This week

I currently only teach at the Burnley campus of UCLan, teaching two modules to the foundation degree. However, initially I was supposed to be teaching one module across two campuses, due to a timetable clash my colleague and I changed our teaching responsibilities so she teaches my module in the main campus and I teach hers in the Burnley campus. This has led to us sharing lectures and using each others resources rather than replicating work. This week, the lecture I was teaching for the module my colleague leads was a briefing about the assignments they are required to complete. This experience led me to reflect on the difference in our teaching styles, and how difficult it is to use someone else's lectures, especially when they use different techniques and have much less input than I would choose to have. My colleague often asks students to 'do the work themselves', by this she means setting students group activities and asking them to complete them and feed back to the class. I find this a relatively difficult way to teach, especially as we both teach classes of non-traditional students, often mature students or students for whom English is not their first language. I find that using a lot of activities can be quite 'hit and miss' and often relies on one or two students being present and contributing to a discussion or taking a lead in activities which they soon tire of. However, as I am not writing the lectures for one of the module on which I teach, I have no choice but to change my style and use the resources I have access to. This week I have appreciated how difficult it is to use someone else's lectures, I realise how difficult it must be for her, she is using my lectures which are written in completely different style, I will definitely be including more options for activities in the future, enabling her to use the content she feels most comfortable with. Although next academic year I will ensure I have time to change the lectures I am using and if necessary, write new ones.

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