Hi!
> It would be interesting to know of practices regarding the accreditation of
> learning carried out by new HE teachers on courses in teaching and learning
> at institutions other than their own. Given the relative mobility of
> colleagues who are just entering HE teaching and the average time it takes
> to complete a Postgrad Cert in T&L (2 to 2.5 years)it is likely that
> equivalences will be sought. Any leads?
I think a lot of ad hoc solutions are being used for this; typically
talking to the member of staff and exempting them from whatever they
(claim to) have covered elsewhere. However as these courses become
more formal and become university certificates in their own right,
this is unlikely to remain possible. One potentialy problem is that
the granularity of some of the courses is rather large; some courses
are split into e.g. four modules, and it is unlikely that the contents
of any particular module are likely to have been completely covered
even if a person has already passed a module elsewhere. This is of
course a problem with almost any formal APL scheme; given that you
can't assume that the content of two modules is identical at two
different institutions, how similar does it have to be to count as
equivalent? Even if there is equivalence, how do you deal with it when
your modular division of the material is different to another
institutions? (Fine-grained HND-style enumeration of objectives is one
solution; but potentially an administrative nightmare, and it is not
clear that this can capture larger scale integrative learning.)
One thing which helps all this is that many such courses are largely
assessed by a single final portfolio. Therefore the portfolio can
consist of reflections on the teaching which has been done at both
institutions, and can draw on workshops and teaching-observations
which have been conducted at both institutions. This is one of the
advantages to this form of assessment.
A related question is whether institutions are accepting other
institutions' (ILT/SEDA accredited) certificates as being equivalent
to their own. Certainly when I started my current job it was not
considered sufficient that I had passed an accredited course
elsewhere; instead I had to attend those components of the local
course which were not in the syllabus for my original course and
produce a "top-up" portfolio. I have no idea whether this is common
practice nationally. I think this sort of problem is caused by the way
in which many courses consist of (at least) three things all mashed
together: induction to the particular institution, continuing
professional development, and a formal academically-grounded course on
education.
Colin Johnson.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Colin G. Johnson. Computing Laboratory, University of Kent at Canterbury.
[log in to unmask] http://www.cs.ukc.ac.uk/people/staff/cgj
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
|