Learning and teaching innovation: Creating an inspirational learning community

Abstract

This paper presents a strategic approach taken by a research-led institution to rebalance its mission and to recognise and reward staff engaged in research, learning and teaching or community engagement equally. The focus is on the learning and teaching aspects of the strategy and the decision to emphasise the importance of innovation in terms of permission to innovate, support for innovation and senior-management agreement and resources for innovation. At the centre of the plan is the establishment of a centre for learning, innovation and professional practice. The new strategic plan of which this is a part aims to create an inspirational learning community for all staff and students by 2012.

Key words:

• innovation
• leadership
• learning
• strategy
• reward
• teaching

Background

Founded in 1895 and a university since 1966, Aston is a long established research-led university known for its world-class teaching quality and strong links to industry, government and commerce. With an outstanding international reputation for research the university is also regularly ranked within the top five in terms of graduate employment. Aston has gained sound accolades from the National Student Survey (NSS) as a small, friendly university that provides an excellent learning experience. In the 2008 NSS survey there was an 89 per cent satisfaction rating from our students that resulted in the current position of 11^th in the UK. In 2008 the university gained 12^th position in the UK, in the Good University Guide. Aston has always had a mission to be an:

‘International centre of excellence in teaching, research and consultancy, focusing on subjects of professional and vocational relevance in the sciences, engineering, business and the humanities’

In 2006 the university appointed Professor Julia King as the Vice-Chancellor of the university and her vision was for Aston to become an ‘inspirational place to work’. She realised that to achieve this vision there needed to be rebalancing of the mission to and reward staff engaged in or supporting research, learning and teaching or community engagement equally and the concept of a new balanced mission provided the focus for the development of a new strategic plan ‘Aston 2012’.

This balanced mission understands that excellent learning and teaching needs to take place within an environment in which staff are actively engaged in leading-edge research, scholarly activity and professional practice. This research underpins and enriches teaching and learning in a variety of ways: the curriculum of programmes is constantly being refreshed and enhanced by new research findings; specialist modules and dissertations in taught programmes often reflect the research interests and expertise of staff; students have the opportunity to learn about how knowledge is developed and created and to take part in the research process and thereby to develop valuable research skills; undergraduate and taught postgraduate students are invited to attend research workshops, seminars, staff presentations and guest lectures organised by the university, their school or subject areas. This sharing of knowledge between disciplines and research approaches is the way to create a dynamic learning community in which everybody is valued and their contribution recognised. The learning and teaching aspects of this approach are the key focus of this document. The paper is presented in three parts. The first part of the paper looks at the national priorities for learning and teaching and presents Aston’s position and potential with respect to these. The next section gives a brief review of the development of learning and teaching strategies over the last ten years within the university before going on to set out the various stages in the development of the new learning and teaching strategy ‘Creating an Inspirational Learning Community’ and the bringing together of staff from within the institution to form a centre for learning, innovation and professional practice to support the schools in the implementation and embedding of the strategy. The third section provides a short update on the progress that has been achieved to date, and the paper finishes with a personal reflective account of the meaning of innovation in the context of learning and teaching at Aston.

Introduction

Over the past five years, there have been numerous national developments within higher education (HE) which have had an impact on learning and teaching within the university sector. This section provides a context for learning and teaching developments at Aston.

Widening participation

The move to widen participation had a government target to enable 50 per cent of eighteen to thirty-year-olds to engage with HE by 2010. The latest participation figures indicate minimal overall growth in participation from 39–40 per cent over the eight years from 1999 to 2007.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) policy on widening participation provides a background context that matches the position taken by Aston:

‘Our aim is to promote and provide the opportunity of successful participation in higher education to everyone who can benefit from it. This is vital for social justice and economic competitiveness. Widening participation addresses the large discrepancies in the take-up of higher education opportunities between different social groups. Underrepresentation is closely connected with broader issues of equity and social inclusion, so we are concerned with ensuring equality of opportunity for disabled students, mature students, women and men, and all ethnic groups’.

(http://www.hefce.ac.uk/widen)

Aston University has a diverse staff and student base. HEFCE figures show that 89 per cent of students starting full-time first-degree courses at Aston in 2005–6 came from state school backgrounds, and 57 per cent are from minority ethnic groups, with 46 per cent coming from the West Midlands.

Aston has an excellent reputation for widening participation and its outreach work with schools and colleges has enabled the initial recruitment and strategic decisions taken to ensure that the necessary support is in place to retain this diverse student body. For example, in 2006, a learning support centre was established. The success of this centre and other widening-participation activities such as peer mentoring, volunteering, personal development planning and preparing for placements can be evidenced by the very low (4 per cent) drop-out rate, as the 2005–6 Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data presented in the Guardian indicates.

The university has also engaged successfully with Aim Higher, the new Life-Long Learning Networks, and leads the regional National Gifted and Talented Youth Hub (NAGTY). All this excellent and innovative activity was managed through support service departments with support from teaching staff, and monitored by various hubs, steering committees and working groups through an annually agreed budget. This innovative range of initiatives did not appear to feed directly into the curriculum.

Employer engagement

Aston has always worked closely with industry and commerce, and, currently, about 80 per cent of students on programmes have placements. Research has indicated that students who have the opportunity to gain work experience during their programme of study in general obtain at least one degree classification higher than those without, as a result of which the new strategy aims to be able to offer all students work-based experience by 2012. The key recommendations from the Leitch report (2006) align well with Aston’s strengths and strategy. These are the need to:

• increase employer investment in higher level qualifications, especially in apprenticeships and in degree and postgraduate levels;

• provide more training in the workplace;

• raise people’s aspirations and awareness of the value of skills;

• introduce compulsory education or workplace training up to age 18 following the introduction of new diplomas and expanded apprenticeship route;

Aston has expanded its foundation degrees from 25 students in 2006–7 to 100 in 2007–8 and 350 in 2008–9. As a result of the development of these programmes, the university was successful in gaining £1.6 million from the HEFCE Strategic Development Fund for the purpose of setting up a foundation degree centre. There is considerable interest from employers, and the student numbers on these bespoke programmes is expected to reach 500 by 2010.

E-Learning

HEFCE has developed a ten-year strategy to integrate e-Learning into HE, ‘HEFCE strategy for e-learning’. The strategy is intended to enable all universities and colleges to make the best use of information and communications technologies (ICT) in their learning and teaching. The necessity of embedding learning technologies and e-learning appropriately to enhance student learning is a major challenge for HE institutions. It is a key component of the latest HEFCE strategic plan, 2006–11, and in the capital allocations announced in January 2008 e-learning is specified as one of the areas of national strategic priority for the use of the Learning and Teaching Capital Investment Fund over the period 2008–11. At Aston the schools have used two different VLE’s that staff have developed on an individual basis. Technical computing support is centrally available through Information Systems Aston (ISA) and an externally focused organisation Aston Media has provided the main support for the exploration of learning technologies. Schools with funding were able to contract Aston Media to develop learning resources. In 2005, HEFCE allocated funds to all HEI.s to support the development of e-learning activity and strategic plans. Aston received £157,000 and this was used for a variety of e-learning initiatives, the main one being a Centre for E-languages. At the same time teaching quality enhancement funds were deployed by central staff development to establish a Flexible Learning Development Centre (FLDC). The aim of the centre being to support staff interested in developing new approaches to delivery by providing small amounts of funding as well as a forum to share the emerging practice.

The FLDC was crucial to the aspiration to be offering modules and programmes by a much more flexible delivery tailored to individual needs. Many interesting projects have been conducted with real benefits to the subject group involved but much of the work has been at school level with occasional good practice days for wider sharing. There is real scope to both develop and deploy technology in learning and teaching but the existing resource is scattered within the university, between the schools, Interdisciplinary Studies, ISA and Aston Media and there are no regular forums to bring the expertise between these well qualified and talented groups of staff together.

Library and Information Services at Aston work closely with the schools and departments to support the staff and students through a range of electronic resources. They have readily integrated library resources and training materials into the VLEs through digitisation of book chapters and journal articles, and recently introduced a Library Matters module. They are actively involved in the current debate sponsored by JISC about the future of libraries.

Research and learning and teaching

Teaching at Aston takes place within an environment in which staff are actively engaged in leading-edge research. Research underpins and enriches teaching and learning in a variety of ways. For example, the specialist modules and dissertations in taught programmes often reflect the research interests and expertise of staff. Thus programmes are constantly being refreshed and enhanced by new research findings and students have the opportunity to learn about the research process and about how knowledge is developed and created. Undergraduate and taught postgraduate students are invited to attend research workshops, seminars, staff presentations and guest lectures organised by their school or subject areas. Within all programmes there are research components in various formats, from clinical research through to more traditional laboratory and library based research. Schools have strong links with employers and there are opportunities to undertake research projects within the work-based environment. Many module specifications include a “contribution of research” section. In line with the university’s approach there have been national moves to encourage universities to support ‘research-informed’ teaching. In October 2005, HEFCE announced the approval of “additional funding to support teaching informed research, for 2006–07 and 2007–08 to be allocated in inverse proportion to an institution’s research funding.” These funds were included within the institutional allocated teaching quality enhancement funds, for learning and teaching strategic plans. These monies will be used to initiate learning and teaching research projects in 2008.

Rewarding and developing staff in HE

Aston introduced ‘Teaching Excellence Awards’ in 2005 for both teaching and support staff. This was managed by central staff development who also offered new staff the opportunity to participate in a postgraduate certificate in teaching and learning. As a research-led institution, take-up of this programme was low, support from the schools was variable, and, in the five years from 2001 to 2007, of the 207 staff who initially enrolled, only 86 gained the award.

This section has briefly highlighted the five main aspects that impact on the student learning experience at Aston: widening participation, employer-led programmes, e-learning, research-informed teaching and rewarding and developing staff. There was a considerable amount of innovation in all of these areas, and a high level of commitment from staff, but there was also a generally held feeling that teaching was not as important and not rewarded in the same way as research.

In November 2007, the new strategic plan placed learning and teaching innovation as the first key objective seeking to become a nationally recognised centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching by 2012.

The next section looks at the university-wide agreement of objectives for learning and teaching and the establishment of a centre to lead the development of innovative curriculum, technical innovation, research and development of innovative practice in learning and teaching and employer engagement.

Towards a new learning and teaching strategy: creation of a Centre for Learning, Innovation and Professional Practice (CLIPP)

This section outlines the purpose and plan for meeting the strategic objective to become nationally known as a centre of excellence in learning and teaching by 2012 and to create an inspirational learning community.

University-wide objectives for learning and teaching

Discussions about the new strategic plan and the specific focus for the objectives of a new learning and teaching strategy took place over a three-month period between November 2007 and February 2008 with a variety of groups and individual staff and students across the university. Eight generic objectives were agreed by the senior management teams in schools and the executive in March 2008. In the new learning and teaching strategy, there are four focused on staff:

1. Promote creativity and innovation in curriculum design and delivery that supports the needs of a diverse student population and their employment needs.

2. Enable staff to support student learning and assessment through an effective use of e-learning technologies and appropriate pedagogic research.

3. Develop recognition and reward opportunities and career paths for learning and teaching.

4. Develop strong subject-led curriculum partnerships with our regional, national and international partners.

And four focused on students:

1. Enable all students to deepen their knowledge, understanding and skills to enhance their achievement and employability.

2. Provide flexible and interactive learning opportunities within all programmes tailored to student needs.

3. Continue to enhance learner support systems to enable student achievement.

4. Provide a learning environment compatible with flexible delivery options to enhance student learning.

For these learning and teaching objectives to be achieved, there was a consensus that the following six aspects were needed.

1. Central leadership and coordination, working with the four academic schools and key support departments to support learning and teaching leaders within the schools and to provide the benefits of synergy across the institution.

2. A critical mass of innovative curriculum developers, researchers, technical innovators and professional practitioners within the schools that have clearly defined roles as learning and teaching innovators or champions.

3. Inspirational leadership and delivery reflecting the very best learning experience for the staff on for the PG Cert. This needed to be delivered in partnership with the schools and needed to illustrate the role of an academic practitioner at Aston. Work-based masters and doctorate opportunities would be validated for progression from the PG Cert along with transparent career paths to readerships and professorships in learning and teaching.

4. Support and resource for both internal and external dissemination of learning and teaching innovation and research to raise the external profile of Aston.

5. Income generation to support the development of the curriculum, innovation, pedagogical research and scholarship in learning and teaching.

6. Mainstreaming the innovative work of the widening participation task groups (learner support, student mentoring and volunteering, employability and placements) and the media and learning technology opportunities from Aston Media into the curriculum.

The strategic solution

Restructuring and leadership to form the new centre

It was agreed that staff engaged in student-facing work relevant to the development of innovative curriculum, delivery and assessment methods should be brought together. These included staff working in the outreach and widening participation office who were engaged in learner development and peer mentoring, staff from human resources engaged in delivering the postgraduate certificate, the whole of Aston Media and the foundation degree centre staff. In this restructuring, four of the five key areas crucial to development in learning and teaching (namely, widening participation, employer engagement, e-learning and developing staff) have been collocated in newly refurbished rooms and form the core of the new CLIPP. CLIPP has appointed four new senior academic department heads, all of whom report directly to the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Learning and Teaching Innovation. These are Heads of Curriculum and Learner Development, Media and Learning Technologies, Learning and Teaching Research and the Director of the Foundation Degree Centre. CLIPP will build on existing good practice by aligning staff engaged in developing innovative curriculum, delivery and assessment methods and forming learning and teaching research teams. The centre will provide leadership in technical innovation, pedagogical research and curriculum delivery and assessment as well as financial and practical resource to the schools to enable them to develop action plans to deliver the agreed learning and teaching objectives.

Buy-in and resource for innovators and champions from the schools

A second key aspect of the strategic solution was the creation of learning and teaching innovator and champion roles within the each of the four schools. These staff will work collaboratively with staff in CLIPP to share intelligence, innovative approaches and research-informed good practice. The plan was to seek at least three innovators or champions from each school within the three key areas of professional practice:

1. Curriculum and learner development.

2. Technology innovation.

3. Learning and teaching research.

The staff are responsible for developing the learning community in each school and department and will be led by the Associate Dean responsible for learning and teaching in the school. As a team, their role is the development, implementation and evaluation of the learning and teaching action plans and targets to meet the university-wide learning and teaching objectives.

All four executive deans of the academic schools agreed to fund the innovator or champion roles in their schools. It is envisaged that these roles will be within 0.2 and 0.3 of a total workload and that each role will be responsible for specific parts of the school Learning and Teaching Action Plan. Schools can change or renew the innovators on an annual basis depending on school priorities and identified areas of development.

A new committee structure

In line with the new balanced mission, the committee structure of the university has been reviewed and refreshed. The former Quality and Standards Committee, which had a quality enhancement sub-committee that dealt with learning and teaching, has been replaced with a major learning and teaching committee, with quality assurance, regulations, curriculum and learner development and learning technologies sub-committees. The latter two will be chaired by the CLIPP heads, with cross-university representation, including the school innovators and relevant staff from the support departments. All relevant funding streams, widening participation, teaching quality enhancement, employer engagement, research for learning and teaching will be planned and monitored via these groups to ensure that there is a transparent and strategic deployment that benefits the plans of the academic schools. They will also act as a focus to share practice and support the experimentation of new methods of enhancing learning.

Rewarding and developing staff

Responsibility for the postgraduate certificate has been transferred to CLIPP and is led by the Head of Curriculum and Learner Development. All executive deans have agreed that this programme is important for new staff, and the programme was redeveloped with school teams and revalidated in June 2008.

New promotion criteria to recognise and reward staff whose main focus was innovative curriculum development, academic leadership of programmes and research and dissemination of their practice were approved in February 2008. The Aston Teaching Awards were expanded in May 2008 to recognise the role that a wider group of staff play in delivering a successful university experience, including international student support and learner support.

The solution in practice progress to date

Establishment of CLIPP

CLIPP was initiated on 1 September 2008. Overall, there are 50 staff, all of whom are core-funded. In creating the centre, only one external appointment has been made — that of the Head of Curriculum and Learner Development. The Head of Aston Media became the Head of Media and Learning Technologies, and a previous National Teaching Fellow holder from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences was appointed as the Head of Learning and Teaching Research. Research-informed best practice will be at the core of the centre’s philosophy and income generation for core business essential to sustainability. CLIPP will provide academic leadership on innovative and research approaches, specialist workshops, individual support, information on national initiatives, access to national networking and dissemination of good practice.

Appointment and empowerment of school teams

All schools appointed innovators or champions led by an Associate Dean. As teams they have developed action plans for their school for this academic year. The plans include the development of new curriculum, evaluation of formative and summative assessment approaches, and research projects to enhance the learning and teaching experience. Staff taking on these roles are crucial to the successful implementation and embedding of the new learning and teaching strategy. The appointed champions are all mainstream members of staff, based in their own schools, and have credibility in the areas of innovative curriculum and learner development, pedagogical research and the innovative and effective use of technology to support learning. They have a good working knowledge of learning and teaching practices and will be able to motivate staff, encouraging the sharing of current practice and working with staff in developing their practice and dissemination skills.

Making the new committee structure work

Committees only work if the staff on them are clear about their role and feel empowered. There is a current enthusiasm to ensure they become decision-making, practice-sharing bodies that enable staff to do things differently and more effectively. Advance use will be made of technology so that staff can simply sign off papers that are to be received with time being spent on major work plan targets as needed. The new committee structure is to be implemented in the first semester of the 2008–9 academic year. All terms of reference, work plans and progress are to be reviewed initially in December 2009.

Rewarding and developing staff

The new PG Certificate in Professional Practice has thirty new staff who have been asked to attend the programme by their academic schools. It is to be delivered through a series of residentials, seminars, action-learning sets, the VLE and an e-portfolio. Aspirations are high for the new programme, and the programme leader has expectations that over 90 per cent of staff will complete it in the first year.

The new promotion criteria have been implemented with the internal promotion of two professorships in learning and teaching, a readership and several senior lectureships. Such positive action has set out a clear agenda for the increased value placed on learning and teaching within the institution. The expansion of the Aston Awards has been well received by staff from whom there were a large number of applications from both individuals and teams. They were celebrated by a lunch hosted by the Vice-Chancellor in September 2008.

Leadership and innovation for learning and teaching at Aston (a reflection)

In setting out this account of the strategic approach taken by a senior management team in a research-led institution, focused on rebalancing the mission, I am mindful that there may be readers who feel there is nothing innovative here as many of these ideas have already been implemented very successfully within other HE institutions in the UK, but, if we reflect on what innovation means, I like this quote from John Adair in his book Leadership for Innovation:

To innovate means literally to bring in or introduce something new — some new idea, method or device. The novelty may, of course, be more apparent than real, for newness is a relative term. What is new to me may already be familiar to you. But innovation as a wider concept has certain important facets. In particular it combines two major overlapping processes: having new ideas and implementing them.

(http://www.johnadair.co.uk/4.html)

Innovation in the context of Aston is all about valuing and profiling the work and ideas of the teaching and support staff, to enable developments and promote and support ideas, in all aspects of the learning and teaching strategy, e.g., curriculum delivery, implementing and evaluating new learning technologies, rewarding staff, learning and teaching research that has a measurable impact on learner achievement.

Another Adair term that resonates with the Aston leadership team is ‘action-centred leadership’ in which there needs to be a clear sense of direction. At Aston there is a clear vision set out in the strategic plan. The restructuring has brought learner development together with learning technologists, curriculum developers and learning and teaching researchers. I am optimistic that the establishment of this diverse team will aid creativity and provide coherent central leadership and support for the school action plans and the more general implementation of the learning and teaching strategy.

An example of how this has worked in practice is the moving of the whole institution onto a single VLE in just six months. The academic departments have always purchased their own hardware and software for teaching, and this resulted in the university being on two different VLEs. Problems in October 2007 with one of the systems offered the opportunity to move the university onto one system with major benefits to both staff and students. In March 2008, I hosted a strategic review with senior managers in the schools and departments, academic staff and ISA of the current VLEs — the outcome of which was a desire and agreement to move to one VLE. A fully costed business case was approved by the University Executive. To ensure that the full benefits could be gained from the move and that there was full consensus and buy-in from all stakeholders, a VLE consultant spent three days with senior managers and users from schools and departments as well as technical experts from ISA in April 2008. An additional day was then devoted to the identification of the hardware, software and training needs of ISA staff. Short-term timescales and actions were agreed, and the new Head of Curriculum and Learner Development took over the project leadership. A graduate team of learning technologists were recruited to support staff, and additional resources were released as required.

The system went live at the start of September 2008, and optimism is high. The reason for such a quick and effective implementation was senior management support and resource, single project leadership and the creation of a diverse team from the schools and service departments who were aware of local need. Anywhere, anytime, anything support is also readily available matching the highest expectations of the users. For Aston, this approach is new and therefore innovative. It also has the benefit of demonstrating alignment from the senior management to action on the basis of the needs and aspirations of staff.

This is only the first step in initiating change and recognition for the excellent learning and teaching that goes on at Aston. Not all the steps will be the right ones, but, collectively, we need to be robust enough to tell each other when the direction is not right but confident enough to give things a go. And perhaps above everything it should be fun!

About the author

Alison Halstead has worked in industry, at Brunel University, Coventry University, the Open University and Wolverhampton University. At Wolverhampton, she gained and led a £4.5 million Centre of Excellence in Learning and Teaching and in 2005 she was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship for her innovative curriculum development and academic leadership. She is currently the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Learning and Teaching Innovation at Aston University and recently became one of the first Senior Fellows of the Higher Education Academy.