Promoting Teaching & Learning at the Departmental Level

The following practices were identified from the responses departments made to the Ensuring Teaching Quality (ETQ) at UWA - Best Practice Pathways instrument in May this year. They all illustrate the kinds of things some departments are doing or could be doing at the departmental level in order to enhance the quality of teaching and learning. Extracts from these documents are available at http://www.csd.uwa.edu.au/tl/etq/.

Committees to support teaching and learning in the department

Many departments have a teaching and learning committee which deals with issues related to teaching and learning in the department, and which reports to the departmental meeting. Other relevant committees include curriculum committees, industry advisory committees and student-staff consultative committees – these last two allowing for the incorporation of student and relevant external views into discussions of teaching and learning.

Development and implementation of a strategic plan for guiding changes in teaching and learning

The articulation in a strategic plan of a departmental commitment to change a particular aspect of a department’s teaching and learning practices over a period of time. The Faculty of Law for example is currently implementing a strategic plan to move significantly from lecture-based instruction towards seminar-based instruction.

Teaching retreats

A one or two day meeting of all academic staff in a department in order to share each others’ teaching approach and the rationales for these different approaches.

Annual teaching reviews

The involvement of all academic staff in a regular review of the year’s teaching with the purpose of planning for the following year’s work.

Allocation of departmental funds to support a range of activities related to teaching and learning

Such funds are being used to support innovative teaching projects, to fund attendance at conferences on teaching the particular discipline, to provide departmentally-based awards for good teaching, and to support staff in attending external staff development opportunities.

Allocation of teaching load

The allocation of teaching loads so as to ensure all staff have fair teaching loads that are not too burdensome. The allocation of lighter teaching loads to newly appointed staff in order to take account of their need to develop new courses and course materials.

Departmental commitment to staff development

A commitment on behalf of all staff in a department to participate in some kind of staff development in relation to teaching and learning by a certain period of time, where funds and time release are allocated to support this commitment.

Locally-based staff development workshops

The organisation and provision of locally-based staff development activities and workshops on different aspects of teaching and learning relevant to the needs of departmental staff and to the discipline. Two models are in use here. One in which external staff developers are brought in to deliver workshops within the department, and the other where the department itself runs workshops for its own staff and tutors.

Staff seminars on teaching and learning

Regular meetings of interested staff held to discuss issues relating to teaching and learning.

In-house mentoring

The involvement of senior staff in a department in the mentoring of junior staff.

Peer review

Setting up an annual system of peer review of teaching and learning, whereby individual academics review each other’s teaching in relation to consistency, coherence, relevance and ‘up-to-dateness’ of aims, content, methods and assessment. Peer review can also be used through teaching observation in order to provide feedback to colleagues on their lecturing.

Departmental teaching and learning manuals

A manual produced in order to inform staff of all relevant information and documentation relating to teaching and learning in the department, including university and faculty policies, as well as departmental practices.

Using the World-Wide-Web to publicise information about teaching and learning, including course outlines.

Strategies for enhancing the fairness of assessment

• Making assessment criteria explicit to students
• Use of external examiners
• Use of one marker per exam question in such a way that no one marker can influence the mark as a whole for the particular exam.
• Use of blind double-marking
• Use of an independent panel of experts to mark samples of assessed work
• Sharing criteria, marking practices and standardising between examiners
• Having a departmental assessment committee to review standards and deal with issues that arise year to year