Warwick International Higher Education Academy
Notes of the Foundation Fellow Lunch held on 5 th October 2015
1 Presentation by Professor Christina Hughes
Professor Christina Hughes gave a presentation to attendees on the latest developments in relation to the WIHEA, (attached). She noted that a particular challenge for projects selected for support by the WIHEA would be scalability.
It was intended that between 3 and 5 projects would be selected for support in 2015-16 under each of the following schemes: Learning & Teaching Champions and Digichamps, to be overseen by Robert O’Toole.
Foundation Fellows were challenged to consider two topics: firstly the role and ambition of
Foundation Fellows themselves; and secondly, potential projects for support in 2015-16.
2 The role and ambition of Foundation Fellows
The following points were made:
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Need to avoid reinvention of wheel or replication of good practice going on elsewhere institutionally e.g. IATL already supports risk taking, digital work.
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WIHEA should act as an umbrella organisation structure to bring colleagues together and encourage joined-up thinking. Foundation Fellows (FFs) should work as advocates for this.
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In another 12 months, the Academy should be contributing effectively to developments well beyond its own immediate sphere of activity. Regular events will be required to develop colleagues’ relationship with WIHEA and clarify the opportunities it brings. It would be good to see ideas for projects being developed in
Faculties and brought forward. Networking must be a major strand of work to reach colleagues not so far involved in T&L enhancement.
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Fellows should be learning, sharing, and being personally ambitious for as much time as they can make available. There is a need information about intended levels of commitment in order to enable Fellows to make a case for their role to be taken into consideration in their home departments.
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Consideration to be given to ensuring colleagues pulling together in same direction around projects, rather than in disparate directions depending on individual preference.
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The visibility of FFs within the institution needs to be raised.
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Consideration should also be given to raising the profile of strong researchers who also have strong teaching skills and who are involved in enhancement activity.
3 Potential Projects
The following points were made:
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Worries about parity of assessment. Colleagues supported the Academy getting involved in work to encourage staff to adopt digitally-enabled forms of assessment.
This might be assisted by colleagues already working in this area providing detailed case studies of their approach and experiences to enable early adoption. The difficulty with showcase events is that sometimes staff don’t feel they receive enough
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 information on ‘how to do it’ to enable them to adopt the exemplars they see demonstrated and so bridging the gap from theory to practice for them is crucial.
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Digichamps work should been seen as subset over overall T&L work; projects should initially be assessed for merit and then a determination made as to which fall under the ‘digi’ label.
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Consideration might usefully be given as to how to respond to TEF. Perhaps the
University could develop a database to record excellence alongside numerical indicators which seem the primary focus. Case study template for TEF impact.
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WIHEA should sponsor the development of excellence case studies. May be 4/5 per department? WIHEA could develop a template with appropriate student impact metrics for inclusion?
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WIHEA could usefully explore means to encourage inclusion of practical experiences as part of learning e.g. recent work in Classics.
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Need more studio-based activities which requires longer period of time to complete successfully.
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Increased student demands of personal tutoring system could be the subject of a focus group approach. The institution should focus on well-being as a baseline perspective to underpin sound academic learning.
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It would be useful to pursue work in relation to postgraduates ’ teaching experience as an integral part of their development rather than a distraction from their own work.
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Could investigate the relative lack of engagement with wider University life of parttime mature students.
Would be useful to explore levels of participation of students in class. Sometimes a small % of assessment is linked to participation; need to consider other incentives.
Sharing practice in staff use of technical tools with a view to normalising their use.
Use of SSLCs as a tool to support the development of student participation.
Focus on assessment: how best to support new UG students to enable them to understand how marking is done and the nature of the feedback process.
Staff providing feedback on assessed work and closing feedback loops.
Opportunities for analysis of module evaluation within wider feedback mechanisms including through student involvement in SSLCs.
More student involvement in pedagogic understanding: insight into which questions to ask and how to go about responding.
Potential value in developing Foundation Year programmes at Faculty level.
4 Action points to take away
(a) Shared webspace for Foundation Fellows to interact.
(b) Means to enable departmental recognition of WIHEA activity in workload models.
(c) Consideration of route for study leave applications to be brought forward in connection with substantial teaching enhancement projects.
(d) Consideration of conference funding for Foundation Fellows.
(e) Email distribution list to be developed and circulated to the group.
(f) Principles/criteria to be used by groups assessing project applications.
HRWS 05.11.15
Foundation Fellows lunch notes
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