Do you want to learn a simple trick to help you guarantee career success? It’s called Positive Thinking and it can have a huge impact on your career potential. A single positive thought can be viewed as having the same effect as dropping a pebble in a lake. The ripples…>
Academic Careers
The ‘Delivery’ Metaphor of Teaching and Learning
Many of us might remember learning about metaphors in school mainly as a poetic or linguistic device which we were encouraged to identify and discuss when analysing literary texts. Metaphors can help us understand complex ideas and systems by simplifying them; equally, they can confuse or constrain our thinking by…>
Networking: How to Maximize Opportunities and Boost Your Career Connections
This article considers a few key points about different forms of networking, the challenges as well as the benefits. Whether you are employed, looking for your first job, or aiming to set up your own business, maximising networking opportunities can bring rewards. Let’s start with a question: What images come…>
PowerPoint – Has ‘Click and Talk’ Replaced ‘Chalk and Talk’?
PowerPoint was conceived and developed as presentation software. Even though it was not originally designed for use in teaching, PowerPoint has become ubiquitous in all levels of education. Excessive reliance on this program can have a ‘distancing’ effect and, in the worst instances, teachers stop being teachers and simply become…>
How to Approach the Academic Job Market to Teach English Abroad
“So you are a native speaker of English and you have a PhD. You should be able to teach English, right?” Wrong. This is a common misconception held by aspiring language teaching academics looking to change their career paths and those outside of the profession alike. The academic teaching English…>
Making A Five Year Research Plan
Many academics will be asked by their institutions to produce a research plan that will take them up to the date of the next REF-style audit. In this exercise universities want their researchers to conduct ‘blue skies’ thinking that will fulfil their institutional strategic needs. However, scholars have their own…>
Getting Published
There has been a proliferation of options for would-be writers to be published in recent years due to the development of digital technology and social media platforms. Many publications are now both online as well as in hard copy, with others only accessible online. Whilst this offers more choice for…>
Top Ten Tips on Note-taking
Note-taking is a skill that we use in many walks of life: at school, university and in the world of work. However, it will be obvious to many people that they have not honed the skills needed to get maximum potential from their note-taking, so here are 10 tips on…>
Considering a Career Change? Your 5 Step Plan for Success
A career change can be a daunting process and usually comes with a significant investment in the process: time, money or both. However, it need not be as daunting as you might think, after all, most people will change career several times over the course of their working life. The…>
Considering Graduate Career Options
This article highlights some of the key points for those starting to consider the wide, and perhaps sometimes confusing, range of graduate career options on offer. It could be that you’re nearing graduation and haven’t given too much thought up till now about what you’ll do once you’ve got your…>