Through the Trees: Resourcing Transitions

As a teaching consultant, my lectureship is tasked with supporting staff to develop and deliver pedagogically sound papers and programmes based on contemporary principles of teaching, learning, assessment and curriculum design.  I attended an event last month for the local chapter of the Tertiary Education Union.  Interesting conversations ensued around one table, which has relevance to my work.

This work by Katarina Gray-Sharp is licensed under a
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One lecturer discussed the difficulties he was having with the rapid speed of technological change.  He felt that he was expected to assimilate one new system into his teaching practice, only for it to be quickly replaced with another.  One method for responding to this difficulty is a policy that resources transitions between processes.  This means every time a new process, technology, or policy is initiated, resources which assist with the transition to the new system are automatically provided.  Such resources should include individual and unit assessments followed by training, but may extend to marking assistance or capital items depending on the assessed need.

Although transparency was identified as a general procedural issue, the quality of information was also perceived as problematic.  A trio described the onslaught of unnecessary emails from administrators across the institution.  Although not quite spam, the content was not focused on the academics' three areas of interest: teaching, research, and community service.  They, like me, look forward to a filtering device that automatically deletes emails about lost cats.