Welcome

Welcome to our website.  Healey HE Consultants was established in 2010 by Mick.  In 2016 Ruth joined the family firm.  She continues as a full time Professor at the University of Chester, UK.

In this website you will find details of the HE keynotes, workshops and consultancies that we offer, along with comments from delegates who have participated in previous sessions.  Since Spring 2020 we have presented many of these online.  We present together and separately, dependent on the topic and our availability.  There are also our biographies, a list of our learning and teaching publications, and some useful resources. The latter have been downloaded over 100,000 times.  Tess (2006-20), Sam, Megan, and Mollie, our Golden Retrievers, also have their own web page!

IMG_7069 Cropped 1 (2).jpg

 One of the first sessions Ruth and I ran together was in July 2017, when we presented a joint keynote and workshop at Writtle University College, UK. This was a ‘coming home’ for Mick as he was bought up on the College Estate where his father was Vice Principal.  He would be immensely proud of three generations of Healey’s presenting professionally at the College!

Ruth was awarded a 2017 National Teaching Fellowship (NTF).  According to the HE Academy we made ‘a little bit of academic history’ as the first parent and child to both be NTF recipients. In 2000, 17 years before, Ruth, then aged 17, was at Mick’s award ceremony.  Mick was at Ruth’s ceremony in November 2017.

In January 2023 Ruth was promoted to position of Professor of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education at University of Chester. She also began a 0.4 position as a University Innovation Fellow.

“Mick and Ruth are a phenomenal double act. The level of expertise that they bring, alongside their extensive experience in facilitating events, creates something quite special. Their facilitation left both staff and students buzzing with ideas and enthusiasm.”

— Naomi Winstone, Head of Department of Higher Education, University of Surrey, UK

“The real test of a keynote speaker at a Learning and Teaching event like ours is will they cut it with staff dealing directly with students. Mick and Ruth impressed on the day with their depth of knowledge and their ability to communicate with a sophisticated audience from a wide range of disciplines.”

— Kieran Kelly, Curriculum Development Fellow, Bath Spa University

Many thanks Ruth and Mick for a superb online, interactive keynote today with over 150 participants. You stimulated a rich conversation, full of practical hints and tips on how to bring active learning to life – online or on campus. It was terrific.”

— Professor Martha Caddell, Director, Learning and Teaching Academy, Heriot-Watt University (at Edinburgh, Dubai, and Kuala Lumpur)

You and Mick were superb and set the scene for the entire [online RAISE] SIG [Special Interest Group]. I hope you will continue to support this as you are the ‘go to’ peeps on SaP”.

— Peg Murphy, Co-Convenor RAISE (Researching, Advancing and Inspiring Student Engagement Network) Partnership Special Interest Group

 News


November 2023 - Mick found it very pleasurable to join Kelly Matthews and Earle Abrahamson in coversation about our experiences of leading International Collaborative Writing Groups as part of the ISSOTL 2023 Podcast Series.

15 November 2023 - Almost 200 people registered for the launch of Ruth’s ‘A Guide to Working with Students as Partners’.  You can find the recording here

 The links to the guide and accompanying case studies are here: 

13 October 2023 - Our first time running our new workshop on ‘Searching and reviewing the literature on SoTL’ - Great to be virtually back at Strathclyde as we work with colleagues through their Strathclyde Scholar Programme journey. We were delighted that Suzanne Faulkner took another sketchnote and shared it with us:

“Thank you both for a fantastic afternoon exploring searching and reviewing the SoTL literature. It was a brilliant really helpful session.You are both most fantabulous people!

9 June 2023 - We are delighted to be working with the University of Strathclyde over the next two years in support of their Strathclyde Scholar Programme. We began on Friday running an introductory workshop on SoTL. Suzanne Faulkner, a participant, sent us this comment afterwards:

Thank you both for a fantastic session on SoLT today! I thoroughly enjoyed it and I’m excited to see where it takes us as a University and me personally. I hope you like the sketchnote I created on the brilliant session today.

  • 9 February 23 - Mick has been appointed a Visiting Professor at the University of Westminster.

  • 16 January 23 - Delighted that two related papers on “Searching and reviewing the literature on SoTL: An academic literacies perspective” have been published in Teaching & Learning Inquiry. See ISSoTL Blog.

    • “I can’t tell you how much I love this article! What a wonderful combination of pragmatic guidance and thoughtful argumentation about the SoTL lit review/search.” Nancy Chick, 20 March 2022, past editor of TLI about an early draft.  

    • “Both the papers are excellent. They will be most useful for understanding what a literature search involves and for conducting a literature review, in general, and not just in the area of SoTL. Your endeavour is a massive contribution to the entire academic community in higher education.” Shailey Minocha, 24 February 2023, Professor of Learning Technologies and Social Computing, The Open University.

    • I am sure they will become seminal articles as they make a huge contribution.”   Joelle Fanghanel, 24 February 2023, Previous Chair of SoTL International Conferences, London.

    • “I just wanted to send you a quick word of appreciation for your recent two articles in Teaching & Learning Inquiry. I am an early-career librarian and I have been asked to do a workshop on SoTL lit searching and I came across your articles, which have been so useful in preparation. Many thanks for writing them!.” Joel Blechinger, 28 April 2023, Mount Royal University Library, Canada.

  • 15 December 22 - Senate confirmed that Ruth has been promoted to Professor of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education at the University of Chester from January 23.

  • 12 August 21 - Our website goes public. Over 1000 page views in first 24 hours. Lots of nice comments, including these:

Snazzy new website from @MickHealey3 and @healey_r packed with resources, great for #AberPGCTHE and others to use as a first port of call for #StudentAsPartners #ActiveLearning #ResearchLedTeaching and more” @MaryJacobTEL1 (Aberystwyth)

“… the new website looks great and I loved the story about Tess, Sam, Megan and Mollie.” Nancy Hensell (California)

Here it is! Writing About Learning and Teaching in Higher Education by Mick Healey, Kelly E. Matthews & Alison Cook-Sather is published (September 2020). It is free to download!.  

This book is a real gift. Books about writing can be pretty pedestrian, but the authors have truly invited readers into a conversation… Most important, it’s beautifully written - with a great voice - scholarly but personal.” Pat Hutchings (senior associate Carnegie Foundation)

  • We were privileged to be interviewed by Peter Gossman for SEDA’s Educational Developments magazine in July 2020. A transcript of the interview is available in Issue 21.3. 

 “I think you’ve performed a minor miracle in condensing so much excellent material into such a clear and accessible guide. … It will be read for years to come.” Dr Wendy Green (Tasmania)

“A truly inspirational blog. An amazing career trajectory”. Prof David Owens OBE (Greenwich)
 “Great reflection from a true scholar and someone whose advice and insight I learnt hugely from back in the days of FDTL and GEES.”
Dr Sarah Floyd (Ulster)

9d6d46dd-64ed-4021-8495-10ddbc2cf2a8Ruth ISSoTL Fellow cropped.jpg

Recent Publications

Forthcoming. Writing collaboratively in groups: Reflections on twenty-five years experiences of international collaborative writing groups. In: Aitken, Verity and Norton, Lyn (Eds) Writing partnerships in higher education: A guide for academics and HE professionals. (Healey, M. & Healey, R. L.)

2024 The role of academic developers in initiating, developing, and supporting student-staff partnerships in learning and teaching in higher education: A systematic narrative literature review and a new framework. International Journal for Academic Development (Healey, M. & Healey, R. L.)

2023 Applying for a National Teaching Fellowship This Year, Next Year or Sometime. Healey HE Consultants. (Healey, M. & Healey, R. L.)

2023 A guide to working with students as partners. Centre for Academic Innovation and Development, University of Chester. (Healey, R. L.)

2023 A guide to working with students as partners: University of Chester case studies. Centre for Academic Innovation and Development, University of Chester. (Healey, R. L.)

2023 Reflections on disciplinary perspectives on students as partners, International Journal for Students as Partners 7(1), 1-13. (Healey, M, Healey, R. L. & West, H.)

2023 Reviewing the Literature on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): An Academic Literacies Perspective Part 2. Teaching & Learning Inquiry 11. (Healey, M. & Healey, R. L.)

2023 Searching the Literature on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): An Academic Literacies Perspective Part 1. Teaching & Learning Inquiry 11. (Healey, M. & Healey, R. L.)

2022 Foreword to The Cambridge Handbook of Undergraduate Research (edited by Mieg, H. et al), pp. xx – xxvi. Cambridge University Press. (Healey, M. and Jenkins, A.)

2022 The Design of Physical Learning Spaces in Supporting Learning and Engaging Students on Campus. A Report for the Centre for Education Teaching Innovation, University of Westminster. (Healey, M.)

2022 Using an Academic Literacies Lens to Examine Searching and Reviewing the SoTL Literature. Paper presented to EuroSoTL 2022 conference, Manchester 16-17 June. Proceedings pp.70-77. (Healey, M. & Healey, R. L)

2022 ‘Every partnership [… is] an emotional experience’: towards a model of partnership support for addressing the emotional challenges of student–staff partnerships, Teaching in Higher Education DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2021.2021391 (Healey, R. L. & France, D.)

2022 The history of the Higher Education Research Group of the UK Royal Geographical Society: The changing status and focus of geography education in the academy, Area 54(1), 6-14. (Healey, R. L., France, D., Hill, J. & West, H.)

2021 Learning from the pandemic to embed empathy in students-as-partners practice. SEDA Blog, 15 December 2021. (Healey, R. L.)

2021 Developing the curriculum within an institution using a Change Academy approach: A process focus. International Journal for Academic Development 26(2), 150-162. (Turner, N. K., Healey, M., & Bens, S.)

2021 A developmental framework for mentorship in SoTL illustrated by three examples of unseen opportunities for mentoring. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 9(1), 395-413. (Friberg, J. C., Frake-Mistak, M., Healey, R., Sipes, S., Mooney, J., Sanchez, S., & Waller, K.)

2021 Recognizing students’ expertise and insights in expanding forms of academic writing and publishing about learning and teaching. International Journal for Students as Partners, 5(1), 1-7. (Cook-Sather, A., Healey, M., & Matthews, K. E.)

2021 Re-naming and re-framing: Evolving the ‘Higher Education Research Group’ to the ‘Geography & Education Research Group’, Area. (Healey, R. L. & West, H.)

2020 Expanding the conventional writing genres: A matter of equity and inclusion. Educational Developments 21.3, 8-11 (Healey, M., Cook-Sather, A., & Matthews, K. E.)

2020 Interview with Professor Mick Healey and Dr Ruth Healey. Educational Developments 21.3, 11-13 (Gossman, P.)

2020 Writing about learning and teaching in precarious and promising times. Association of American Colleges and Universities Liberal Education Blog. 18 Sept (Cook-Sather A, Healey M, & Matthews K E)

2020 Making sense of writing about learning and teaching. ISSoTL Blog 3 September (Healey, M., Matthews, K. E., & Cook-Sather, A.)

2020 Writing about learning and teaching in higher education: Creating and contributing to public scholarly conversations across a range of genres. Center for Engaged Learning Open-Access Books, Elon University, USA (Healey, M., Matthews, K. E., & Cook-Sather, A.)

2020 Learner-teacher partnership in times of COVID-19: A community poll to share practices and perspectives. Brisbane: University of Queensland. (Matthews, K. E., Cook-Sather, A., Godbold, N., Healey, M., & Rafferty, C.).

2020 Embedding active learning into your teaching practice. Watt Works Quick Guides 19. Heriot Watt University (Healey, M. & Healey, R. L.)