Vivian Neal

The prescriptive-ness that Alice, Rosalie and Barb all discuss is central to how we go about support the HE teachers.  The notion of lesson plans in HE would be frowned upon here in the UK I am sure. However, the Higher Education Academy has gathered a huge number of teaching resource in a wide variety of subjects, and these can be used by anyone to support their teaching - see the Subject Cetres at:  http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/networks/subjectcentres

I'll also attach a one-page document which describes the learning outcomes of the first required course on our LTHE program.  You can see that the learning outcomes are very general, yet for our second course (sorry, I can't seem to attach 2 documents to the same posting) we have a separate course for lecturers in the creative disciplines such as architecture, dance and fine arts - we found that the standard set of learning outcomes was too narrow for the creative domains.

The challenge of developing a competency framework that is useful yet flexible enough is a huge challenge, but I do think the UK framework, see: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/professional (find the standards on the left hand side menu) has done a fairly good job. Deirdre and Barb both mention their concerns about making the standards broadly applicable. The interpretation of these standards is left up to the individual institutions, and in fact for one of our courses we have negotiable learning outcomes. That is, the specific learning outcomes are negotiated between the teaching and the student. As another example, a part of our program is a teaching observation where the teacher observes the new lecturer in a teaching situation - we do indeed go into the hospitals to observe them with their medical students, and we go out in a boat with them and their marine biology students, and of course we observe them in the classroom also.

Strangely when I've told my UK colleagues that there is no teaching accreditation for higher education in Canada, they are shocked. Yet, these programs have only been mandatory in UK HE institutions for the past 10 or 15 years. The culture has changed radically and in a fairly short time. I'm not sure how to change attitudes, but perhaps we should be looking at techniques for creating social change - where to start, how to do it? Thoughts?

It's interesting the difference between "Teaching Expectations" and "Teaching Excellence" that Alice and Wendy refer to when questioning how the national and institutional quality of teaching are considered. If we assume that some kind of framework is benefitial, perhaps the community of institutional peers would put pressure on so that their fellow institutions are motivated to adopt the framework - this would be the marketting end of the "Teaching Excellence" model.

In Canada, the top down approach may not be so effective as in the UK, simply because of the difference in the governance of the higher education sector. In Canada, education is a provincial responsibility. Although, Scotland has a completely separate education system from England and Wales, and they seem to have complied with the HEA framework.

Nick, Barb and others share an interest in this topic as it may at some point affect the way we work with teachers in HE. It's great that you are participating in this seminar and I'd like learn more about your perspectives on how a credentialed environment might affect you personally and your workmates.  Barb, of course I know your workplace (my old Canadian workplace), but I don't know your opinions about credentialling....

Irene and Valerie are bringing up an interesting point about the college system and the need for professionalizing teaching in this realm.  And also Valerie brought up "transfer" courses, as they are called in British Columbia, whereby students take a couple of years at a college, then transfer to a university to complete their degree.  At the University of Plymouth, a subsection of our LTHE students take a course in Higher Education in Further Education Contexts (further education in the UK has some similarity to the community college system in Canada and the US). As far as I can tell, this route for taking HE is expanding quickly and becoming increasingly important and relevant to students.