1987

This is the date when the original article on the seven principle of good teaching practice was published. Developed by Arthur W. Chickering and Stephen C. Ehrmann. They were developed specifically for undergraduate education and it turns out there's a lot of invaluable and detailed information available about it online. I think this introduction to the principles on the TLT group's website (led by Chickering and Ehrmann), is especially useful as it includes an update from Ehrmann in 2003.

Inititally I felt oddly reassured when I saw it had been published quite a while before the explosion of online learning and communication technologies. It gave me a comforting sense that there are still rules and fundemental principles to good teaching. No carts leading horses. The problem with this though is that firstly, I'm still not 100% convinced that technology is a cart, and secondly I'm not ready to commit myself to these 7 principles. They sound good but how can I know that they're really valuable? Were they always useful principles? If not when did they become so? And when will they stop being so?

Interestingly, it's just been suggested I should start with these principles if I want to get a sense of the basis of London Met's upcoming elearning strategy.