10:00 Planning Group meeting (for members of the planning group only)
1:00 Registration & refreshments
2:00 Special interest sessions
(parallel discussion groups, please select two of three, we will swap groups after 45 minutes):
(a) Continuing Professional Development:
We are two years into SPS funding (in England) with another two to three years ahead, and there have been years of engagement with CPD by SEDA, ILTHE, HE Academy and a great many others. What models have been established in the UK, how do we work with the expectations of national teaching standards (what does the third level mean?) and how do we plan for the long term on CPD?
(b) Community volunteering:
Practice in this area is developing fast, partly driven by special funding initiatives, and partly by Universities’ understanding of the need to link to the community around them. Which models have we developed? How have we involved Student Unions? Does this work link to PDP recording and CV building and how has that been implemented?
(c) Educational Development Groups and research
With increasing interest throughout the sector, in linking research and teaching, and more explicit funding for research becoming available through the HE Academy, some of our research aspirations for educational scholarship, may become ‘fundable’. It seems a good time to discuss ways of taking research directly into our learning and teaching strategies. Which ways of linking learning and teaching do we have experience of, and how would we explore what achievable research-teaching plans for our institutions would be?
3:30 Tea break
4:00 The linkage between Pro Vice Chancellors and Heads of Educational Development Groups.
A discussion about our liaison with the senior strategic level in our institutions. For this item we especially welcome Professor Janet Beer, Pro Vice-Chancellor Learning and teaching of Manchester Metropolitan University, who chairs the HE Academy PVC network and has kindly agreed to introduce this discussion by sharing an insight into the PVC network.
6:00 Break
7:00 Drinks, dinner and an evening of socializing with colleagues
9:00 Business meeting
9:45 Student input in educational development
Exploring the role of the National Student Survey, the contributions of increasingly trained and informed student representatives at course and institutional level, and the role of students in our quality enhancement and assurance processes, but possibly also our staff development work.
11:15 Coffee break
11:30 Special interest sessions (parallel discussion groups):
(d) Dealing with time limited funding: funding exit planning
We’ve all heard of ‘exit planning’ for time limited projects. Can we (and should we?) think about time limited funding in the same way? What are our plans and options for our long term futures? It may also be worth noting that by the end of the next three TQEF years, we are also entering the final year of the first CETLs and that is the point where CETLs will also be looking at exit strategies. How do we balance the books, and keep staff going, or should we wonder whether after nine years of TQEF, the sector is ready for a different educational development and support model? How can we (or should we) steer this process?
(e) Learning spaces
What role do educational development groups play in the decisions making about learning spaces, and what experience is there between us. This is likely to become an area of particular interest to the funding councils in the coming years, particularly with a view to include pedagogical thinking in capital funding decision making. How much do we know? Do we know whether there are patterns to the pedagogical issues stemming from space problems? Are we prepared for this, or is this the moment we should start exploring this area?
12.30 Lunch