2 Take control of your own development: join in with our development community
Throughout this 8-week course we will keep referring to ‘development’, rather than alternative terms such as ‘teaching’ or ‘education’. You will spend some time learning about collaboration and collaborative leadership. However, the main focus of your work will be on developing yourself as a practitioner, as someone confident and capable of stepping into leadership work.
This does mean that you will need to take control of your own learning. We will invite you to reflect on collaborative leadership within your own working environment. More than this, we will actively encourage you to try out certain ideas in your work context that will aid your development.
We have set up a discussion forum [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] where you can discuss and debate the course content with your fellow learners and with us, your course authors. You will also see that you have a learning journal where you can record your own thoughts on your development in leadership. Key members of the OU’s Centre for Voluntary Sector Leadership will be able to see what you write and we may anonymise and draw on some of what you say for future research – we see this as a circular relationship where we develop one another’s knowledge. The aim is to build a community of learning: we are all in this together.
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1 The course: an overview