Report 6 Case Studies

Report 6 – Case studies

Report 6

Case studies

Colin Bryson

Case Study A

This was a large post 1992 university with over 30,000 students. The university was based on one main campus in a city centre with two other campuses in towns a considerable distance away.

The focus of the case study visit was on two areas where previous communication had shown there was ongoing proactivity on PTT issues, including:

1. Courses on teaching and learning provided to PTT through the central Learning Development Unit.
2. A particular initiative in the Business School where formal policy on supporting PTT has been developed and implemented.

Therefore the interviewees were two members of staff from the Learning Development Unit (Head; and one of the Learning Development Advisors who took responsibility for the courses) and two staff in the Business School (Dean; and Academic Development Facilitator).

The interviewees were not able to provide information about the scale of deployment of PTT across the university. In part this was because schools and departments were both diverse and autonomous in this regard. Staff in the Learning Development Unit (LDU) perceived there to be a large deployment of PTT in the university. There were not many postgraduate students, but some of them taught on this basis and many PTT were drawn from external professionals. For example, there had been a large number of PTT in Art and Design, although recent budgetary constraints had reduced this number. There were well established support mechanisms for PTT in Art and Design mainly involving a mentoring system for new starters. Another department which provided its own support and development for PTT was Languages which ran a major pre-sessional event for international students almost entirely staffed by PTT (who were employed entirely for this event only). This event was perceived to be well organised and successful, as the PTT involved were experienced and carried out similar roles in EFL elsewhere.

Addressing PTT issues had been identified as a strategic issue for the university but only one faculty (Business school) had so far been pro-active. Many of the issues were bound up in the negotiations on the implementation of the National Framework Agreement and were yet to be resolved.

The university was organised into four faculties headed by a Dean. Each faculty has a number of departments under a Head, and these are further sub-divided into subject divisions. The division leader was responsible for the subject modules and each module was managed by a module leader.

The central focus of support for learning and teaching and educational development (ED) was the LDU, which was responsible for:

1. Learning and teaching support
2. e-Learning support and development (including Web CT system)
3. Overseeing provision of all ED courses including accredited courses.

It was notable that many of the members of staff in the LDU were former academic teaching staff who had come from the faculties rather than an educational development route.

Faculties and schools had some autonomy and responsibility for learning and teaching (L&T) and ED. They each had a Teaching and Learning Coordinator (TLC) who both contributed to the generic PG Certificate in L&T in HE and had the role of encouraging the development of faculty policy on L&T and linking that to the institutional strategy. Each faculty also had their own academic officers for areas such as disability and international students. Thus this university operates a mixed model in terms of central versus devolved structures.

Staff development provision

The LDU had developed a course which they called the Teacher’s Toolkit. The main rationale for this had been to create a course of sufficient robustness to ensure members of staff new to teaching were adequately prepared to teach, but not making it so so onerous that staff would not undertake it. At that time changes were required to certificated courses and it was decided that a flexible provision was likely to benefit more staff, including allowing staff with more part-time involvement in teaching to attend. Five days was chosen as the optimum duration for this purpose and in order to ensure participation the course was run six times a year beginning at different times of the week. If assessment elements were undertaken by participants and successfully completed the participant could then gain certification and associate membership of the Higher Education Academy. Undertaking the full (with assessment) Teacher’s Toolkit formed the first module of the PG Certificate course. Much of the course and module was delivered by the TLCs.

This Teacher’s Toolkit had now been running for four years and was always oversubscribed. The course was not strictly compulsory. New salaried teaching staff “need to gain accredited professional status” and the Toolkit was deemed the appropriate method to do this. There was considerable variance among Heads of Department on how much pressure the members of staff were under to attend. HRM paid for staff to attend although there was a fee charged if it was undertaken as a module as part of the PG Certificate. The Toolkit was entirely voluntary for PTT to undertake.

Nearly all new salaried staff undertook the Toolkit but a rather smaller proportion undertook the assessment and therefore achieved certification. Several more experienced salaried staff had taken the course and they were more likely to go on to the certificated route. Some PTT had done the course but even fewer had undertaken the assessment element. Time constraints and other commitments seemed to have adverse effect here.

A more recent innovation had been the introduction of a mini-toolkit. It was noted that not all PTT were able to devote a whole week at once to such a course as the Toolkit. Therefore a one-day ‘Introduction to Learning, Teaching and Assessment (LTA)’ was developed, which focuses on delivery and skills in the classroom rather than theory or infrastructure. This was aimed specifically at PTT. This ran twice in each semester on both a full day and two half day variants. In the first two years it attracted several PTT on each occasion it was run. However, this year participation has been down. Some possible reasons were offered for this:

1. New salaried staff are invited to the Toolkit by HRM at the same time as receiving all documentation prior to start but communication with PTT is much more uncertain as HRM are not necessarily aware of them (as recruited at Department level) at this stage
2. PTT do not have email addresses and cannot be invited this way
3. PTT do not hear about the course until well after they have begun teaching
4. Although the course is free it not common practice for PTT to be paid for their time in attending.

The LDU offered many other staff developments events. PTT rarely attended these events and the reason given for this was communication difficulties. The LDU produced a booklet and regular updates which were directly mailed to salaried staff, but had to rely in indirect transmission to PTT.

Other routes to identifying and supporting the development needs of PTT were not strong. The appraisal system had become rather diverse and ad hoc and did not provide the LDU with useful information. Although new members of staff were, in theory, allocated an induction mentor this only provided, where it was operated, some initial support.

This university was one the pilot institutions in implementing the Professional Standards Framework (PSF). The LDU was responsible for this but acknowledges that the element of enhancing continuous professional development was very challenging. They were initiating a series of projects linked to PSF, some of which built on their existing provision. None of these were specifically aimed at or involved PTT. However, a key part of the strategic approach by the LDU was building a stronger culture of a learning community involving all those who teach and support students, including all types of PTT (including technical and other support staff). The LDU was making inputs to the National Framework Agreement negotiations to ensure that development and support of PTT was included in this agenda.

The LDU had been successful in obtaining Supporting Professional Standards funds from HEFCE in 2005. This provided resources to appoint a staff member in each faculty on a 0.5 FTE basis for 18 months in the role of Academic Development Facilitator (ADF). The ADFs took forward the ED enhancement agenda that their own faculties chose from a list suggested by the LDU, such as e-learning, peer support and peer observation. These posts were now coming to an end and it was proposed that they be replaced by a series of projects, each of which would focus on an institutional priority. One such project is ‘uncovering’ – seeking to get staff to identify their own continuing professional development needs and how to address these. However, the introduction of the role of the ADF in one faculty had led to a major initiative to support PTT.

The Business School model

The school had over 150 salaried academic staff. There were currently 53 PTT on hourly paid contracts (see table below).

About 15% of all teaching was undertaken by PTT and the Dean was of the view that, given the economic climate and the necessity to retain flexibility, a similar proportion would be required for the foreseeable future; “no school can operate with spare capacity and we need to manage peaks and troughs [of demand]”.

PTT were recruited via the jobs.ac.uk website. Division leaders would identify staffing needs and then scrutinise CVs that were sent in for a match. This had been very successful, but it was noted that turnover among PTT was quite low, so there had been few recent new starts.

The Dean had been concerned for some time about the ad hoc and varied nature of support for PTT. When the university had created the position of Academic Development Facilitator it had been an ideal opportunity to address this and adopt a consistent approach across the faculty.

One of the priorities suggested by the university for the ADF to tackle was the ‘treatment of hourly paid lecturers’. Without this investment it was unlikely that an initiative on PTT would have been undertaken. As the Dean said:

Frankly these sort of jobs, the ones which need doing at a corporate level but which you have no resources for, are the ones that get left.

Therefore the first task for the ADF when she was appointed was to develop policy on supporting PTT. The ADF was an experienced lecturer from the HRM discipline. The school appointed an ‘academic enhancement team’ at the same time which consisted of all role holders with school wide roles in L&T issues and which as a group met the Dean bimonthly.

The intention of the ADF was to create a self sustaining framework for supporting PTT which did not require her constant vigilance, as she had other tasks to undertake after establishing it and was aware of the temporary nature of her post. Therefore she focussed on identifying key issues in terms of what PTT would be required to do and know, and then identified who should be responsible for providing and maintaining that. This covered elements of induction, but also more ongoing requirements. The initial framework is included as an appendix to this document.

The role of the ADF in operating the policy framework was restricted to offering an initial induction workshop. This turned out to be impractical in terms of PTT availability and she had substituted this with a one-to-one meeting. The PTT were given a copy of the framework together with their contract. Much of the framework was built on foundations of practice that already existed. For example, Heads of Department (HoD) and departmental administrators had carried out these roles prior to this, but there was a need to formalise them. Division leaders had interviewed PTT (with HoD making final selection decision), but now had a more extended role in integrating PTT into the programme and ensuring the PTT were aware of student expectations. Supporting and managing staff went with the territory of roles such as HoD and division leader, but was more of an innovation to module leaders. In order to recognise the responsibilities of module leaders, they were given an allowance of hours in the workloads model for this task including supporting PTT. It was noted that some module leaders did not teach on the module and indeed might only be present at the initial stage of the term, for example because they were on research secondment. Therefore it was very much in module leader’s interest to brief and support the PTT at this stage, rather than allow problems to develop later on.

The ADF emphasised the importance of replication in the framework, “many different routes to the same thing”, i.e. reinforcing key messages to ensure that the PTT got essential information and support. She noted that although several PTT were experienced teachers in other settings or worked in multiple PTT roles in HE and FE, it was local procedures that were important to learn. For example, at this university, there was short turnaround period for assessment with feedback, but the challenge of this to busy staff was mitigated by giving generic feedback initially. Indeed assessment was a particularly problematic issue, mainly because it was set by somebody other than the PTT and the module leader should explain their thinking behind the design to the PTT.

The school sought to “strongly recommend” attendance by PTT on the Introduction to LTA course, but it was not compulsory. Members of staff were not paid to attend this, but the ADF felt that a bigger issue was for PTT to attend, when the course either clashed with teaching or if not teaching, with other commitments outside. She noted that many of the current PTT had done the longer Teaching Toolkit course.

The framework was now in its second year of use and the ADF felt it had become more embedded. She had reminded staff on a regular basis about it – a maintenance role. Her role was to set the framework up rather than manage it, so she had not evaluated it. She was unsure whether PTT were now appraised or mentored on a systematic basis. The Dean commented that appraisal was more systematic now. The ADF hoped PTT would demand this support if not offered. She was confident that the responsibilities had become established.

She had written a report for university senior management which was well received and the Business School was acknowledged to have met its ‘performance plan’ in this regard. Another indication that the framework was successful was the interest shown in by other faculties. It was quite likely that one of the other faculties would be creating their own version shortly and there had also been interest from HR and from another campus.

It was not possible to meet PTT during the case study visit to ascertain their views.

The Higher Education Academy, January 2006

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Report 6 – Case studies

Appendix A – Case A Business School

FACILITATING INDUCTION FOR HOURLY PAID STAFF

The Higher Education Academy, January 2006