Issues of Teaching and Learning, 9(7)

Achieving Institutional Teaching Excellence

This issue of ITL provides you with a brief insight into the excellent institutional projects which were recently forwarded for consideration in the Australian Awards for University Teaching conducted by the Australian Universities Teaching Committee.

UWA Excellence Awards: Addressing Diversity, Creating Opportunity, Promoting Achievement
related to the AAUT institutional category relating to Innovative and Practical Approach to the Provision of Support Services that Assist the Learning of Students. Jon Stubbs, Director of Student Services and his team reflect on the AAUT experience.

First Year Human Biology at UWA: Challenges of Diversity, Benefits of Engagement
was submitted by the School of Anatomy and Human Biology under the leadership of Brendan Waddell for the category Innovative and Practical Approach to Team Teaching in Large First Year Classes.

Embedding Quality: The UWA Internship Scheme
was developed by Jane Long to demonstrate UWA's approach toward providing Innovative and Practical Approach to the Enhancement of the Quality of Teaching and Learning at UWA.

A fourth submission titled Succeeding in Mainstream: Graduating Indigenous Professionals was prepared by the School of Indigenous Studies under the leadership of Jill Millroy. The submission demonstrated UWA's Innovative and Practical Approach to the Provision of Services to Indigenous Students.

While the past contribution of the teams was recognized in their selection for nomination, the process of preparing the submission still proved very demanding. In particular, the groups needed to validate their programmes and demonstrate excellence. This raised a number of interesting challenges which caused considerable reflection and discussion as to how programmes could be evaluated and how excellence could be described. Each group learnt much and developed strongly through the process - as they outline. Their insights offer some valuable forms of reflection for others who manage units, courses or programmes of support. How do we evaluate our effectiveness and outcomes? And how do we prove excellence?

The Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL) invites reader response to its publication ITL. Responses advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised will be published in the Web version of that issue.