Words on Otherworlds

I miss our regular two hours of confusion on a Tuesday morning. And what is sadder still is that you were the only cohort to experience, learn from and endure Otherworlds. For soon I am to leave Manchester for pastures new and Otherworlds will be disappearing with me. By the time this year's intake of freshers reach the dizzy heights of the 3rd year, Otherworlds will be but a dim and distant memory.

But on the bright side, rumours are correct, Craig and I are currently drafting a paper on our experiences of Otherworlds and you can look forward to publication in a suitably learned scholarly journal at some stage in the not too distant future (publishing timescales allowing). You will all be acknowledged, for you all helped to make the experience what it was.

I read an interesting article recently in the Times Higher (28 September, 46-47 'Ready to furnish tools of thought'). A piece urging lecturers to be more critical, reflexive and creative in the way they teach - indeed encouraging us to involve the students in the knowledge-making process. Everything Ms Swain said read to me like the basics of what any lecturer should already be doing, and it sadenned me to think how rarely students really engage in the knowledge-making process today. So who knows, if nobody else is taking on the challenge, I may one day have to return to spread the Otherworlds word, or it may come to a bookshelf near you, for students of the future to challenge the sausage factory and stake their claim for the right to critical pedagogy! :) (If it is posible to confine the monster that is Otherworlds to the pages of a book that is, I am no Hagrid...).