Dear colleagues,

This week we have the pleasure to have with us Chris Corker (@ChrisCorker), a Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University who will be leading the #LTHEchat on ‘Discussing failure and when things go wrong in Learning and Teaching’

Chris Corker

Chris Corker is, in his own words, a ‘learning and teaching enthusiast’, having previously worked and published in areas related to learner autonomy, employability, retention, critical thinking, and most recently failure. His discipline background is in History, where is he is currently working on his PhD on the Sheffield Armaments Industry between 1900 and 1930. He also teaches in History, and recently co-developed a module which gives first year history students the chance to work in libraries and archives to uncover potentially new and untouched aspects of local history. Several publications are forthcoming documenting the approach.

Alongside Chris, Sue Beckingham from the LTHEchat team will be facilitating the chat.

Discussing failure and when things go wrong in Learning and TeachingIt appears when it comes to Learning and Teaching, we never talk about when things go wrong. You only need to look at how many times the word ‘success’ comes up in journals, article titles, conferences and so forth to see that we are obsessed with sharing what went well. So what about ‘failure’? There seems to be a taboo around the word, and that somehow not sharing when things go wrong is for the best. This is where our discussion comes in. I believe that there is a wealth of knowledge to be gathered from when things don’t go to plan or fail that simply isn’t shared, yet is just as powerful as talking about when things do go to plan. By sharing failures we can prevent repeating such mistakes again and potentially help the community develop further from such an exchange of knowledge. There is even the potential that something that didn’t work in one institution, subject or discipline could work elsewhere, and that the element which led to failure is idiosyncratic to the environment, not the idea. We are only scratching the surface, but there is certainly a lot to learn in this area. I hope our chat generates some meaningful discussion. See you all Wednesday!

If you are reflecting on this specific #LTHEchat please share your post with us so that we can reblog. A Google presentation has been set-up to share your thoughts there as well.

image source: here

We will be collaborating more with students and introduce dedicated #LTHEchat s led by the student community. These will be called: “Questions we always wanted to ask you” which will be a great opportunity to bring educators and students closer together.  The student guest  will represent questions from the student community. Questions he will share will include some of his own but also those from his peers.

If you have other suggestions on how we could make the #LTHEchat more valuable for you, please let us know.

See you Wednesday, same time, same place 😉 – 8-9PM GMT #LTHEchat

The LTHEchat team