Back to School?

Well, that was an interesting summer.

And now the autumn term approaches. Can you spot the difference, apart from the cooling temperatures and back to school pleas from the PM?

The faltering start to a new academic session beckons unlike any other. The CMO underlines what we perhaps already innately knew – things are going to be ‘difficult’ for the next 9 months. We know so little, it’s so easy to just keep deferring decisions and remain in holding pattern, but that’s not a great place to be. It’s hard to stay motivated when there are no hard lines in the sand.

At ARMA, we’ve been thinking about this. About motivation. About measuring progress. About preparing for when things do ‘get better’. About doing something positive in a sea of negative.

When there is no opportunity to attend face-to-face workshops and courses in our own institutions, or indeed leaf through the range of ARMA workshops members are so used to, it’s hard to be positive. We are learning creatures. And when it comes to appraisals, the learning and development part, which should be the highlight, has perhaps become, well, a bit of a non-event.

So, over the last few months at ARMA, we’ve been doing something about this. We’ve been sorting out the My Dashboard area of the website and refreshing our Online Learning area. Easier to navigate, easier to find things.

We’ve been editing and republishing some of our well-loved ARMA Bites and indeed we’ve created some new ones too. There are currently 8 of them to enjoy, all free to download, on topics ranging from GCRF to Research Culture, from fEC to IP. We’ve also got 8 longer recorded presentations on meatier topics such as Coaching, Developing Research Strategy and Rankings & League Tables. You can find all these at https://arma.ac.uk/online-learning/.

And just last week, we launched the first of our new-season live webinars, our very popular Induction event, details of which you can find at https://arma.ac.uk/dashboard/professional-development/events/. We’ll be launching two further events very shortly, on Working with Political Institutions and Public Officials and Raising the Quality of Research Proposals. And more will follow – we’ll let you know in our Members Newsletter.

ARMA Online learning: Relevant. Accessible. Flexible.