 Hi everyone and welcome along to this UCAT, LVSA, TV, Crossover, Hybrid. I'm Colom Cronin from the Adventures in Advising podcast and I'm delighted to be joined by two fantastic individuals from Maastricht University whose names I will likely butcher with my Irish accent. So I will allow them to introduce themselves in a minute, but in a scenario, welcome. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having us. So Iris, we might start with you for viewers. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what it is that you do at Maastricht University? Yeah, my name is Iris Birx. I'm the coordinator of academic and student advising at Maastricht University campus Venlo. We have a small campus in Venlo and I've been involved in the development of this workshop and the conference itself. And in normal days, when we get to go on campus, I tend to go with my outside with my students quite a lot. And we do these team-based, these teamwork workshops. And that's why we would like other advisors to taste this a little bit as well. Very good. And Ari, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yeah, I'm Ari von der Luft. I'm a teaching animal from the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience. I'm also a big fan of experiential learning. My first experience with that was actually in the UK. I was trained at XT University for training the tutor training by guys from BP Yamoko. That was my first connection to experiential learning. And I've been using it ever since in my teaching. I think it's a very powerful method. Iris and I were both being trained by the same local company who are real experts in reading groups of people. But the funny thing is that I also really like the connection to advising because ten years ago, I actually participated in a workshop by the famous Charlie from Nakada, who taught me a very important lesson that teaching is advising and that advising is teaching. And I've never forgotten about that important lesson. So I'm very happy to join the LVSA and UCAT crowd next week. Very good. Well, I'm delighted to welcome you. And I will be speaking to Charlie at some point over the next few days. So I'll definitely pass along that little anecdote to him. But I suppose, Iris, maybe you could tell me a bit more about the team building sessions that are going to be taking place. Yeah. So normally, like I said, we would be stepping outside. We would put our boots on and dig them deep into the mud. Unfortunately, that's not possible at the moment. So we try to recreate this experience in a virtual setting and let the participants experience as much as possible what we would do with our participants, while at the same time also telling them a little bit about the theory behind what we're doing and to take them along in why we use this experiential learning method and why we feel that in advising or teaching, these are useful techniques. Very good. And Ari, so if I'm a conference attendee, I'm hearing about this for the first time. Intrigue me. Get me excited about participating in this. Well, if you ever want to get to know yourself at a different level, then you have to come to our workshop because we will make things real that you will have never experienced in that full reality before because we will make you zoom in on aspects of how you are in a group of people that will learn you a bit more, not just about yourself, but also about the people around you. And I think it's a crucial skill for learning together. And of course, that's what Maastricht University is kind of famous for, that we have this collaborative approach to learning. Very good. I think that's definitely the case. Certainly anyone I have met from the university, that is certainly their approach. And Iris, for anyone watching this who is wondering about what else they can look forward to at the conference or how can they find out more about what will be going on? Where can they go to get that information? They can have a look in the program booklet or on the website. There's a short description on the different workshops. They can also register for this session because this is one of the pre-register sessions. You have to let us know in advance that you want to participate simply because we want to keep this a little bit intimate and be able to read the group, read the floor as we go along because it's essential in experiential learning that we also notice and see what goes on with the group. So I would say go on and have a look at the websites and see whether this would be something for you and we would be happy to see you in our session. Absolutely and not just us, also my Ducky. I've got a very caring and nosy Ducky and yeah, you're bound to meet her during the workshop as well. I don't see how anybody could resist an invitation to meet Ducky. So I would certainly encourage anyone attending to sign up for this session and I know, Iris, that there will be lots more information put out through LASA's social media accounts over the course of the conference. So people can keep an eye on that. But for now, I just want to thank both of you for taking the time to chat to me today about what sounds like a really fantastic, intriguing, entertaining and educational session that you have planned. Thank you, Colm. Yeah, it was lovely to meet you in a virtuality column.