Have you considered the following in your department or faculty?

• Peer feedback on teaching

  A colleague might assist another academic by agreeing to sit in on one of their lectures, tutorials, or some other learning activity and provide supportive, constructive feedback . Video-taping a teaching session and going through it with a colleague might also provide useful feedback to the teacher. The Centre for Staff Development has developed a peer feedback sheet for help in reviewing your teaching.

• Mentoring by senior teaching staff

  Staff in the early stages of their academic career and staff new to a particular type of teaching are likely to benefit from the guidance, coaching and support of a mentor.

• A departmental collection of teaching and learning resources

  A departmental pool of photographs, slides, videos, books, CDs, lecture notes, ideas for small group activities, assessment guides, self-directed learning projects, learning contracts, etc. could reduce costs and prevent teachers having to `re-invent the wheel'.

• Student input on teaching and learning

  As 'key stakeholders' students are to provide valuable input to reviews of subjects and curricula as well as departmental policies and guidelines on such issues as assessment and feedback, equity and postgraduate supervision.

• Co-ordinated SPOT items and surveys

  As well as encouraging the formative use of student surveys your department might like to decide on a selection of SPOT items to be surveyed. These can then be aggregated by the SPOT service to provide an anonymous indication of student perceptions of teaching across the department.

• A faculty or departmental teaching and learning committee

  A formal committee might consider broader issues related to teaching, such as curriculum, work load distribution, assessment practices, availability of teaching staff, etc. In addition to student representation, the committee could also include external representation from professional groups, industry, providers of research funding and the like.

• A faculty or departmental teaching forum

  This could provide staff with the opportunity to swop ideas and discuss the outcomes of teaching and learning `experiments' on a regular but informal basis.

• Professional associations related to teaching and learning

  Membership of associations concerned with teaching in the discipline area might help to promote national and international discussion, debate and innovation amongst staff in a particular department or faculty.

• Attendance at internal and external staff development workshops and conferences, and undertaking of award courses in teaching in higher education

  Encouragement and financial support for fees and HECS from the department would assist individuals in developing teaching competence and help to bring new ideas into departmental forums

• 'Teaching and Learning' as a standing agenda item for departmental meetings

  Issues might be initiated by staff on a particular aspect of teaching or by the department, for example in response to University policy changes relating to teaching.

• BYO workshops

  'Bring your own' workshops on teaching issues held at regular intervals would involve individual members of teaching staff identifying an issue or problem related to their own teaching and taking it to a faculty or departmental workshop for discussion and problem solving with other interested staff.

• 'Teaching and Learning Week'

  One week each year could be set aside by a department or faculty to focus on teaching and learning. The faculty, department and individual members of teaching staff could organise a program of activities, possibly drawn from the suggestions above.

Assistance from the Centre for Staff Development

The Centre for Staff Development is happy to provide assistance and advice on establishing and promoting staff development at the local level. The Centre can provide additional information on, and assistance with, any of the above ideas and would encourage the development of other strategies.

Contact the Director, Owen Hicks, on x3845, email ohicks@csd.uwa.edu.au