Enhancing the student experience workshops November 2011 Liverpool John Moores University

1. Enhancing the student experience workshops November 2011Liverpool John Moores University Sally Brown Emeritus Professor, Leeds Metropolitan University, Adjunct Professor: University of Sunshine Coast, Central Queensland and James Cook University . Visiting Professor, Plymouth University

2. What we are aiming to achieve today • Discuss how we can behave strategically to enact change • Consider how this group can take learning, teaching and assessment forward in the faculty; • Do groundwork on the targets for the Learning, Teaching and Assessment Plan; • Discuss what excellent teaching looks like and how we can foster it; • Consider who we can propose for Teaching Excellence awards; • Discuss how we can showcase and disseminate good practice.

3. But first a few words from the Faculty LTA coordinators • Liz Mahon, Claire Hennesey and Louise Williams will report back from yesterday’s LTA coordinators half day conversations; • Discussions covered contextual issues, managing change in the wider context and promoting student engagement; • They identified three priorities for action.

4. Introductory task: imagine What would an ideal university look like? How does an ideal student behave? What are the features of an ideal colleague? Or What would a nighmarish university look like? How does the ‘student from hell’ behave? What are the features of a sub-prime/toxic colleague?

5. What’s achievable from this? • Back off from total support being provided at level 4; • Level 4: draw the ideal student on Monday; • Deal with individuals and their situations immediately; • Next centre meeting collaborative planning/reflecting on timetable and other associated issues; • Identify expectations from the start and indicate what we actually should be providing;

6. and • Create/develop a working environment that promotes and supports positivity, collegiality and the will to be happy at work; • Ensure that all work/social/learning spaces are fit for purpose for both staff and students; • Benches outside (with wifi); • Manage expectations and perceptions; • [sort out] car parking; • Find ways to get a voice.

7. LJMU The draft strategic plan October 2011 • Period until 2017 the most dynamic & challenging in history of HE. Innovation, agility and flexibility needed for success; • £9k fee level fixed and OFFA agreement accepted (but we don’t know the likely impact); • Increasing competition on price from FE and private sectors; impact unknown but likely to be differentiated; • LJMU must work towards favourable REF in 2014, while keeping focus on student experience.

8. Key messages • Student recruitment, development and support; • Learning, teaching and assessment; • Research and scholarship; • Commercial and international development; • Excellence in delivery. • Should we be doing these things? • What else should we be doing? • How do we measure success in these areas? • What do you think is the purpose of a 21st Century university?

9. 1. Student recruitment, development and support • LJMU OFFA Access agreement- commitment to widening access, balancing this and admission standards; • Enhancing the overall student experience; • Employability, WOW, employer partnerships and graduate salaries.

10. 2. Learning, teaching & assessment • Student success in terms of employability and ‘good honours’; • A curriculum that is challenging, current and informed by research and scholarship and the world of work; • A high standard of teaching with innovation and enhancement in teaching methods, learner support and assessment; • The programme of study as the primary ‘product’ with which each student identifies; • Market responsive programmes, so more frequent changes in our programme portfolio.

11. 3. Research and scholarship; • A continuing focus on supporting areas of world-leading and international research standing, whilst encouraging the development of those areas of high national potential; • A positive REF outcome in 2014 and continued success in research beyond this (grants, publications etc); • A clearer definition of scholarship in all aspects of academic delivery (teaching & assessment process, the curriculum, employability agenda and commercial capabilities). This will be an essential differentiator in relation to Private and FE-delivered degree programmes.

12. 4. Commercial and international development; • It must enhance LJMU’s corporate reputation; • It should generate high value business income for the University in ways that complement, promote and support our core academic strengths, at home and internationally; • It can bring an international dimension to the work of the university; • It can promote staff engagement with the business world which is critical to the success and credibility of employability/ world of work initiatives.

13. 5. Excellence in delivery • Balanced budgets and financial stability in an increasingly competitive market; including responsibility as a major employer in the city and economic driver for the region; • Adding value for students, employers, and research and commercial clients; contribution to society; • Improving business processes and monitoring performance; • Recruiting, developing and supporting employees; • Corporate governance, ethical standards and environmental sustainability.

14. Working together: flip chart task in Centre groups • What environmental factors are necessary to enable faculty colleagues to work together? • What factors might prevent good collegial working (and what can we do to mitigate these)? • How many of our issues we need to deal with are common and how many are specific to our Centre? • One short term, one medium and one long term priority for your Centre.

15. What prevents good collegial working? Blockages 1 2 3 4 5 What we can do about it? 1 2 3 4 5

16. Behaving strategically to enact change? How does change happen: some thoughts from theorists

17. Top down or participatory? “Too often new approaches are introduced by executive fiat or though a centralist management strategy, or, at worst through ad hoc and hurried planning interventions in response to years of benign neglect. It seems a rarity indeed for academics to genuinely feel that they are part of a meaningful, participatory decision-making process that values their experience or even their instinct for seeing potential pitfalls.” (Lueddeke, 1999 p236)

18. Compliance or commitment? “…values are only values if they are chosen voluntarily and as such cannot be imposed from the top. Thus initiatives that are solely top down are at best likely to evoke compliance with change rather than a genuine commitment to it.” (McCaffery, 2004 p237)

19. The necessity of trust “Little progress is likely within the current external quality monitoring regime unless there is a radical shift to an integrated process of trust that prioritises improvement of learning” (Harvey, 2005, p.274). “A fundamental factor in reshaping culture is how well the senior management consistently model good practice” (Scott, 2004, p.5).

20. The need to bring staff with you “Staff will not engage in a change effort and the learning that goes with it unless they can personally see that doing so is relevant, desirable, clear, distinctive and importantly feasible. Being appropriately involved in shaping an agreed change project and being clear on what is envisaged are also powerful motivators. Right from the outset, staff affected by each change will be weighing up the benefits of engaging and persevering with it against the costs. This is a process that carries on over the whole life cycle of every change effort” (Scott, 2004, p4).

21. Making changes to the student experience: some issues • NSS scores: what next after the number crunching? • Risk analyses and contingency planning: what do we need to anticipate? • What can we afford to do? (And what can’t we afford not to do?) • How can we best work closely with student representatives including focus groups and Liverpool Students’ Union?

22. Making changes to teaching and learning. How can we • Further use Technology enhanced learning to enhance curriculum delivery? • Use Computer-aided assessment to avoid drudgery? • Making better use of learning resources, including Open Educational Resources? • Integrate information literacy better into our programmes? • Ensure our programmes are constructively aligned? • Ensure we are not over-assessing?

23. Improving organisational management • The timetable; • Rescheduling rather than cancelling lectures; • Responding to student feedback (and letting them know promptly what we have done); • Improving communications pathways; • Nipping problems in the bud.

24. Driving the LTA forward in centres. Task • Which areas of LT&A need most of our energies? • What areas do we feel reasonably comfortable about? • Are there any areas which do not concern us? • Which are going to be the hardest tasks to tackle? • What is urgent? What is important? • What are the priorities for our centre in 2011-2012 and 2012-3?

25. Fostering great teaching: discussion • What makes great teaching / teachers? • How can we foster communities of practice? • How can we further energise our staff to value and fully engage in teaching? • Who should we be encouraging to go for Teaching Excellence awards?

26. What are the characteristics of a great Teacher?

27. Fostering great teaching: quick tips • Watch lots of other people teach and talk about it; • Consider reviewing teaching contexts beyond just lectures; • Articulate your own diverse models of great teaching and try different things out; • Have people watch you teach and ask for focused feedback; • Ask for and learn from regular student feedback; • Take (medium sized) risks in your own teaching.

28. Communities of practice • Etienne Wenger (2002) describes these as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” • Communities of practice don’t just happen by accident. They need shared purposes, supportive conditions and an agent or agents to look after the practical aspects; • ‘Learning how to do it better’ needs to be an overt purpose of the Community of Practice; • Can we help our Centres become such communities?

29. Energising staff; quick tips • Demonstrate that good teaching is really valued by the Faculty; • Get new staff working with experienced staff for high energy mutual benefit; • Foster a culture of managed risk acceptance where innovation is prized (rather than automatic risk aversion); • Take advantage of home-grown expertise as well as external advisors; • Protect some budget to support learning, teaching and assessment development activities.

30. Who should we encourage to go for Teaching Excellence awards? • It’s an emergent system at LJMU; • Awards must be evidence-based. Evidence could include evidence of positive peer-observations, comments from senior staff, comments from external examiners etc. • They must include strong evidence from students e.g. Course evaluations, outputs from focus groups, awards from the SU, individual student testimonials etc. • Internal awards can be precursors to nomination for National Teaching Fellowships.

31. For NTFS nominees are likely to need all of the above plus… • Evidence of successful external influence; • Publications and conference workshops/papers on learning, teaching and assessment; • Involvement in subject orientated LTA activities e.g. former HEA Subject Centres; • A track record of bidding for and achieving funding for LTA projects within the university and beyond; And even people who have all this aren’t guaranteed success!

32. Working together across the faculty • Keeping it real while making the most of what we’ve got; • Can we collectively write joint project bids? • Are there faculty Teaching Initiatives we need to seed? • How can we foster writing for publication about learning and teaching? • What channels exist for effective dissemination of good practice?

33. Writing for publication about LT&A • It provides opportunities to demonstrate scholarship of teaching; • Staff just starting researching often find writing about LT&A a good way in (and staff on the PGCert often have something they can use immediately); • It enables staff to showcase what’s going well in the Faculty, drawing attention to good practice; • People writing about their teaching can make use of their day-today experiences. • Staff writing together build collegiality.

34. Writing for publication about LT&A. Quick tips • Write every day in 30 min – 60 min snatches to get you going; • Devise 10 questions you want to answer and write 500 words on each; • Start writing in the middle and do the introduction and the conclusion last; • Check out your targeted journal early on and focus your writing to their requirements; • Get local peer review before you send it away; • Be robust in the face of discouragement.

35. Writing successful bids for external funding • Needs coordination and prioritisation to avoid internal competition; • The more bids you write, the better you get; • A team of specialists working together gets more funding than individuals trying to do everything; • Lots of great bids get rejected, and a hit rte of one in three is brilliant; • Successful bidders tend to get more success.

36. Quick tips on funding bids • What on earth is this all about and why should I care? • Having they taken any notice whatsoever of what’s been done before? • Is it worth the substantial amount of money they are seeking? • What could possibly go wrong? • Who are these people anyway?

37. Or in the jargon • Is there a clear focus to the bid? Is it interesting/original? • Are they building on existing work? (and have they referred to the literature in the field?) • Does it offer the funders value for money (and are they putting in anything themselves?) • Have they done a realistic risk analysis with mitigation plans? • Does the bidding team have a track record?

38. Faculty L&T enhancement plans Brief summary of 2011-12 enhancement activities; 3-5 Priority areas for enhancement to include: • Aim/objective • Background/rationale • Action • Led by • Timescale • Support /resources needed • Impact measured by?

39. Individual prioritised action plans • What needs urgent/immediate action? What might block progress? How can we work around this? • What important tasks are there coming up that needed focussed attention? • What longer term goals need addressing? • What are the success measures? • What are the keys risks and how can we mitigate them?

40. References on change management Brown, S. (2011) Bringing about positive change in the higher education student experience: a case study, Quality Assurance in Education, Volume 19 No 3 p195-207. Brown, S. with Denton, S, ‘Leading the university beyond Bureaucracy’ in Denton, S and Brown, S. (eds) (2009) Beyond bureaucracy: managing the university year, London, Routledge. Cuthbert, R. (2002) Constructive Alignment in the world of institutional management, presentation at the Imaginative Curriculum symposium, York ,Higher Education Academy http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/resource_database/id170_constructive_alignment_in_the_world accessed April 2011. Debowski, S., Stefani, L., Cohen, M. and Ho, A. (2011) ‘Sustaining and championing teaching and learning in good times or bad’ in Groccia, J., Alsudairi, M. and Bukist, B. (eds.) A handbook of College and University Teaching: global perspectives, London: Sage Publications. Harvey, L. (2005) "A history and critique of quality evaluation in the UK", Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 13 Issue: 4, pp.263 – 276.

41. References 2 Holt, D. Palmer, S. and Challis, D. (2011) Changing perspectives:Teaching and Learning centres’ strategic contributions to academic development in Australian Higher Education, International Journal for Academic Development Vol 16 No 1 March 2011 p5-17. Iszatt-White, M., Randall, D., Rouncefield, M. and Graham, C. (2011) Leadership in Post-Compulsory Education: Continuum Press London and New York Henkel, M. (2000) Academic identities and policy change in higher education Higher Education Policy 46; London: Jessica Kingsley. Kezar, A. and Eckel, P. (2002) The Effect of Institutional Culture on Change Strategies in Higher Education: Universal Principles or Culturally Responsive Concepts? The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 73, No. 4 p 435-460 Lueddeke, G. (1999) Toward a Constructivist Framework for Guiding Change and Innovation in Higher Education , The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 70, No. 3 (May - Jun., 1999) (pp. 235-260) Marshall, P. and Massy, W. (2010) ‘Managing in turbulent times’ in Forum for the Future of Higher Education, papers from the 2009 Aspen symposium Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge USA. McCafffery, P. (2004) The Higher Education Manager’s handbook: effective leadership and management in universities and colleges, Abingdon: Routledge Falmer .

42. References 3 Newton, J. (2003) ‘Implementing an Institution-wide Learning and Teaching Strategy: Lessons in Managing Change’ Studies in Higher Education Vol 28 No 4. Quinn, R. E. (1995) Becoming a Master Manager: a competency framework 2nd Edition, London: John Wiley and Sons,. Robertson, C., Robins, A. and Cox, R. (2009) ‘Co-constructing an academic community ethos- challenging culture and managing change in higher education: a case study undertaken over two years’ in Management in EducationVol 23 Issue 1. Scott, P. (2004) Change matters: making a difference in Higher Education, keynote given at the European Universities Association Leadership Forum in Dublin http://www.uws.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/6892/AUQF_04_Paper_Scott.pdf (Accessed April 2011) Trowler, P. (1998) Academics Responding to Change: New Higher Education Frameworks and Academic Cultures Maidenhead: SRHE, Open University Press. Watson, D. (2010) Epilogue in Kubler, J. and Sayers, N. (2010) Higher education Futures: Key themes and implications for leadership and management Learning Foundation for Higher education, Series 2, Publication 4.1, London.