Quality Management of Academic Development Work: Implementation issues and challenges

Strategic leadership of Teaching and Learning Centres: from reality to ideal

“…But, even here, other Associate Deans from the same university used positive descriptors such as 'contributing' and 'supportive', a strong indication that it is the individual experience of staff that is the telling factor as they draw conclusions about their Centres. The crucial importance, highly variable quality and sometimes ambivalent nature, of relationships between Centres and their stakeholders has been observed elsewhere (Gray & Radloff, 2006). The survey of Directors that preceded the focus group phase also illuminated the importance of relationships between the Centre and individual incumbents in teaching and learning leadership roles -a number of respondents (Directors) noted that relationships between the Centre and particular individual key institutional stakeholder positions vary widely in nature (from the constructive to the virtually non-existent) and depend significantly on the incumbents in those roles.…”

“…Where the past tense was used, indicating a sense of completion, there was still a sense of recent change, with 'reshaped' and where, for instance, a DVC(A) chose 'empowered', that Centre's Director chose 'poised on the brink'. Perhaps because they are viewed by the university executive as an organ for implementing strategic initiatives relating to teaching and learning quality improvement (Brew, 2007), Centres seem to be prone to restructuring in continuing attempts to 'get it right' (Gray & Radloff, 2006). While by no means the only area of universities prone to cyclical re-configuration, whatever the reason(s), frequent and widespread Centre restructuring is reported internationally (Gosling, 2009a;Hart et al, 2005;Weimer, 2007).…”

Elastic Practice in academic developers

“…The second is the concern that this probing may impact on the faculty by bringing into question some current practice. Exposing these practices places the academic developer in the potentially dual role of faculty ally, and advocate for action to address specific teaching and learning issues exposed (Gray & Radloff, 2006). The academic developer is constantly walking a fine line within the context of their own institution.…”

“…This can only happen when this work is valued and recognised and therein lies our dilemma. If we utilise, for example, a quality management framework for academic development, as proposed by Gray and Radloff (2006), we are able to provide evidence of our principles, standards, performance and impact within the managerial structures of the institution. However at risk is our relationship with discipline-and faculty-based academics and their managers and administrators, who may regard this with suspicion on two accounts.…”

Three perspectives on a collaborative, whole-of-program process of curriculum change: Aligning a Creative Arts program with Threshold Learning Outcomes

“…Kirkpatrick (1998) proposes four levels of evaluation, including satisfaction, learning, application and impact. However, according to Gray and Radloff (2006), academic development work is most often evaluated according to participant satisfaction and learning. They argue that a key question that must be addressed is whether and to what extent student learning has been enhanced as a result of the work of academic development (p.87).…”