Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Good times for a change

Today was such a typically interesting day.

Got in this morning, went through the waiting emails and dealt with two issues raised directly or indirectly by Programme Members. Most of the time I can address and solve (at least in the short term) problems that come up and it's a nice feeling because you know that at the other end of the problem are real people who will feel they've made the right choices by coming to Henley to study.

Then I finished off some flow-charts mapping all the possible scenarios in the registration and re-registration process for the MBA from next year. Progression is the key measurement for us and the more we can do to keep helping people stay on track, the better. Mind you, the more we look at putting all of this into the system, the greater the challenge seems.

A quick and informal up-date meeting with the project manager for the virtual learning environment before lunch, including pondering how to get good blogging ability set up for all our participants (we ended up playing around with ideas for names to call it - 'VLE' sounds generic and dull). Henley staff have a great self-service canteen, and it's a wonderful place to sit and chat with people from all parts of the College.

After lunch, a coaching session with one of my 'guinea pigs', people who have agreed to be coached by me as part of my portfolio for the Henley Coaching Certificate. I really enjoy the coaching process, it's a real pleasure to flex one's 'curiosity' muscles. Don't know if my coachee felt uplifted, but I think we had a good session.

Then a meeting with the director of the Associate School in Denmark, who is spending a few days here. We talked about the system of workshops for the distance learning MBA and how they are handled there. All these major pieces of the day are fleshed out by short and long, informal and formal, funny and exasperating interchanges with people in and out of the College.

I love days that are full of varied incident and progress with issues.