No more "Innovation North"

From 1.August the faculty which I joined 5 years ago, "Innovation North", ceased to exist. As a part of the Leeds Met Faculty Realignment process, this faculty has now been merged with the former "Faculty of Arts and Society".

Two Leeds Met Staff shortlisted for THE Awards

Every year in autumn, the Times Higher Education (THE) magazine gives awards to universities in different categories. Leeds Met has been shortlisted and commended a few times in the past years. When this year's shortlist came out today it was nice to see that two members of staff are on the shortlist for "Most Innovative Teachers of the Year": Nicholas Halafifi from the Carnegie Faculty, and Catherine Sanderson from the Faculty of Health.

Congratulation to you two for this nomination, and best wishes for the actual award ceremony!

Graduation Week 2009

The Leeds Met Graduation 2009 was held this past week at the Headingley Campus, in the white Marquee on the Acre. Each day another faculty had their celebration, and on Friday it was the turn of our Faculty Innovation North. In two celebrations, our students and the students from the Regional University Network were handed their award. Two honorary degrees were also conferred: to entrepreneur James Caan and to the CEO and Founder of MOBO, Kanya King. Later that afternoon, a reception was held to honour our former Dean Cath Orange who is leaving the university in a few months.

Open Day at Leeds Met

This weekend, Saturday and Sunday, Leeds Metropolitan University is organising an Open Day, for prospective students to visit the campus, talk to lecturers, and inform themselves about studying.

For the first time, the main venue was the newly opened Rose Bowl near the Civic Quarter, across form Civic Hall. For this weekend, Innovation North has their information stands in room 317 and 320. A good dozen of members of staff were present today and will be tomorrow as well. We had quite a good turnout of visitors, despite the weather which was tempting for some outdoor activities, although in the afternoon there was a brief drizzle.

Leeds Met has "buzz" (Times Higher Education)

I just found this article in the online Times Higher Education magazine. It describes that Leeds Met has the most buzz about it, when it comes to web blogs and reviews. I wonder if my own blog here with my occasional reporting about Leeds Met has a little bit contributed to this... (well, actually Leeds Met is tops not in blogs but in news coverage, whereas the blog coverage is topped by Sheffield Hallam).

Visiting other Institutions

Our hosts are from the H.M.Patel Institute for English. We are also interested to meet other people from the university. Unfortunately, this is the time of the Hindu festival Diwali, which just was a few days ago: celebration of the beginning of the New Year. Students actually have off, and many of the staff is on holiday too. This Diwali festival becomes more popular, as India appears to move away from Western holiday schedules: we were told that a few decades ago Christmas was the major holiday, but it is being nowadays been replaced by Diwali.

We visit the Faculty of Arts which is not very far away. Very interesting architecture of the building. We see the workshop rooms and ateliers, with exhibitions of paintings and sculptures. Then we try to meet someone at the Faculty of Art, but they are all on holiday. We further visit Asha's faculty, the Faculty of Business. were we receive an information pack and a light meal, prepared by the restaurant of the School of Tourism.

In the evening, Dr. Jadeja, head of the H M Patel institute, invites us to a restaurant. I enjoy the dosa, but I could not resist ordering s "sizzler": cabbage leafes outside on a sizzling pan, inside filled with rice and vegetables. There appears also to be a sausage-like thing - is probably made of soy.

Am feeling a bit worse, the frequency and intensity of my sneezing increases.

New site: "The Innovation Bank"

Linda Brougthon and her team from the NTI have set up a great website for our faculty: http://www.innovationnorth.co.uk - The Innovation Bank. One of the very nice and useful things that are there is the interaction regarding Level-3 final year projects: students can access project ideas, and supervisors can manage these projects.

The site is publicly accessible over the web.

Times Higher Education Awards 2008: Leeds Met Shortlisted Again!

As every year since 2005, the Times Higher Education gives out awards to universities, recognising achievements in a wide variety of areas. Leeds Met has won in 2006 in the category "outstanding contribution to the local community" and became 2nd in the overall "Unviversity of the Year" category. When I opened today this week's Times Higher Education issue, I saw that Leeds Met again has made it into the shortlist: this time in the category "outstanding contribution to inovation and technology", for a project on giving student feedback through audio (MP3 files). Congratulations, Bob!

SDF: Faculty Day

On Thursday the day of our faculty, Innovation North, in the Leeds Met Staff Development Festival. I attended a workshop given by a specialist on Intellectual Property (IP), and then joined Tony Bryant in the workshop "I am a researcher - get me out of here!".

In the afternoon, the Ideas Factory presentations were repeated, and I got my medal a second time (after I had handed it in before).

During the last plenary keynote talk I was asked to joint the faculty management team who were sitting in the first row. Tony was not to be found, so I was told that I should say something about research as kind of closing remarks of the day. During the quite funny keynote by comedian Kevin McCarron I was collecting my thoughts to produce some meaningful sentences (without any powerpoint slides!). Then we all walked onto the stage. As I take place, I see that Tony is here too! He must have been there all the time, just had not been noticed. So what now about my words about research? I do not want to say the same as he, since this would just "his show"... so when it is my turn I talk something general about the Staff Development Festival, instead of what I had wanted to say (which was how to link research with student-related teaching etc.). Then Tony gave his public address, and our faculty day closed.

SDF: Research Day

Today the Leeds Met Staff Development Festival held its Research Day, where talks, workshops, and symposia were held related to Leeds Met research activities. I had set up a mini-symposium: "Creative Technology - An Oxymoron?". John Elliott gave a talk about the human mind, Michael Ward presented state of the art of musical beat tracking, and Ben Dalton showed examples of robotics and remote presence used for creativity.

Two presentations at Staff Development Festival

On Thursday there was the "Assessment, Learning, and Teaching" (ALT) Day at the Leeds Met Staff Development Festival. It began and ended with plenary keynote speakers, and in between there were two workshop sessions. Originally I had proposed to hold three workshops, but only two workshops were possible due to the schedule constraints. So I gave the following two workshops: one workshop together with Prof. Roderick King about a software for teaching physiological processes during sports activity, using a game that we and the company Kooji had developed in a joint project; and one workshop about the learning object editing tool CourseLab. Everything went well, except that the room where the CourseLab workshop was held, was completely overheated, due to a problem with the ventilation.

Originally I had offered to hold three workshops, but out of time constraints, I had to withdraw the workshop on the TQEF project about a particular tool my colleague Prof. Claudio Vignali had developed.

Staff Development Festival

As every academic year here at Leeds Met, this year too begins with the Staff Development Festival. This is the fourth of these festivals, and it is also the beginning of my fourth year here at Leeds Met.

The festival opened on Monday with inspirational speeches and a set of workshops. I had been invited to the "Ideas Factory" event, where Leeds Met staff members could present their "idea" for any improvement / concept / activity to a panel of judges. Among these judges was a senior manager from Google. The panel would act likein the "Dragons' Den" and put questions to the presenters, to test the feaibility. The winning idea would be taken forward by the university in the coming months. I presented my idea, in competition with 4 other idea presentations by others. And - I won. Nice :)

Also, in time for the new academic year, Leeds Met has a new website. It looks much more contemporary than the previous version, and in the coming months all pages of the Leeds Met site will be converted into the new layout.

This means that I will have to update the site of the Centre for Creative Technology too...

Olympic Flag at Leeds Met

On Sunday afternoon, a ceremony was held at Leeds Met on the Headingley campus: as the Olympiade in Beijing came to a close during the closing ceremony, the olympic flag went down there, and went up in many towns across the UK. One of the designated locations of the olympic flag is the James Graham Building of Leeds Met.

This was celebrated here with a small party on the lawn. When the flag went up, a firework of glitter paper was shot in front of the entrance. The flag will stay on top of the James Graham Building for 8 days until next Sunday.

Best Wishes for our Dean!

The Dean of our faculty Innovation North, Cath Orange, is leaving the faculty to become university-wide Dean for Post-Graduate Programs. She had been at Innovation North for 4 years, one year before I joined the faculty. On Thursday, we had a little celebration and a fare-well dinner to her honour.

I am very grateful to her, as she had been in the committee for my appointment here at the University. Best wishes for Cath in her new role, where we will continue to work together!

Graduation

At Leeds Met, this week is Graduation Week. That is why I could not add holiday to my business travel, as every Leeds Met member of staff is supposed to be present. Our Innovation North ceremony is on Wednesday evening at 17:00 and on Thursday morning at 11:00. In addition, I have several meetings scheduled for these 3 days in this week - quite busy schedule!

Again I get the same robe as last year, for walking in the academic procession: some greyish thing, with a blue collar and a round greyish hat. It is very warm in the marquee tent, despite the air conditioners. Very festive atmosphere, as every year here. These ceremonies are really special and well arranged!

Open Day at Leeds Met

This Saturday was a very rainy day, strong showers, also some wind gusts (gales, as they say here in UK). This was the first event I am aware that took place now in the temporary Marquee tents on the Acre here in Headingley.

Open Day for the whole university. Each faculty has a stand and presents their offerings to prospective students and their parents. I have decided to show my geotracking application. Is not extremely "cool", just to have that one little icon representing me there on the web screen. But some people are actually genuinely interested in this.

There is a couple from New Zealand whose daughter has decided to come to Leeds Met in a year for a MSc degree. She is specifically interested in Leeds Met - no wonder, some of the buzz has obviously made its way around the globe already!

Many other parents come and ask for our curriculum, courses, opportunities for study. A busy day, starting at 9:30 and ending around 15:00.

Busy Time at Work

Two meetings today at the Old Broadcasting House in the morning. Then in the afternoon, a bit of time for other work. A long list of things to do in the next 2 weeks...

Intensive PhD Program in Cyprus - 1. Day

Unicersity of Cyprus, Noew Campus in Nicosia


The reason why I travelled to Cyprus was to give a workshop within the Intensive PhD Program.

My role in this program was to give a workshop to the PhD students for writing their own paper, to be submitted to a conference, journal, workshop, or other. The seminar started in the morning of Sunday, 22. June, at the campus of the University of Cyprus. Erwin Bratengeyer (Danube University Krems) and Savas Katsikides (University of Cyprus) had organised this seminar and gave an introductory overview on this seminar. Then I started my workshop.

Naturally, when it comes to paper publication in the Computer Science domain, the automatic paper generation tool SciGen comes to mind. While this is a great tool for "testing" conferences, it also has some educational merit as showing the general structure of a paper. And it creates a fun effect for all participants who can get one of those fabulous nonsense papers.

The workshop gave to participants the first assignment: to find suitable outlets for their work.

For lunch we Savvas ordered 8 pizzas, which we ate on the roof of the university building.

Preparations for Graduation and Staff Development Festival

Since Friday, 30.5., the Acre has been fenced off, and the construction of the large Marquee has begun. From my webcam the progress can be followed, it is now turned towards the marquee construction.



This picture was shot Friday afternoon, when the first work on the Acre had started.

First Runner in: 15:33

the first one just came in, I did not hear the name... but quite a good time for the 5000 m distance: 15 min 33 sec.