something more along the lines of a rich summer pudding than a lemon meringue pie...layers of different fruits merging together over time, wrapped in/surrounded/supported by bread (which has also absorbed the juice of the fruits), not too separate entities of lemon and meringue merely co-existing in time.

: )