Dear Dilly and Panos,
Dilly makes some very important observations in her reply, which match my own experiences. A central learning and teaching unit very often has to ‘take a back seat’ for an initiative to be adopted and owned across an organisation, however, without the unit there would be no traction for the initiative. As the initiatives come from a number of points, including senior managers, this can then lead to some less informed senior managers wondering what is the point of the unit. They don’t put their name, or originate, anything! It is the better informed senior managers who realise that they need the support of a well placed, respected and TRUSTED unit to deliver the every more demanding agenda they are expected to deliver.
I do wonder if this is why there is some much flux in the size and location of Educational Development units within any one university, particularly when there are changes in the senior management teams.
Best wishes,
Ian
______________
Dr Ian G. Giles PFHEA
Emeritus Fellow, Medical Education, Faculty of Medicine
Previously Director of the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit
University of Southampton
e-mail: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
web: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/medicine/about/staff/igg.page
http://about.me/iggiles
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/iggiles
"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled" - Plutarch
From: <Fung>, Dilly Fung
Reply-To: Dilly Fung
Date: Monday, 16 February 2015 17:10
To: "[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>"
Subject: Re: Development of Communications Strategies and Tactics
Dear Panos
This is a really interesting question. In my experience centres like ours can do better to develop cross-cutting initiatives which have their own names and profiles and to promote these, rather than promote the centre itself. In fact we go out of our way not to name our centre on a lot of the things we produce: the initiatives themselves (e.g. 'UCL Arena', or 'UCL Connected Curriculum') then take on a life of their own, and feel like (in fact, are) whole institutional activities. They're run by Steering Groups with representation from right across the institution.
We also deliberately blur the boundaries of the centre itself as a unit - for example in terms of staffing, by having fractionally seconded academics from a range of subject areas working in partnership with us on initiatives (e.g. Connected Curriculum Fellows), and also by having students and professional colleagues working with us closely. The more we dissolve the centre into the fabric of the institutional community, the stronger the fabric of both the community and the centre seems to become: the educational developments take root in many places and become embedded in all kinds of projects and strategies. From a resourcing point of view, this approach has made us stronger as a centre - our work is evident in many areas of institutional life, and we can demonstrate impact. (Of course we're always looking to improve, and we're currently working to create better evaluation strategies to that end.)
I'd be very interested to know what you and others think about the tensions between T&L centres being effective and being visible - perhaps those tensions are just not there in other institutions?
All good wishes
Dilly
Dr Dilly Fung PFHEA
Director, Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching (CALT)
UCL
020 7679 5939 (Internal ext. 45939)
1-19 Torrington Place
London
WC1E 7HB
On 16 Feb 2015, at 02:40, Panos Vlachopoulos wrote:
Dear colleagues,
greetings from Sydney. At MQ University Learning and Teaching Centre we are revisiting some of our communications strategies with an overall aim to achieve a high 'visibility' of our teams with key stakeholders within our institution (from Senior Management to all academic and professional staff). I am writing to ask for any ideas you can possibly offer us on this matter. To do so, I prepared a googldoc table. If you are doing something in your academic or educational development teams that you feel it works well in terms of communications and you are willing to share it with all of us, please edit the document. Of course you can all keep a copy of the final document....
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cIma7m4JTYAsJA1YzTgk73GCw_pjRuGKPbjHGYBsaAw/edit?usp=sharing
I look forward to your contributions,
all best wishes
Panos
--
Dr Panos Vlachopoulos,
Senior Lecturer in Higher Education Development
Learning and Teaching Centre
Building C3B 412
Macquarie University
NSW 2109 Australia
T: +61 2 9850 9677
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Check out my professional profile and connect with me on LinkedIn<http://lnkd.in/bYWs3yH>.
Dr Dilly Fung PFHEA
Director, Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching (CALT)
UCL
020 7679 5939 (Internal ext. 45939)
1-19 Torrington Place
London
WC1E 7HB
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