Professor Debbie Holley shares her reflections on a webinar delivered at the ANTF symposium 2021, in collaboration with Dr Sue Beckingham and Dr Helen Webster.
The Association of National Teaching Fellows and CATEs Symposium 2021, in partnership with AdvanceHE was celebrated online this year. We focused on celebrating good practice, sharing ideas, and networking through wonder.me (where we created bubbles and moved around the room to create circles and then chat to our fellow NTFs and CATEs). A central area for the community to progress relates to the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion work led by keynote Professor Sally Everett. Her talk covered the structural barriers that make it difficult to advance a career in learning and teaching, and the lack of champions, role models and specific career pathways for ‘others’. The new JISC mailing list ‘NTF In It Together’ has just been launched, and NTFs and those interested in this crucial area are warmly invited to join in. Find out more from an insider’s view of the symposium, where ‘newbie’ NTF Dr Beatriz Acevedo reflects on the day.
Our focus for the symposium this year was ‘An avenue to exchange ideas’, building upon our earlier national webinar delivered in January to aspiring NTFs.
We invited NTFs to an ‘avenue to exchange ideas’ (Forbes) 20.03.2021). Networks are built upon a reciprocal two-way relationship with real people, says Prof Sally Brown. Harvard Business Review add an additional level – strategic networking for linking up with others, developing skills and creating a role as an opinion leader. Our session, useful to any educators seeking to develop and enhance their sphere of influence, offered some insights into networking using social media, and there was an opportunity to map and reflect upon individual online networks. We then shared our own case studies on national committee work, blogging, and social media for building networks and influencing in different contexts.
Our presentation can be accessed here: An avenue to exchange ideas – Networks and why they matter
Follow our NTF work on twitter @NTF_tweet
Sue is on Twitter as @suebecks, Helen as @scholastic_rat and Debbie as @debbieholley1
