My university has an Institutional Operational Plan (IOP), which includes a 5 year strategy to develop capacity in both research and teaching & learning (T&L). This implementation plan is mirrored at both faculty and departmental levels. The idea is to have departmental versions of the university’s vision, and to strive to achieve those goals within set periods of time.

There are 2 main “legs” of the IOP, namely T&L and research. Both of these have their own 5 year implementation plans that are again mirrored at faculty and departmental levels, with each plan split into several key areas. For example, the T&L plan in my department has 9 key areas, which include (the following points are summarised):

• Enhance and promote the status of T&L within the department
• Develop and promote the scholarship of T&L
• Infuse technology into T&L
• Develop an infrastructure for T&L
• Embed graduate attributes into the programme

Each of these key areas is split into:

• Actions that required to develop the area / achieve the objective
• Performance measures to evaluate progress towards the goal
• Expected outcomes i.e. how do we think this will make things better?
• People and resources required
• Timeframes

We realised almost immediately that without someone to drive the implementation plan, it was just a collection of words on paper. So we appointed a T&L co-ordinator in our department who uses the T&L implementation plan to set yearly objectives and to evaluate our progress towards achieving them. The more complex areas are divided into sections and we evaluate each section over time. We know that we can’t do everything at once. For example, one of our objectives was to incorporate peer review of teaching practices into our T&L portfolios (developing a T&L portfolio was another objective). We began by developing a rubric that worked for us, and then committing to being reviewed once, and conducting one review. Having been through that process, peer review is now part of our T&L practices.

We have a similar structure for the research component. The departmental plan mirrors the institutional plan, and there is a policy and guiding framework, all driven by the research co-ordinator within the department. We re-visit each of our implementation plans at the end of every year at our annual planning meeting to evaluate our progress. We’re held accountable for the goals we set as a department, as well as individuals, and for the time we were given to achieve those goals.

With heavy teaching and supervision loads (we have 8 permanent staff members and 4 contractors with a student population of about 240 undergraduates and about 30 postgraduates), it is challenging to see the implementation plans as living documents that need to be embedded in our practice. In order to move forward, we need a very supportive environment in which no single person has too large a burden to bear. We divide work up equally (well, as equally as possible), sharing our teaching, supervision and research loads. There is no favouritism and our professors are as involved in the undergraduate curriculum development as we are.

In addition, we provide substantial support to novice teachers and researchers. For example, when I’m working on an article I send it to at least 2 of my colleagues for critical review, preferably colleagues with a mix of research and writing experience. I get to receive feedback that will help me strengthen my work, but it also gives novice authors the opportunity to learn about the review process. This support extends to contract staff, no matter how recently they’ve been appointed.

I recently spoke to a colleague who only got a supervisor after more than 1 year as a PhD student. She’s almost 3 years into the programme and still hasn’t been able to submit a proposal. It’s not that she’s a slacker…she’s been let down by a broken system. Our postgraduate applicants must submit a 5 page concept paper, which is discussed and reviewed. If the idea seems feasible, the student is accepted and immediately assigned a supervisor. There is an expectation that the proposal will be submitted and accepted 1 year after admission to the programme.

The point of this post wasn’t to suggest that we’re better than others. I just thought it might be useful to share how we do things, especially when I often come across colleagues who have very different approaches. If you have a different way of developing staff members that works for you, please share it in the comments.

Share

I spend an enormous amount of time reading, a lot of it online using RSS feeds. I used to think that I was pretty good at filtering the content to find what was meaningful to me but I recently became aware of how many feeds I just skimmed through, and how many emails I delete without even reading the title. I started becoming increasingly aware of how little value all of this “reading” was adding to both my personal and professional life.

I’ve just returned from a 2 week holiday during which I didn’t always have access to the internet, which meant that I was cut off from my feeds for a lot of the time. In the beginning it was difficult for me and I’d use any opportunity to “catch up” with the stream. After a while I noticed that without all the feeds to go through I was thinking more when I did read something interesting, rather than starring it for later (at that time I had more than 600 articles and posts waiting for later because I didn’t have time to read them).

I also noticed that as I was going through those starred (i.e. “important” articles), there were very few that actually added much value to my life. Sure, they were mildly interesting but often no more than that. I’d spent an enormous amount of time going through many posts, marking some of them as important, deleting the vast majority having read only the title or skimmed the text, and not had a whole lot to show for it. In contrast, during my (mostly) offline holiday I managed to finish 3 books which I thoroughly enjoyed (Game of thrones, The girl with the dragon tattoo and The girl who played with fire), none of which are quick reads.

So, to counteract this pollution of my “life feed”, I’ve started unsubscribing from blogs and mailing lists, un-following Twitter accounts, un-friending people on Facebook (you know, that guy you went to school with haven’t seen in 15 years but who nonetheless wanted to be “friends”), and making an effort to avoid wasting time on articles and posts that don’t add value to my life. I’ve started reading more long form posts (for example, the “Something to read” section in Flipboard).

I’m hoping that as I cut out the extraneous content that was taking up so much time to filter and “get through”, I’ll give myself more time to focus on the good stuff, do more thinking and maybe even more writing.

Share

@scaprogramme This is great, thanks for pointing it out. Will follow up and let you know how we’re getting on #

Share

Share

Share