So summer is over?!

Mine wrapped up with a couple of weeks off. A much-needed break from work, and a rare chance to take stock and make a few personal changes that have probably been brewing for a while. Not the easiest headspace to sit in, but growth is rarely comfortable.

Results time

Right in the middle of my time off, the grades arrived for the PGCert in Creative Teaching and Learning Design I finished back in July.

When the email landed, I was genuinely chuffed. Partly because the mark was one I could feel proud of, but mostly because keeping part-time study on track alongside the day job, navigating a divorce, and stubbornly clinging to a social life felt like a minor miracle some weeks. Towards the tail end of the course, the urge to abandon learning theories in favour of a pint or just hiding behind the drum kit was very real. Occasionally, that’s exactly what I did. All work and no play makes Stu a miserable bloke.

Naturally, having barely paused for breath, my next thought was: right, let’s get stuck into the PGDip.

The PGDip begins

So here we are. Stage two.

The big shift this term is how the curriculum is set up. It leans hard into scenario-based learning. The setup drops us into the Learning Innovation Hub at “Westbridge University” - a fictional, cash-strapped institution staring down an £18m deficit, dodgy student satisfaction scores, and an IT estate that feels like it’s held together with gaffer tape and wishful thinking.

In theory, it’s a brilliant way to explore learning design without getting bogged down in the overly academic (which is my preferred mental approach).

In practice though? It feels slightly too familiar.

Having spent the best part of twenty years working on digital transformation across different parts of the public sector, this isn’t an academic exercise for me. It’s literally my Monday to Friday. The familiar tension between executive urgency and staff scepticism, the gulf between what leadership thinks people need and what users actually need, the endless battle against performative tick-box exercises… it’s all there.

There’s a bizarre mental gear shift when your evening coursework looks identical to your weekday calendar. About ten minutes into our first stakeholder exercise, I caught myself thinking: Wait, am I billing for this? 😂

The double-edged sword of experience

Carrying plenty of delivery, design, tech, and transformation experience into a scenario based course like this is a funny one.

On one hand, the context isn’t remotely intimidating. When the brief throws conflicting internal politics, legacy tech debt, or grumpy faculty at us my muscle memory kicks straight in.

On the other hand, university isn’t client delivery. I don’t need to prove I can manage a project, wrangle an obstinate stakeholder, or spot broken system architecture. I’m also not arrogant enough to think I can’t hone or develop new skills in these areas. The real challenge though is deliberately stepping out of “fix-it” consultant mode so I can focus on the actual craft of learning design - the pedagogy, the sequencing, the nuances of inclusive design, and how to build stuff that genuinely helps people learn.

Keeping the boundaries intact

I feel part of the challenge this term won’t be getting my head around the material. It’ll be protecting the headspace.

When what you study mirrors what you do for a living, the line between “work” and “study” blurs almost immediately. I need to make sure I’m treating this as a creative sandbox to experiment in, rather than just a second shift.

The saving grace so far is the cohort. Because of time zones, we’ve been split into smaller groups, which makes it much easier to actually talk to each other. We’ve already got a WhatsApp group on the go, and today we had an impromptu half-hour catch-up outside of class to get to know each other a little more and chat all things learning.

Having a solid group of smart, curious people to sanity-check things with makes a huge difference. It’s an encouraging start, and a good reminder of why I signed up for round two. I’ll try to keep you posted on how things progress.