iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

This is the energy I bring to every lecture….

David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

I love me some time boxing, to-do lists really don't work for me but I have an almost Pavlovian response to stuff in my Outlook!

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

A5 Consistent and honest use of timeboxing on Outlook (other calendars are available) so that everyone respects each others time. Everyone can see how colleagues are using their time and make only reasonable requests on others time. And free thinking is a valid and protected use of time #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

A4 Saying "the restructure is finished" at the organisational conclusion of a restructure is a bit like telling someone who's had reconstructive surgery on their leg after a break that "it's all finished" before they can stand up and walk. Let alone run and dance like they used to! #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

People say leaders should only be strategic but an understanding of the operational consequences downstream of big strategic decisions would help. An airline may want to lay on more flights to get more customers but if they don't hire enough baggage handers and gate agents you get angry travelers!

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

A4 they'd find people still working through the unintended consequences of the previous transformational change project #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

A3 The people they work for and with having a relationship with them that notices, appreciates and supports them through the years they're in the institution and hopefully as they grow through their career. Bosses should know and support you and we should all be doing that for each other #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

A2 We should make a place where flourishing and getting the absurd amount of work we all have to do aren't mutually exclusive. This means cutting out busy-work, meetings that could be an email, and performative presenteeism. Trust but verify! #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

A1 feeling appreciated and validated are good too but mostly I want to be able to discharge my responsibilities and pursue my passions. Sometimes they even overlap! #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

A1 the time and headspace to do all the things I have to do and all the things I want to do #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

I forget, isn’t there an institution other than universities which is supposed to foster an economy which generates jobs for educated individuals?

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

The Churchill Arms. Kensington. Good Thai food.

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Nice! It’s also like Improv: lots of “yes, and”-ing!

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

I'd just see that as a challenge!

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

A6 Depends which challenges you're talking about. Enormous class sizes are a problem but the challenge of falling recruitment and reduced student attendance is an opportunity to focus on those that're in the class. What a downer at the end of an excellent chat: sorry! #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

This is all the more true as I age! I work out purely so I can clamber into the middle row of a 300 seat tiered lecture theatre....

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Ha, I often tell experienced academics they should try to learn a new musical instrument every so often so they can make dreadful noises and suck and so realise that the subject which feels easy and intuitive to them will be, like their awful trumpet attempts, entirely foreign and new to others!

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

A3 probably group as everyone does the solo learning when they're thinking and preparing what to say in the conversation or after when they're thinking about what they've learned. I guess it may not be more efficient but I think learning requires a lot of meandering towards understanding. #LTHEChat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Oh yes, during the session or the next. I'm an awful person, I always timetable a 2 hour session where we do all sorts of problem solving and conversation) where most everyone else does 1 hour lectures) so I build in plenty of time to see where the experience takes us. It's all very jazz. #LTHEChat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

A5 My favourite way to use TBL is to make the application exercise reading a research paper or going through the results of a paper and interpreting them as we go (after the i/tRAT gets them the knowledge required to do so). That's engaging them with the real world of the subject I teach #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

A2 Oh, I've learned never to call it formative assessment. Students hate it. They're just learning activities. Any kind of number or score they get out of it needs to be discarded instantly #LTHEChat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

A4 I've never tried different tasks. That's not much of an answer. Sorry! #LTHEChat But with the same task it's always instructive to see how different groups tackle it and I always learn something new about how students learn or approach a problem by comparing different attempts at the same thing.

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

A3 It's both. Everyone learns alone in their own head but then builds on it in conversation. Learning is almost always a dialogue of some kind so it's good to force students into it. Otherwise who knows what's going on in their heads! (Probably planning their next meal as I am!). #LTHECHat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

A2. Retrieval practice, spaced repetition, scaffolded learning....BINGO! #LTHEChat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

A2 it also focusses everyone on the topic in hand. And everyone knows all the hard words and acronyms... #LTHEChat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

I have an internal rule (that I only occasionally break) that I'll only talk for 10-15 minutes before we do something together. Even in a lecture of 100-200 students you can get around a lot of them in a reasonably short time, as long as you don't mind mild climbing injuries.

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

A2 most of my teaching uses active learning so students get formative feedback several times in every teaching session. Those smaller activities build to the larger aim of the module. It's like they're doing sudoku or wordle several times a week, only about really abstruse genetics. #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Ooooohhhhh, "unconditional positive regard": I like that!

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

A1 subject knowledge, empathy, patience, some knowledge of how people learn, even more patience! #LTHEChat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Thanks @santanuvasant.bsky.social! I feel like my stuff is like the Velvet Underground: not many people know about it but those who do are incredibly cool and influential!

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Here I take a slightly provocative approach to suggest that if an assessment in a degree programme doesn't help a student to improve in their future learning then it's a pointless dead end. Feel free to argue back!

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

We should work out a rule-of-thumb for this. So many people are convinced it can’t work but I think both it can and we must.

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

A6: they still need to be able to read and understand comples stuff, synthesise info and ideas, develop an argument/hypothesis, find ways to test ideas, analyse results and communicate them. This all goes on in their brains. How they communicate it will change but the brain-work is the same #LTHE

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

A5: have them read a smaller number of papers and be critical of them, using AI sparingly to understand the details, and then assess by a mix of written and in-person verification of understanding. Familiarise them with the literature, not a LLM, Wikipedia or a textbook. #LTHEchat.

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

A2 You can scale it up to the 100s with enough colleagues and TAs/demonstrators, you just need to remember that you're replacing marking a load of identical, dull-as-can-be 2000 word reports, writing feedback and admin with a 15 minute interaction, an conversation and an online rubric #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

A2: I realise there's no use of AI here, tho they could have used it learn about 'scopes but ultimately they need to know how to do a thing. We apply this to lots of skills, we also do it for hypothesis and experimental design. 4-5 conversations a year with students gets them used to it! #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

A2: many of our assessments now have an interaction like an OSCE so students show their knowledge in person rather than submitting a written report. On Friday I'll spend 4 hours with students showing me how to use a microscope properly which is a lot more fun than marking lab reports! #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

A1: it depends if we have to or not. In the learning process I'm not sure how we would or if we should bother. In assessment we design the thing that make make a judgement about so that we can tell if the student has gained the knowledge and skills at the end. #LTHEchat

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Hey hey! Hurrah! Congratulations!

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

I detect barnyard in the bouquet…

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

Pretty good off the bat, we use copilot institutionally with students as it’s a closed system (I think, I’m not expert!). If you train ChatGPT on some of your own work along with the learning outcomes feedback gets much better but I’ve not done that with students due to privacy issues.

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David Tree @davetree.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

A1 It's excellent for formative feedback. I'd like it to solve Bloom's two sigma problem but for now I'll use it so students can get feedback on their own understanding in the moment after learning and then hopefully use spaced repetition several times between teaching sessions. #LTHEchat

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