Research Essentials

  I just had my first “shushing” today in my new desk in the open plan working environment of the JLB. I was moved there because I joined a new project and other team members were there. Don’t get me wrong. The shushing was very politely done, but nevertheless it was a bit of a [...]

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Glancing through this blog, I realised that it had the tagline “perspectives on an academic environment” and I thought that perhaps I had neglected this aspect somewhat so heres some perspectives and maybe a little perspective too Summer is a funny time in academia. Everybody seems to disappear. Having moved to an open plan space [...]

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After an exciting holiday shared with the bat colony living in our loft appartment, I returned to install myself in the new building. Initial impressions are good. The ambient light filtering in through the translucent walls has a pleasant and soft hue and is pleasing to work in. The area I’m in has, thus far, [...]

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I just bumped into Patrick in the corridoor and he assured me that the students will be in the new building. It’s nice to know that the Institute of Educational Technology loves its students.

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I started wondering which would be better, hot desking or fixed, so I thought I’d try to come up with a list of pros and cons. However I then realised that there are two different ways of hotdesking. You can either issue hotdesking staff with a laptop on which they keep their working environment with [...]

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Patrick unusually late today for our supervision meeting. I now realise that it was because he was involved in planning the desk layouts for the Jennie Lee. When we’d finished discussing me and my things, he said that they had finally settled on some really nice layouts for the JLB. However they had had to [...]

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Reading Julia’s response to my post about the Jennie Lee building got me thinking about its potential effect on the communities. The work-based communities, such as the courses team or the OpenLearn team, will be placed near each other in delimited spaces. But what about the other groups. I am thinking particularly of the PhD [...]

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I went on my tour of the new Jennie Lee building today. There were supposed to be 10 of us, but only 4 made it on time, although one late-comer did manage to squeeze in before we’d gone too far. Time and the Jennie Lee tour wait for no-one. I was impressed by the interior [...]

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