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Not an ‘answer’ Martin, but – and excuse brevity as I am up to my eyes – my current strategy (as a head of LD who has been told next year will be ‘even tougher’ and we’ll lose our current cushion of residual TQEF money – taking us from c3.5 equivalent FT LDers back to just 2.5 for the whole university) is to target and talk to programme leaders / subject leads in areas where there are ‘issues’ with retention, then encourage them and their colleagues to prepare to apply for access funding from our central widening participation pot, in order to establish embedded LD type activities such as peer learning schemes – which they will then need us to advise and collaborate on, hence some of the funding should come back to boost LD …
Sending supportive wishes to your friend …
John
From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Martin Hampton
Sent: 02 November 2011 11:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: ...by a thousand (hypothetical) cuts
Greetings all.
I have a friend who works in a Learning Development service in a large-ish university. This LD service has gone in just a couple of years from close to 7 FTE to 4.5 FTE. My friend recognises that other such services have suffered greater (indeed complete) staffing reductions and knows he should count his blessings. He's also worried, though, and wondering how the, err, 'streamlined' department can refocus its work to best serve the learning needs of the University's students (and taking into account, of course, the institution's strategic priorities). Of the range of 'typical' LD services - one-to-one tuition (currently open to any and all, with the exception of students with a Learning Difficulty or Disability), centrally-provided and course-embedded workshops, co-teaching in intra-curricular seminars and lectures, consultation in curriculum design and development and contribution to the design/delivery of 'Academic Development' for members of the teaching staff - my friend is wondering which could form the heart of the business of a 'smaller, smarter' service. He's also open minded to quite different notions of what might constitute LD practice. So he asked me to ask the good people of this forum whether they have experience of this kind of re-focussing, and if so how it worked for them, and if not whether they could speculate on how they might conceptualise and realise this kind of re-focussing (whilst acknowledging, of course, that no institution will work exactly like any other).
I know my friend would be very grateful for any thoughts, however brief (at this busy time), that you may have.
best wishes!
Martin Hampton.