{"id":444,"date":"2016-07-07T11:05:38","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T11:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/?p=444"},"modified":"2016-07-15T09:43:14","modified_gmt":"2016-07-15T09:43:14","slug":"road-trip-newcastle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/sacaca-project\/2016\/07\/road-trip-newcastle\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Road Again: Our Trip to Newcastle"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Newcastle
Newcastle University Business School<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While most of you have been heading South for the summer, Sam Phelps and I, both members of the co-design group were bucking the trend and heading North. That’s right, on Wednesday we travelled up to Newcastle University Business School with Mark Gatenby and Stefan Cantore. This trip was as a result of our presentations at the Chartered Association of Business School\u2019s conference earlier in the year. Whilst there, a member of the teaching staff at Newcastle, Frank Worthington, had asked us if we would be able to deliver the sessions to other teaching staff at Newcastle University Business School (NUBS) Learning and Teaching Workshop. After work to arrange this, Wednesday was settled on as the day and off we went.<\/p>\n

Much like Birmingham, it was another early start, meeting at Southampton Airport for 6am. This almost became a problem for Mark, who had to wake his taxi driver up, and wait for him to fix a flat tyre\u2026all before he\u2019d left home! Luckily we all made it on time, and arrived fresh in Newcastle at 8:30. From the airport it was straight to the venue, where after a quick \u201cpreparation coffee\u201d we were ready to go.<\/p>\n

We delivered two sessions over approximately 2 hours. The first was on the co-creation group and the undergraduate Business Management suite as a whole, and the second was a more interactive session, introducing the staff at NUBS to self-managed learning. It was really great, as always, to receive such a high level of interaction when talking about our work at Southampton. We opened the floor to questions throughout the presentation, and the intense discussion (particularly around economics and how this fitted into various models of Business School, proposed by others and attempted to be synthesised by us) actually caused us to run slightly later for lunch. Again as always, I always come away feeling like we have more to say, yet delighted with the audience reaction and, most importantly, interaction.<\/p>\n

The second session was, as I mentioned, much more like a workshop. The pressure was really on for this one, as it was the same session we delivered in Birmingham, and the main reason Frank had invited us. Fortunately, the session went well, similarly to how it went in Birmingham. Again, one of the most fascinating things from my point of view was witnessing academics going through exactly the same uncertainty, asking the same questions and feeling as baffled as we all did at the start of the process. However, once they began to grasp the way self-managed learning works, and the benefits behind it, they started to embrace the process, and there was a last minute rush for the resources we had bought with us to help them. I think seeing the benefits of it clearly explained by Stefan, and how the academics from NUBS responding was very beneficial, and answered a lot of my own questions regarding self-managed learning! This was summarised for me by an attendee of the conference asking me \u201cHow on earth can you answer all of my questions as quickly and succinctly as you are?\u201d. \u201cSimple\u201d I replied, \u201cI had the exact same questions when I started!\u201d. It is only through answering these questions, that our skills around learning can develop, and that is the key message I hope people took from the workshop.<\/p>\n

I can’t finish this post without mentioning the building in which NUBS is based in however. We were told it was the ex-offices of Newcastle Brown Ale, but by far the most exciting thing for me was that we were mere metres away from the Gallowgate end of St James Park. I had never been to Newcastle before, but members of my family had grown up there, and are strong Newcastle fans, so it was an added bonus to give our presentation looking out over the famous stadium.<\/p>\n

It was all in all a great trip, and I thank, as always, Stefan and Mark for inviting Sam and myself along. I also want to thank Frank for inviting the four of us to Newcastle, and hope that all attendees enjoyed and felt they benefitted from our sessions.<\/p>\n

Right, off to catch my plane back! Hope you’re all enjoying your summer.<\/p>\n

Here are some photos from our day:<\/p>\n