Cumbernauld College
Sector-leading and innovative practice: Annual course review template
To support self-evaluative activity, Cumbernauld College has produced a bespoke
annual course review template. The template includes a number of helpful features
including pre-populated performance indicators (PIs), in-year unit success, early
retention data and three-year trend data automatically appearing in helpful, graphical
format. In addition, the template includes collated perception responses, gathered
from learners, relating to their college experiences. The template is structured in line
with Education Scotland’s external review framework. This approach supports
effectively teaching teams’ completion of self-evaluation reports. The template is
accessed through the college’s intranet. Teaching staff populate self-evaluation
reports during pre-determined timelines dispersed throughout the year, rather than at
the end of the academic session.
The template very effectively supports staff in their roles. They no longer have to
individually gather and acquire PI data as this is already supplied to them. This
centralised approach ensures that all programme teams are using the same data,
staff no longer refer to locally-devised data. This approach also saves staff time and
allows programme teams to focus on evaluating their own performance and
improving outcomes for learners. The template helpfully identifies the progress
made by learners with protected characteristics. As a result, programme teams can
identify where particular groups are underperforming on particular units or
throughout their programme. The introduction of the template supports teaching
teams more widely to reflect on their practices and approaches and to identify areas
for improvement or further enhancement. The template supports staff when they
undertake self-evaluation activities and they complete the process in a shorter
timeframe. The introduction of a 1000 character limit, when populating the
evaluative evidence templates, ensures that commentary is focused, concise, and
identifies key areas for improvement. Since the introduction of the annual course
review template it has won a number of awards including first place in two
competitions held by Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and an equalities
and diversity award from Scotland’s Colleges. The college is currently giving
consideration to marketing this commercially with a number of other colleges across
Scotland who wish to take advantage of the annual course review template.
Managers are investigating further enhancements, including investigations into
faculty level and college-wide evaluative templates.
Education Scotland
Foghlam Alba