Enhancing academic development practice: reclaiming academic practice wisdom

The growing impetus for science-based or evidence-based practices in higher education are shaping conceptions of the nature and role of professional practice and raising new concerns about what it means to be adequately prepared and what it means for practitioners to learn. But the practices of teaching are moral-political, not simply scientific or technical undertakings. This seminar will explore the concept of academic practice wisdom and values and how these might be reclaimed and developed

Opening up spaces for collegial, collaborative academic development practice within a strategic, centrally coordinated team-based support model

Academic development units do not always determine the orientation of their professional activity. This paper showcases an initiative to implement an institution-wide strategic, project and team-based, faculty support model in a regional, Australian university. The institution wished to broaden the impact of the academic development unit across five faculties and address growing staff need related to e-learning. Learning Innovation Teaching Enhancement(LITE) teams include academic developers, librarians, e-learning support and others. They work with faculty colleagues on learning and teaching projects, targeting improvement at the degree and discipline level. This study uses a participatory action research, mixed-methods approach to evaluate both the effectiveness of our centrally coordinated model, and our capacity to retain successful aspects of our previous practice, such as situatedness and collegiality. This stage of the evaluation locates our support model within existing academic development practice and assesses its alignment with good practice principles outlined in relevant literature. Based on a preliminary analysis of group reflection, faculty uptake, success of project outcomes and survey data I conclude that LITE team projects can be an effective model for academic development. This initial evaluation also suggests that individual team projects tend to open up more collegial academic development spaces under the following conditions: where there is faculty ownership of project aims; where there is a faculty leader within the project team; where there is horizontal interaction between faculty participants, and between faculty and support team participants; and, where the academic developer can leverage existing relationships and collegial networks to generate a more collegial environment

Measuring the impact of Educational Interventions on the Academic Performance of Academic Development Students in Second-Year Microeconomics

This paper analyses the impact of educational interventions made in the first- and second-year microeconomics courses on academic development students’ final mark in the second-year course. It also addresses issues of methodology, specification, and statistical analysis with respect to other studies in the field. The results suggest that the educational interventions in the first-year had a positive impact on the academic performance of the academic development cohort, relative to the mainstream cohort for the first period (2000-2002). The results also suggest that the educational interventions introduced in the second period (2003-2005), in the form of voluntary workshops for the academic development cohort, also improved the academic performance of this cohort relative to that of mainstream students.

Integrated and situated academic development for all categories of staff: lessons for constructive alignment from an HEA-accredited Continuing Professional Development scheme

Higher Education Academy (HEA) Fellowship and the UK Professional Standards Frameworks (UKPSF) are increasingly used within British higher education institutions to support the professional formation of university teachers. This paper evaluates the use of practitioner inquiry within an HEA-accredited scheme (OpenPAD) to support the professional development of part-time Associate Lecturers at a large distance-learning institution. OpenPAD was available between 2013 and 2016 to all academic and academic-related staff in the Open University, including the 5000+ part-time teaching-only staff who are the main focus of this evaluation. OpenPAD used situated learning through practitioner inquiry to generate evidence against the UKPSF. Participant experience is evaluated and lessons drawn, which may have implications for similar schemes in other institutions. Opportunities for the further integration of academic development opportunities for all categories of staff in a successor scheme are identified in a proposed alignment between academic development; career-related processes such as induction and appraisal; institutional teaching and learning policies; and scholarship agendas

Developing the developers – supporting development of online conference presentations

Delivering online tuition has become standard practice in most universities with many students receiving part of their tuition online. However, so far there appears to be a resistance to utilising online delivery for staff and academic development. An online academic development conference was delivered to 150 teaching staff delegates over the course of a week. The conference structure was to have a keynote presentation and eleven shorter discussion presentations, each with their own dedicated asynchronous discussion forum. Conference presenters were each asked to produce a video presentation of up to 7 minutes and run an associated online forum. This paper reports on the experience of the presenters in producing their video presentations and running the forums. It will highlight the valuable development opportunity for presenters as well as summarising their experiences. Finally it will outline the lessons we have learnt and propose some recommendations for others considering running online staff development conferences

Using e-portfolios for learning and assessment within the Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PGCAP) at the University of Salford

The e-portfolio system PebblePad is being trialled since September 2010 by the Academic Development Unit (ADU) during the Engaging and Enhancing Student Learning (EESL) 30 credits module of the blended PGCAP programme. It is used as a personal learning space, to capture reflections, the process of learning and for assessment purposes

Championing academic integrity in academic development

Curtis et al. (2021) propose that educators with practical, theoretical, and research experience in academic integrity (AI) are well-suited to deliver workshops on the subject. These workshops promote shared understandings amongst attendees, and provide a platform to discuss concerns, devise solutions, and relieve anxieties. Finally, these workshops are most effective when they are a part of themed academic development activities. Assiniboine Community College’s (ACC) Centre for Learning and Innovation (CLI) supports program development and renewal, course and instructional design, teaching strategies, Moodle (Learning Management System), and educational technology. Working with the College’s Academic Integrity and Copyright Officer, CLI has contextualized academic integrity within existing academic development activities, such as a workshops, job aids, and one-on-one sessions. This situates academic integrity as central to our work, rather than an add-on topic. Join ACC’s Centre for Learning and Innovation team members for an overview of where and how we have embedded academic integrity into our offerings, work, and quality standards. Participants will leave this session with practical examples of how teaching and learning centres can be champions for academic integrity.