A new month … a new start

Today is the first day of teaching in the academic calendar of Middlesex University and this is a welcome from me to all our new students embarking on their BA Professional Practice programme of study. We met a group of new starters at our induction day last week and besides introducing you to the wider university systems and services we spent time looking at Module 1.

We explained the three themes involved in the module and the related readers and tasks attached to each of these themes. All those doing the module need to set up a blog where the tasks will be posted. These will be reviewed by the tutors who will give generic feedback on their own blogs.

In the course of the induction session we asked those present to think of something they were good at. Then we asked them to think about “how” they got good at it. The discussion showed that people got good at something through trial and error, continuous practice, learning from peers / mentors, and from other sources eg. Books, web sources etc. Getting good at something involves a change in the way you do something and in the context of professional practice it involves transforming your professional practice. Central to all this is the practice of REFLECTION something that you will develop as you proceed through the module and the programme.

For the moment, I encourage you to get started by setting up your blog and reading your Handbook for Module 1. Get to grips with what is required – as emerging professionals you will need to learn to manage your time in completing this programme. I hope you will enjoy it as much as our previous students have.