Bringing about Change in Teaching and Learning at Department Level

Report on the GEES Subject Centre Departmental Change Initiative

Mick Healey1, Michael Bradford2, Carolyn Roberts3 and Yolande Knight4

1University of Gloucestershire, 2University of Manchester, 3University of Oxford, 4University of Plymouth

May 2010

Executive Summary“It was excellent” “It’s been really amazing” “Brilliant” “It was wonderful”

Team leaders’ comments about the Department Change Initiative residential workshop

Bringing about change to teaching and learning in a department is a key issue for department leaders. The department is arguably the key organisational unit at which the core teaching and learning experiences of most students are designed and implemented. This GEES Department Change Initiative grew out of a desire to be more strategic about supporting changes in teaching and learning. It adapted ideas developed in the Change Academy programme and applied them at a departmental level. It is an innovative initiative and GEES is the first Subject Centre to implement the Change Academy principles at department level. This report investigates curricula changes which are in the process of being implemented. It covers the critical ‘framing’ stage, and the early stages of implementation of changes to curricula.

GEES departments in four different universities established teams of four to five participants with different roles and levels of seniority, including students. Whilst two teams were single-discipline department groups, one team was interdisciplinary and another was seeking synergies in course delivery from the merger of three previous departments. The year long initiative was in three phases: a) bidding and support of team development; b) 48-hour three day residential event; and c) development of the projects over the subsequent six months. The programme was designed and delivered by three senior staff from the GEES disciplines experienced in running learning and teaching change workshops, with the active support of the GEES Associate Director.

The main conclusion to emerge from the interviews, self-completed questionnaires and the authors’ observations as participants is that overall the GEES Departmental Change Initiative was highly effective at supporting departmental teams to clarify, design and plan significant curriculum related initiatives. Among the key features of the initiative which made it successful are:

The inclusion of the planned initiative’s key stakeholders, including students and where appropriate learning support staff

The supported change residential event, which took the teams off campus for at least two days and immersed them in a mixture of activities, particularly emphasising creative thinking, and time to plan

The discipline-based nature of the event, which enhanced the benefits of networking with members of the other teams

Pre- and post-event telephone discussions, which provided critical support to the team leaders

Respected, experienced supporters who acted as independent critical friends of the teams and encouraged them to think of a range of ways of meeting their objectives.

Against these benefits has to be balanced the intensive nature of the programme from the point of view of the Subject Centre. It is difficult to calculate a cost-benefit ratio, especially for changes which have yet to be implemented fully in their departments. However, the indications from the participants are that the initiative has added considerable value to the quality of the teaching and learning which the four departments have designed and planned. Arguably the projects supported in this initiative will impact on the quality of student learning more extensively than many of the smaller projects traditionally supported by Subject Centres, which are usually targeted at individual modules or courses. In the context of restricted resources for Higher Education nationally, serious consideration should be given to moving from this pilot initiative to a full programme of supporting strategic changes at departmental level. This applies not only to GEES, but to work in the other Higher Education Academy-supported Subject Centres, and to whatever other discipline-based initiatives designed to support teaching and learning may emerge in the future.

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Contents

Executive Summary 2

Main Report 4

1. Context and rationale 4

2. Key features of the initiative 5

3. Researching the initiative 6 4. Understanding curriculum design 7

5. Understanding the management of change in higher education 7

6. Supporting the GEES department change initiative 8

7. Expectations of the initiative 9

8. Experiences of the event 11

9. Post-event developments 15

10.Conclusions 16

Appendix 1 GEES Department Change Event Programme 18

Appendix 2 Approaches to Curriculum Design 20

Appendix 3 Creative Methods for Planning Change 25

Appendix 4 GEES Department Change Case Studies 26

References 39

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Main Report

“I want you to imagine that you have been asked to form a new department of geography. Given the rare opportunity to write without constraint, would your curricula bear much resemblance to

most of the formal courses of study to be found today? With any luck your answer will be something like, good grief no! If your answer is something else … there is not much hope for the

future!” (Gould, 1973, 253)

1. Context and rationale

This report is the outcome of a supported change programme. Bringing about Change in Teaching and Learning at Department Level analyses an initiative undertaken by the Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES) Subject Centre with the support of the Centre for Active Learning (CeAL), University of Gloucestershire. The pilot initiative was developed during 2008 and ran for a year from early 2009 to early 2010. It involved four GEES departments from Aston, Bath Spa, Lancaster and Newcastle Universities, each of which had a significant curriculum-related change project that they were either planning or were early in the process of developing. Each had a team of four or five people with different roles and levels of seniority, including senior managers, experiences lecturers, new lecturers and support staff. Three of the teams had a student member and one bought along two. The report covers the period of project initiation and development through to the beginning of the implementation stage for the change. Hence it reports on work in progress rather than completed. However, it covers the critical ‘framing’ stage in designing changes to curricula.

The department, or school, is arguably the key organisational unit in higher education (HE) where teaching and learning is planned, delivered and evaluated. As departments have variously grown and merged in response to the exigencies of the Higher Education market-place for research and teaching, many cover several subject areas, and some draw curriculum strength from the associations. This has led department heads to seek strategic changes in the organisation of teaching and learning which straddle whole departments. Alternatively, in some cases staff from more than one department may collaborate on interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary tuition. Examples of both of these types of change are seen in this study.

The report is based on research undertaken by the authors during the course of the programme to explore the department teams’ experiences of designing, developing and beginning to implement specific strategic teaching and learning projects and initiatives. The research involved a mixture of individual participant reflections and semi-structured interviews, observations and group discussions. It aimed to capture the ‘journey travelled’ by the teams in managing their change initiatives, and to draw conclusions about the transferability of the approach.

The programme was originally inspired by Change Academy© – a year-long facilitative programme led by the Higher Education Academy and the Leadership Foundation, which enables teams from HEIs to develop the knowledge, capacity and enthusiasm for achieving complex institutional change (Bradford, 2010). The Department Change programme is innovative in that it is the first to apply the core principles of Change Academy at department level. In its first decade of existence GEES has largely focussed on supporting the learning and teaching needs of individual faculty. This initiative aimed to support the needs of departments. It is the first of the 24 national Subject Centres to develop such a department change event. A thematic-based initiative examining the development and embedding of inclusive policy and practice in 10 institutions by the HE Academy used a similar approach to this programme (May and Bridger, 2010). Although we were not aware of this initiative when undertaking ours we found the structure of their report helpful when preparing ours.

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This report disseminates the learning gained from the experiences of the four departments across the GEES subject areas and the wider HE sector. It is hoped that the findings will stimulate others to undertake further work to understand the nature of the change process at department level and how it might be supported to enhance the quality of student learning.

2. Key features of the initiative

The initiative shared many of the key features May and Bridger (2010) identified in their programme:

Self-identified change: Departments were required to identify the rationale and aims of the proposed change and the relationship with the department’s and institution’s strategies. They had also to demonstrate the impact on the students’ learning experiences.

A facilitative initiative: The initiative was designed to support the department teams to focus on, and exchange ideas about teaching and learning development and implementation. It offered space away from the home institution, prompted discussion and debate, provided input from change consultants and access to relevant research evidence, tools and resources. The programme provided a mix of institutional, role-based and cross-team working.

A longitudinal programme of engagements: The initiative involved a series of supported events for team leaders, and a three-day residential event for all team members.

The involvement of department teams: As a condition of participation, departments were required to nominate a team of three to five people drawn from across the department, including where possible a student member.

Working alongside other GEES departments: By bringing teams together, the programme enabled the participating departments to work alongside others who were planning teaching and learning changes. This allowed for the sharing of experiences, challenges and solutions and supported networking across institutions.

Promoting the development of evidence-informed practice: The initiative was informed by a number of relevant research studies.

Seeking to share the learning with the sector: From the start of the process, the initiative was underpinned by research to capture the ‘journey travelled’ by the teams over the course of the programme so that others may learn from the work they have undertaken.

Four departments from different UK universities submitted proposals. One was planning a new interdisciplinary undergraduate programme in sustainable development; another wanted to reconceptualise their first year programme following a merger of geography, environmental science and ecology faculty into a new department. The third wished to develop a programme to support the varied backgrounds of students coming into their twelve month Masters programmes; while the fourth wanted to plan how to engage employers and community groups more effectively in their curricula (Table 1).

The main event in the programme was a 48-hour workshop over three days. This intensive structured event consisted of a mixture of plenary sessions, helping the participants explore a variety of approaches to change and curriculum design and to rethink their projects creatively; team sessions where projects were developed in more detail; and social teambuilding events (Appendix 1). The team leaders were supported in characterising their projects and choosing their teams before the event and discussing progress and issues arising during and after the

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event. Significantly all three supporters of the teams have experience of being Heads of GEES Departments, leading major national teaching and learning projects, and running workshops designed to facilitate change. All three are National Teaching Fellows.

Table 1 Summary of the change initiatives

Department and Institution

Theme of change initiative

Key aim(s)

Interdisciplinary Studies, Aston University

Sustainable development and management: designing an interdisciplinary degree

To develop a new degree in sustainable development and management that provides a coherent and innovative approach to the learning and teaching of environmental and sustainable issues

Department of Geography, Bath Spa University

Employability and engagement in the curriculum

To develop integrated external engagement opportunities for all students whilst retaining ownership, distinctiveness and academic integrity of programmes

Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University

Creating opportunities from a departmental merger: re-evaluating first year teaching across the GEES disciplines

To explore ways of removing overlap between first year subjects, whilst maintaining a high level of embedded skills training

School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, University of Newcastle

Making sense of postgraduate study: transition issues

To improve transition for postgraduate taught students (especially international students) by developing pre-sessional information and integrated skills and academic competency training in the early weeks of teaching

3. Researching the initiative A mixture of qualitative methods were used to research the experience of the teams and their leaders, including interviews, discussions, self-completed reflections, and observations. Although the departments and institutions who participated in the pilot are named with their agreement, comments of individual participants have been kept anonymous.

Discussions took place with the team leaders once before the residential, once during the event, and once after. Each of the team members was asked to complete a one-side proforma reflecting on their expectations before the event; 12 were returned. Interviews, lasting between 10 and 20 minutes, were held with 10 team members in the final 24 hours of the residential event and with each of the team leaders in the week following the event. A similar reflection proforma was distributed six months after the event, but insufficient were returned to analyse. Finally, as the researchers were also the supporters of the initiative, an important source of data was our own observations and discussions between the GEES team. This data was supplemented by summary case studies of each of the initiatives written six months after the event by the team leaders (Appendix 4), our reading of the literature on curriculum change and change management, and our experience of facilitating curriculum change in other contexts.

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4. Understanding curriculum design

As the programme was concerned with bringing about change in teaching and learning at department level it is important to put the proposed change initiatives in the context of approaches to curriculum design. Jenkins (1998) usefully distinguishes between the curriculum that:

Is intended by staff and designed before the student enters the course Is delivered by the staff or learning materials (including books and software) The student learns and experiences The student makes part of herself or himself and remembers and uses some years later.

A paper outlining three different approaches was prepared for the event (Appendix 2). They were:

Engaging the curriculum in HE, based on the work of Barnett and Coate (2005) Developing self-authorship through the Learning Partnership Model, drawing on the work of

Baxter Magolda (2001, 2006, 2009) Curriculum design through the analogy of an Ouija board, based on the work of Jenkins

(1998)

Delegates were asked in their teams to contrast the approaches and suggest how they might, with appropriate adjustments, inform the design of their team’s project. In the following plenary, delegates identified aspects of each of the approaches that they thought threw light on the issues they were discussing.

5. Understanding the management of change in higher education

Securing change in HE can be a convoluted process, where there is a tendency to abandon the radical and revert to the familiar in the face of competing pressures, or occasionally of apparently insuperable opposition. Heads of Department, programme leaders, or their equivalents may face hostility from colleagues with different priorities, or from administrative structures that militate against shifts. The precise role of ‘leadership’ for innovation, and the personal qualities allegedly required to be successful, are frequently rather troubling concepts to those placed in positions of responsibility (McKimm, 2004). Lucas and Associates (2000) offer some largely American perspectives on this, emphasising teamwork, shared goals, facilitation and individual reflection, drawing on examples of institutions evolving over decades. Conversely, some of the business-related models for change emphasise decisiveness, rapidity and certainty, and the ability of leaders to motivate and to engage effectively with opposition (for example, Government Office for the South West, 2004).

Bryman (2007), drawing on publications in the UK, USA and Australia, provides a more detailed analysis of HE leadership effectiveness, but comments on the surprising paucity of literature providing meaningful overviews. Summarising, he identifies the need for the leader to be seen to foster a collegial atmosphere, and to advance the department’s cause, as aspects that are particularly relevant to HE. The subtlety of the relationship of academic staff with their work is also emphasised, a more nuanced one than that of many other professional groups, suggesting a need to pay particular attention to the mindsets of colleagues, their views on the legitimacy of the change, and their trust in their leaders. Gibbs et al. (2008) take this a little further in the context of research-intensive institutions, but argue that teaching excellence can be achieved in entirely different ways involving widely contrasting styles of leadership behaviour. They conclude that advice and guidance on the leadership of teaching should pay careful attention to the context, rather than make assumptions about the general applicability of leadership theory or advice.

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Beyond the level of the individual, the seminal paper on change management in HE, by Trowler et al. (2003), provides an insightful analysis of the different conceptualisations of the change process. This is of value not only in understanding the nature of change after the event, but in providing some sort of map for the journey. They specifically identify the department as the key organisational unit for change, as the intellectual ‘home’ and focus for most faculty. Their analysis includes a classification of models of change into five groups:

Technical-rational Resource allocation Diffusionist: epidemiological Kai Zen or continuous quality improvement Models using complexity.

Crucially, Trowler et al. (2003) articulate a view that rational, linear understandings of change (specifically curriculum innovation), and appreciations that are underpinned by an expectation of the journey being simple, are usually inappropriate. Technical-rationalist approaches, such as the well known eight-stage Harvard Business School model of Kotter (1996), are nevertheless of some use in providing a checklist against which to consider different elements of change, whilst recognizing that in practice these do not necessarily occur in the suggested sequence.

1. Establishing a sense of urgency2. Creating the guiding coalition3. Developing a vision and strategy4. Communicating the change vision5. Empowering broad-based action6. Generating short term wins7. Consolidating change and producing more change8. Anchoring new approaches in the culture

Despite the complexity and uncertainty, discussion of these issues with the participating GEES teams and their leaders nevertheless did provide encouragement for them to stand back from the intricacy of the process in which they were engaged, to consider the broader context, and to reflect on the potentially unforeseen consequences of their initiatives. The discussion was intended to be motivational and to provide a personal development opportunity for colleagues who might not previously have given much thought to this sort of sociological or systematic issue previously. Specific analyses of the ‘change academy’ approach to fostering shifts in practice have been made by Dandy (2009), Gentle (2007) and Flint and Oxley (2009), but these were not used explicitly within the workshop.

6. Supporting the GEES department change initiative

The GEES team, comprising three academics and the GEES Associate Director, worked together before the event to outline the whole process and the associated evaluative research. Mick Healey had proposed the idea and co-led the initiative with Michael Bradford who was able to draw on his experience of running Change Academy to help design the process and the event (Bradford, 2010). Carolyn Roberts was brought in as an additional supporter and Yolande Knight provided the administrative support and link with GEES at Plymouth. Some of the team had worked together before, but not all together on the same project. They brought a range of experience across the GEES subjects, in mounting conferences, running workshops, and researching and developing innovative practices.

The overall Change Academy process was tailored to departmental change: bids were received from institutions which wished to participate; once selected a telephone conference was held

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between the team and the four team leaders, outlining the overall process, the event programme, what was expected of teams, and answering team leaders’ questions (this replaced the Change Academy team leaders’ face-to-face meeting); the event was for 48 hours over three days (rather than 72 hours over four days) because the changes were departmental not institutional and the teams were smaller (four or five rather than about seven); and the follow-up team leaders’ telephone conference (instead of a face-to-face meeting) was held to learn about the developments of projects and teams, discuss emerging issues and reflect on the overall process.

During the first telephone conference we arranged who would be supporters of which teams and which teams might work together on the first evening. The team were joined for part of the event by Pauline Kneale, GEES Director, who acted as a supporter for one of the teams in the first half of the event allowing Michael to concentrate on one of his two teams. Carolyn and Mick each supported a team. The supporter’s role varied with the teams, reflecting the different objectives of the teams and where they were on the journey, but included at different points being a critical friend, being a sounding board, or just being an encouraging observer. At all times it was a constructive, positive contribution.

At the event (Appendix 1), after a brief outline of the programme and an ice breaker, sessions were held on curriculum change (Appendix 2) and models of change respectively. This oriented the teams to the wider perspectives of curriculum change (where and how their project fitted) and theoretical views of change. After tea the teams worked on a ‘rich picture’, which displayed their vision of their project and allowed them to share it with one other team in detail and then later at a reception enabled them to discover more about the other two teams’ projects and to network. The next morning there was a session on creative thinking which enabled teams to reshape their thinking using some divergent and convergent techniques (Appendix 3). During this, teams were paired together for a while in a different pairing from the evening before. Teams then made progress on their projects during the rest of the morning and the early afternoon when their supporter visited them. The day ended with a Liquid Cafe session (a more flexible variant of World Cafe) at which someone from each team hosted a table and topic, which had emerged from the day’s work, on which they wanted other people’s views. People moved from table to table when and as often as they liked. At each table the discussion was recorded, almost mapped, on a table-cloth, a photograph was taken at the end as a record.

On the final morning teams concentrated on what they would do immediately they returned to their institution, having already outlined more long-term ways forward and discussed them with their supporter.

The evenings were an important part of the event with dinners in two different places and on the first evening a session of five-minute theatres. These allowed important networking and discussions of other departmental changes.

The overall programme was designed to help build a supportive environment in which participants felt safe to express their viewpoints, to reveal a little about themselves, and to build trust within the teams and with their supporter.

7. Expectations for the initiative

Before the residential event we encouraged delegates to reflect in writing under four headings on one side of A4. Twelve were returned. The general tenor of the comments was positive and the participants were expectant of the benefits of the event.

Expectations These varied from those emphasising specific outcomes for their project, for example:

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“I would like to get a much better handle on what we really need to teach in our Part 1 subjects”

to more general expectations, such as:

“To have some feedback and information about how to organise change, managing conflict and different ideas to make the best outcome for our department’s proposed changes.”

“To have the opportunity to learn more about the process of change and, specifically, how to manage curricular change in a variety of academic contexts by identifying a) the barriers to change in oneself and others; and b) the opportunities for change which become available when such barriers are explicitly identified and tackled.”

Only one person expressed a concern:

“That there will be too many activities at the event that will take away from leaving with some substantive programme developments.”

Thoughts and feelings about team’s project Again several of the comments were specific to the team’s project, but others expressed more general feelings:

“A desirable task to explore even without the expected outcome”

“Exciting! We are going through a lot of change within our department at the moment, and it feels good to have some responsibility for one aspect. I have felt that we’ve needed to shake things up for a while.”

Thoughts and feelings about team and their ability to be effective as change agentsMost comments about the ability of their team members to work together and to be effective change agents were positive:

“I look forward to working in my team and would readily take up the challenge of being an effective change agent.”

“All staff and students involved in the team seem very committed to improving learning and teaching in … and the staff all have track records of thinking about and effecting changes in curricula and learning/teaching in their own subjects.”

“The team are likely to be persuasive change agents ‘at home’.”

But some of the potential challenges and uncertainties also surfaced:

“I am slightly concerned that the staff team members will be quite conservative about change”

“There are considerable conceptual divides within the team which I have to help resolve.”

“[I’m] uncertain at this stage.”

Preparation for role in team Most seemed well prepared for their role:

“Having seen 30 years of curricular change … I still look forward to learning new skills in this event and having my basic assumptions challenged.”

“Well prepared and ready to contribute where possible.”

“Confident.”

Although some expressed some reservations:

“I have not attended a residential conference before so am a little nervous, but I have a clear understanding of the structure and purpose of the event so I am reassured of my role.”

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“[I’m] nervous, slightly inadequate, and somewhat ill-prepared; as for every new venture.”

8. Experiences of the event

The 48-hour event over three days was the core of the initiative and was the main topic of the interviews with participants and leaders. The experiences of the 14 delegates and leaders interviewed are structured under ten headings.

Time away A common theme in the interviews was the importance of the time spent away from the institution. As one delegate expressed it:

“That was enormously helpful; the reason being that it actually takes you out of your institutional mind set. We’ve had numerous meetings around the table with the same people before we went, and our progress was extremely slow in that we were revisiting the same issues all the time and seemed incapable of moving it forward, but getting away was transformational in the sense that it actually broke that mould.”

Having a break from what was going on back at the University was particularly important for one participant:

“Certainly it’s worked getting away from the job. I think that’s very important. People are always going to be in touch with it because they bring their laptops and the Blackberries - I didn’t, as it happens; I decided to cut myself off completely from it. And so that was a liberation.”

But the teams could have simply gone away somewhere off campus, so we asked the interviewees what difference it made coming to an organised event. They all felt that the facilitated event made a critical difference:

“It was the more focused nature of what we did, that I think really worked, and that there was an appreciation that it was within a framework with other people who were travelling along a similar road, and it was contained, from Monday to Wednesday, and there was a structure placed that we had not decided and we had to work within those timeframes. I found that really useful.”

“There is something I think about the process of the event – the sort of having to bid, the talking through, that structure which you could do on your own, but I don’t think you would do on your own, that was important.”

The event programmePerhaps not surprisingly different delegates found different parts of the programme stimulating and helpful. Several found the discussion of approaches to curriculum change useful and some thought the models of change management interesting, but from an academic rather than a practical perspective. It was the exercises though which generally received the most positive comments.

“The concepts around change, that was the least useful, although it provoked some thought. The curriculum models were interesting and gave us something to work on, and indeed it reinforced some of our ideas, and that was very positive. The activities, the various ways of brainstorming were very helpful indeed.”

“The session where we looked at creative thinking was the biggest hit with my team, and the reasons for that were - we arrived with a preset idea of what … our issue might be - and the creative thinking session … made us appreciate perhaps that we’d assumed rather too much about what our issue might be and we went back to a let’s take a step by step incremental approach to change.”

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The divergent thinking exercise on the second day using Post-its received almost universal praise, particularly the democratic nature of the process which gave an equal ‘voice’ to all team members, and one which is easily transferable to the classroom (Appendix 3):

“Post-it notes are great … it democratises the process, everyone just writes stuff and sticks it up, there’s no filter.”

“But the thing that I found most useful actually and something that I'm going to take away and use with our students has been today’s Post-it session. That has been I think really useful. It’s made us all think in our own space and then share our thoughts with each other and, as you’ve said, it’s very democratic and I think that’s going to be an excellent way of drawing out the more timid students and shutting the other ones up.”

The rich picture exercise on the first night was also thought to very helpful in clarifying the thinking of several of the delegates. As one stated:

“I probably gained the most from the point at which we were putting together our rich picture and beginning to really try to shape as a whole team what we thought our project looked like.”

Although another expressed frustration at the exercise because:

“The issues we are dealing with are very subtle and having to capture that as a rich picture I found intensely frustrating because one was constantly representing something that wasn’t quite right.”

The same person, however, said about the second day exercise using animal and flower metaphors:

“I found the idea of the giraffe and the flower immensely useful; again because it encouraged you to suddenly think of things in a different way.”

The exercises provided a framework and stimulated divergent and convergent thinking, but the benefits only played out in the slots dedicated to team working. One of the student members noted that they:

“Really enjoyed having the longer periods of team work; [they were] most beneficial to our project. [They] allowed discussions of issues or differences of opinion.”

The 5 minute theatre on the first evening divided opinion. Some found it fun and entertaining:

“That was marvellous, I’m glad we did that after we’d had enough to drink, to make it amusing. … It was great fun; although I don’t think any of us advanced our projects by participating in it!”

Others found it intimidating:

“I was really quite uncomfortable with the idea of that. Obviously [I was] glad to get it out the way.”

Exercises which came later in the event, such at the liquid café or engaging others in the department, received less comment, in part because most of the interviews with the team members had already been undertaken by then. None of the team leaders mentioned these exercises explicitly.

Framing the projectsThe leaders, in particular, emphasised the importance of the event in helping their teams frame their projects.

“I think it was important for us to come away and develop a framework for people to work within. They may have preferences for different kinds of framework, but that’s OK, we’re not

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going to go down that road. We needed, as leaders, to devise a framework that we could work with and that we would want people to contribute to, having spent a year looking at a number of other frameworks. I think this is quite a bold step, actually.”

“My own thinking about my language … to achieve change, changed. … It went from trying to achieve a whole department approach to externality to a not very monumental change in the way we work with others, which is quite a different perspective on things.”

Turning pointsIn two cases the leaders reported significant changes occurred in their groups thinking or way of working during the event:

“We changed how we labeled the Venn diagram on the second day, and that seems like a really small point, but it was actually really critical for me. We stopped labeling the Venn diagram as ‘environmental science’ and ‘biology’ and started to label it according to the types of thing we were teaching, like ‘physical processes’, ‘societal processes’ etc …, then it became OK to put what is taught in geography into the physical processes diagram, whereas before it had been ‘Oh no, that’s environmental science space, so you can’t, even though it ‘s the same subject, you have to have it in two places.’ That was a really important point for us, I think.”

“I didn’t feel it was a team at the beginning … the student member hadn’t met us before, it was the first time she’d been involved in it, she was a late replacement … and I didn’t want to position myself as ‘I have a set of priorities or answers here’, I want us just to explore this more creatively. I don’t think people took me at my word so much, it was only when we took the creative thinking workshop that … [we were more on an equal basis].”

Role of supportersMany of the delegates commented favourably on the key role of the supporters, or facilitators as they tended to call us, in helping the teams plan their changes:

“The facilitation by the facilitators … was very helpful, having a completely independent viewpoint, both from the view of the wider context of change and programme curriculum structure and approaches to development. Also, the very concrete, the presence of someone in the room who had no axes to grind was very helpful and the fact that we had other teams there who expressed interest, commentary, and encouragement on what we were aiming to do; and obviously we reciprocated.”

“Having a facilitator who belongs to each team was really useful.”

“I think particularly the guidance of the supporters has been enormous. I have never been a great fan of this sort of activity in the past, but I have had my basic assumptions challenged, not only in terms of that particular project, but in terms of the event, and I have found it enormously helpful, and also in terms of being able to transfer to other situations.”

“An outside perspective is really, really important because you need someone there going ‘actually you can do it differently, you don’t have to do it the same way you always do it’.”

“I think it’s been a good mix of activities. I think it’s been facilitated very, very well. I think the contributions from the facilitators have been valuable. They haven’t imposed and asserted, they’ve added to the process, which is important.”

Role of student team members Just as importantly was the role of the students as team members. For the three teams with one or two student members, the other team members were full of praise of the important contribution they made to their team’s thinking:

“She really, really contributed to our thinking collectively about our issue.”

“The use of the students was really important for us. I included them because you told us to. I was doing what I was told. But they were an incredibly helpful part of our team. They are

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unbelievable. I’ve had a meeting already this morning with … to make sure we capture everything we have done, and … has taken all our flipcharts and notes and taken it away to capture those electronically and make some sense of it all. … has emailed me independently to say we need go away and talk to some students. And they are both coming forward independently to say ‘we want to carry on being involved with the process’.”

“It was essential to our thinking.”

“Having the students with us has been immensely helpful, and frankly they have played as full a part as any other team member and have been just amazing.”

Presence of other teams At various points during the event teams were paired to work with another team or to discuss their ideas with the other delegates, as in the rich picture and liquid café exercises. The breaks and social activities also encouraged informal networking. Several comments were made about the benefits individuals had gained from these exchanges. Many of the conversations were serendipitous and had nothing to do with their team project. For example, among the topics discussed, mentioned in the interviews, were community engagement, designing courses over the three years of the degree around research groups, and teaching basic chemistry skills.

The fact that nearly all the participants shared a link through working in closely related disciplines helped the teams to work together effectively. At times individuals met others with a similar functional role (e.g. students, course leaders, students) to exchange ideas related to their roles.

Leadership issuesThe team leaders varied in their previous experience of leadership. Some tried to play down the role they had in their institution so that other team members, particularly the students and more junior members of staff, were not daunted (see also second quote above under ‘turning points’); others expressed potential issues of managing their team effectively when we asked, ‘What was it like to be the leader?’, reflecting the complexity of effective leadership in HE discussed in section 5:

“I tried my hardest to not be; well to be the leader in terms of making things happen, but not to be the leader in terms of telling people what should be happening and how we should be working and in some ways that was harder for them than for me.”

“It was, I felt, very supportive. I’m not entirely comfortable with a leadership role. … I’m good at working with a team where the team works well together, but I’m not so good with a team where there are people in the team who don’t want to come.”

Personal developmentMost delegates identified some personal benefits they had received from participation in the programme:

“Loads of stuff, loads of ideas about … ways of working with groups, change, how to support change. I’ve never experienced anything in the university … like the activities that we did. Mike was quite frequently asking questions ‘Has anyone come across this before?’ None of us at … had.”

“I think they [the students] had a bit of a light bulb moment. … half way through said ‘I’ve suddenly realised how useful this is going to be for me on my CV’.”

“This has been an opportunity really for me personally to be able to raise my profile in terms of liaison with the academics here.”

Overall progressA final theme which the leaders and several of the team members commented on was the usefulness of the event for progressing their project:

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“I feel that there’s a momentum, which is probably something that everyone would recognise, that we’ve got a set of priorities, we’ve got an agenda, we’ve got action points, and for this year, we’ve got events and even some things, some support already drafted in to help us, and which has acted as a bit of a focus for something that I really want to prioritise this year and I’ve achieved that through this event. Might I have done it without the event? Probably not in the same way and definitely not with the same kind of creative flexible thinking that we had to do on the event.”

“I think it’s actually fantastic! I actually thrive on interacting with other like-minded people and the group … I also tend to look at bigger pictures, the longer term plan and this has been really useful for breaking down the level of detail and actually instead of it being 101 Post-it notes, we've actually been able to identify three key areas which we can actually implement quite quickly and put an action into plan. I know for a fact we wouldn’t have been able to do that without this couple of days away.”

“We started from a situation where not all of the team was on board with what I wanted. It was very much I initiated it, it was my baby, and I wanted to do it and at least one academic staff on my team was not that, hadn’t bought into it and that we were just tinkering for tinkering sake and she was very wedded to ‘this is how we do it’ and by the end she is completely on board and is now a major advocate for what we want to do. So that in itself was a huge achievement from the process, and that came out from the way we approached it. I would have struggled to get that change in attitude without that event.”

“I found the project work very constructive, because the team worked extremely well together, and I’m taking a different role to the one I normally take. I’ve been very much a participant and a contributor, rather than someone who is pushing something through, that’s … role, and I’ve enjoyed that very much, and I think what’s also added benefit to me is that we’ve actually achieved something, we’ve got a clear idea of where we want to go and what we need to do and how we’re going to anticipate problems.”

9. Post-event developments

A telephone group discussion took place with the team leaders five months after the event, in which each was asked to report on how their project had progressed and any leadership issues which had arisen.

Perhaps inevitably, once the teams had returned to their institutions the euphoria of the event somewhat diminished and other priorities and events intervened. One team reported that the Change Event had allowed the development of a vision. This vision has now been developed further, with more staff being brought in to the project. However, they also suggested they had been over-ambitious on the timescale needed to implement the changes. “The original project team meet sporadically face-to-face, but there is a good level of email contact and informal meet-ups. They still feel like a team.”

In another case reorganisation had occurred after the event, with the department participating in the initiative being integrated into a larger unit. The team leader has been made head of the new department and is no longer directly responsible for the subject area. This has slowed progress as new responsibilities are negotiated, in the context of the new and unanticipated environment, but “the project has continued to move forward because of the commitment of the individual team members and because it has been embedded in the curriculum from the start.”

Slow progress was seen as an advantage by a further team. Although the original team members are currently developing materials, they acknowledged that more academic staff buy-in is needed. However, the team leader is working on this slowly “as a deliberate policy of letting people think it is their own good idea.”

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In contrast the fourth team reported good progress, in part driven by the need to meet the validation timetable. They found that the Change Event had given the team time to get to know each other better and where each individual was coming from in terms of the project. Although the original team members are now working on individual parts of the project, they still resonate well as a team: “it may no longer be a formal relationship, but it still works. All are singing from the same hymn sheet.”

All the team leaders reflected on the benefits of the event. For example:

“The event took us back to first principles, challenged our assumptions, especially with respect to staff developing new modules, and it made us more creative. … In particular, the inputs from other teams were very useful.”

“The project needed focus and the event provided acceleration; it gave us a directed push, which would have been hard, especially from a leadership point of view. It has been incredibly useful.”

“It allowed us to re-think, change ideas, and get us working on the ways of engaging, influencing, getting people to think.”

“I would reiterate what everyone else has said; absolutely.”

The only possible change to the event suggested by two of the leaders was consideration of reducing the length by half a day.

Several of the leaders reported that since they had returned they had used the techniques to stimulate thinking used at the event with staff and students. For example:

“I’ve used the World Café activities with staff and it gave me confidence to do that.”

“I used some of these techniques during the PGCert, when the speaker got snowed in and couldn’t turn up. I also used the GEES event as a whole as an exemplar as to how you can do something different to change thinking”.

Interestingly the team leaders also said that they found the telephone discussion useful as an opportunity to reflect on their project and learn how the others were moving their projects forward. All agreed that a further telephone discussion in approximately six months time would be beneficial:

“I think the telephone conference helps refocus the mind on the project.”

10.Conclusions

The aim of this report has been to explore the rationale for this innovative GEES Department Change Initiative; identify the key features and nature of the programme; place it in the context of the literature on approaches to curriculum change and change management; and analyse the experiences of the participants of the residential event and the way the four projects developed over the subsequent six months.

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The main conclusion to emerge from the interviews, self-completed questionnaires and the authors’ observations as participants in the programme is that overall the GEES Departmental Change Initiative was effective at supporting departmental teams to clarify, design and plan significant curriculum related initiatives.

Among the key features of the initiative which made it successful are:

The inclusion of the planned initiative’s key stakeholders, including students and where appropriate learning support staff

The supported change residential event, which took the teams off campus for at least two days and immersed them in a mixture of activities, particularly emphasising creative thinking, and time to plan

The discipline-based nature of the event, which enhanced the benefits of networking with members of the other teams

Pre- and post-event telephone discussions, which provided critical support to the team leaders

Respected, experienced supporters who acted as independent critical friends of the teams and encouraged them to think of a range of ways of meeting their objectives.

On the last point an observer noted that the supporters:

“managed to achieve a delicate balance between over-whelming the participants with material and ideas, and giving them room to develop their projects. Time and space has been given to the team leaders to move forward, with the post-event telephone conferences proving useful in reminding leaders of where they are, and where they want to go next. I feel that this non-judgemental, encouraging, but ultimately hands-off approach is one that works in this context. The role of mentor/advisor, (or, indeed, supporter!), rather than taking a didactic, strong-arm approach with a specific time-frame (‘you will have done x by this time’) has allowed for changes in context within the participating departments. This means that team leaders have felt able to continue to engage with the supporters and the other team members, despite such changes occurring - maybe it’s taking a pragmatic and realistic approach that works! I also feel it is very important that the supporters be extremely experienced and senior individuals - I’m not sure that the role of ‘change agent’ would have sat as well on the shoulders of other members of staff, either for themselves or the participants.”

Against these benefits has to be balanced the intensive nature of the programme from the point of view of the Subject Centre. It is difficult to calculate a cost-benefit ratio, especially for changes which have yet to be implemented fully in their departments. However, the indications from the participants are that the initiative has added considerable value to the quality of the teaching and learning which the four departments have designed and planned. Arguably, the projects supported in this initiative will impact on the quality of student learning more extensively than many of the smaller projects traditionally supported by Subject Centres, which are usually targeted at individual modules or courses. In the context of restricted resources for Higher Education nationally, serious consideration should be given to moving from this pilot initiative to a full programme of supporting strategic changes at departmental level. This applies not only to GEES, but to work in the other Higher Education Academy-supported Subject Centres, and to whatever other discipline-based initiatives designed to support teaching and learning may emerge in the future.

This report began with the quote from Peter Gould where he asked the question: Given the opportunity to establish a new department would your curricula bear much resemblance to most of the formal courses of study to be found today? His answer, that reflects his hope that we would be creative and think anew, presents a challenge to all of us as we design, plan and support strategic changes to curricula. He would probably agree with Barnett and Coate (1995, 6) that

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“there can hardly be a more significant concept than ‘curriculum’ with which to understand higher education.”

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Appendix 1 GEES Department Change Event ProgrammeDay 1 Monday 7 September

12.30 Lunch if requested

14.00 Introduction to event: aims, structure, ground rules and role of supporters (MB)

14.10 Ice breaker: working in teams (MH)

14. 45 Types of change: what constitutes successful change for your project? (CRR)

15.10 Curricular design and change (MH)

15.35 Refreshments (supporters meeting with students)

16.00 Setting up Task 1: Rich Pictures (MB)

16.05 Teams work on Task 1

17.30 Paired teams meet to discuss Task 1: short presentations and questions. Pairs (Aston and Bath Spa, Newcastle and Lancaster) to ask for advice from each other: think of a question to ask relating to your own project).

18.00- 18.45 Free time

18.45 Taxis to Chancellors Hotel

19.00 Open Forum and refreshments: participants to circulate, study and enquire after Rich Pictures (Rich Pictures will be brought to the hotel). Briefing for Five Minute theatre.

19.30 Dinner

After dinner: Five Minute Theatre (CRR)

Day 2 Tuesday 8th September

Breakfast from 7.30

9.00 Introduction to the day and reflection on previous work. Plenary: reshaping the box and creative thinking. (MB)

10.40 Refreshments

11.00 Team work and Tasks 2 and 3 (to be recorded by teams).

Task 2: what assumptions underlie the practices of your department or appropriate units?; do you all agree on these assumptions?; can you challenge or twist them?

Task 3: what are the opportunities and challenges of your project?; how can you make the most of the opportunities and respond to the challenges?

13.00 Lunch

13.40 Brief meeting of supporters and leaders

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14.00 Team work continued and working on Tasks 2 and 3, with visits by supporters

15.30 Refreshments and team work

15.50 Team work continued and Task 4: come to the plenary with question(s) that a member of your team will host at a Liquid Café table.

16.45 Liquid Café: a member of each team will host a table for discussion of a question arising from their project/tasks. (MB)

18.00 Free time

19.00 Taxis to restaurant

19.30 Dinner

Day 3 Wednesday 9th September

Breakfast from 7.30

9.00 Introduction to morning and reflections. Plenary: emerging issues (e.g. engaging others in department, bringing in outside stakeholders etc.) (MB)

9.30 Team work and Task 5: how will you engage colleagues on your return to your department/institution? Write a plan of action.

10.30 Refreshments

11.00 Team work continued and Task 5: supporters to visit

12.00 Final plenary (All)

12.30 Lunch if requested.

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Appendix 2 Approaches to Curriculum Design

Mick HealeyPresentation to GEES Department Change Event, Manchester, 7-9 September 2009

“I want you to imagine that you have been asked to form a new department of geography. Given the rare opportunity to write without constraint, would your curricula bear much resemblance to most of the formal

courses of study to be found today? With any luck your answer will be something like, good grief no! If your answer is something else … there is not much hope for the future!” (Gould, 1973, 253)

“there can hardly be a more significant concept than ‘curriculum’ with which to understand higher education” (Barnett and Coate, 1995, 6)

“If a higher education curriculum is a set of intentions and activities intended to advance human learning to a high level such that it is adequate to the challenges facing human being and society, then we need all the

ideas that may be forthcoming” (Barnett and Coate, 1995, 7)

“We argue that the task now is to reinvent or reinvigorate the curriculum to ensure that all undergraduate students in all higher education institutions should experience learning through and about research and inquiry. The key strategy for us is to facilitate the integration of undergraduate research and inquiry into

the curriculum” (Healey and Jenkins, 2009, 6)

“the academic community, alongside developing a scholarship of its own towards learning and teaching, should also develop a scholarship of curriculum” (Barnett and Coate, 2005, 159)

All the projects in the GEES Department Change event involve making changes to aspects of the curriculum. The purpose of this session is to stand back from the detail of these changes and reflect on some different approaches to curriculum design and assess their potential usefulness in informing the changes you are planning.

What do we mean by the curriculum?“a curriculum is a set of educational experiences organized more or less deliberately” (Barnett and Coate, 2005, 5).

“when considering the curriculum we need to identify: the curriculum which is intended by staff and designed before the student enters the course; the curriculum that is delivered by the staff/learning materials (including books and software); the curriculum that the student learns and experiences; the curriculum that the student makes part of herself/himself and remembers and uses some years

later” (Jenkins, 1998, 3).

Approaches to curriculum designBelow are outlined three different approaches to curriculum design:

Engaging the curriculum in higher education, based on the work of Barnett and Coate Developing self-authorship through the Learning Partnership Model, drawing on the work of Baxter

Magolda Curriculum design through the analogy of an Ouija board, based on the work of Jenkins

ActivityIn your project teams select TWO of the approaches to curriculum design. Divide into pairs (or threes). Each member of the pair (trio) should read ONE of the approaches, while each member of the other pair (trio) should read the OTHER approach. Your job is to skim read and discuss

a) with your partner(s) (7 mins); and b) with the rest of the team (8 mins)how your approach might inform, with appropriate adjustments, the design of the team’s project.

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1 Engaging the curriculum in higher education

“the idea of ‘learning and teaching strategies’ is bound to fall short of its potential unless they become ‘curriculum learning and teaching strategies’” (Barnett and Coate, 2005, 9).

“the test of an effective curriculum is ‘engagement’: Are the students individually engaged? Are they collectively engaged?” (Barnett and Coate, 2005, 165)

“we deliberately want to leave open space for and, indeed, to encourage, creativity in curriculum design. … Rather than filling up the time with tasks intended to achieve stated objectives, the curriculum challenge

has to be inverted to be understood as one of the imaginative design of spaces” (Barnett and Coate, 2005, 3, 168).

“A complex and uncertain world requires curricula in which students as human beings are placed at their centre … A curriculum of this kind has to be understood as the imaginative design of spaces where creative things can happen as students become engaged” (Barnett and Coate, 2005, back cover).

They suggest that the concept of the curriculum has become impoverished and we need to distinguish between:

Curriculum-as-designed – in the validation document Curriculum-in-action – as practised and experienced

They argue that in C21st a curriculum should involve engaging students in three dimensions or ‘building boxes’ (Fig 1):

Knowing – consists of a personal relationship between the person and the intellectual field in question

Acting – includes various activities which lead to the development of discipline-based, generic and employment-related skills and taking on the identity of what it is to be say a geographer, an earth scientist or an environmental scientist

Being – how students develop a sense of themselves and their capabilities, how they gain in self-confidence.

Fig 1: Curricula dimensions

They suggest that these three dimensions “have been and are being construed too narrowly, even as they imply an already widening curriculum. Knowledge has tended to be just that, knowledge without a knowing subject; and action has been confined to talk of ‘skills’ independently of those skills being deployed in a zone of willed action by a self-conscious human being. A curriculum for the age of instability in which we now are will, we contend, need to do some justice to all three dimensions of knowing, acting and being, although what their precise configuration might be in different subjected and even in different institutions will have to be worked through on the ground” (p8).

Knowing Acting

Being

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2 Developing self-authorship through the Learning Partnership Model

“Educators have multiple expectations for the journey that is called a college education. For example, we expect students to acquire knowledge, learn how to analyze it, and learn the process of judging what to

believe themselves – what developmental theorists call complex ways of knowing. We expect students to develop an internal sense of identity – an understanding of how they view themselves and what they value.

We expect them to learn how to construct healthy relationships with others, relationships based on mutuality rather than self-sacrifice, and relationships that affirm diversity. We expect them to integrate

these ways of knowing, being and interacting with others into the capacity for self-authorship – the capacity to internally define their own beliefs, identity and relationships. This self authorship, this internal capacity,

is the necessary foundation for mutual, collaborative participation with others in adult life” (Baxter Magolda, 2001, xvi).

Baxter Magolda, building on the work of Perry (1968) and Keegan (1994), and drawing on a longitudinal study started over 20 years ago, has developed a framework for analyzing the intellectual growth of students through the lens of self-authorship and the Learning Partnerships Model (LPM). She suggests that students’ construction of meaning (or ways of knowing) progress from absolute knowing, through transitional and independent knowing, to contextual knowing (self-authorship). “Moving away from uncritical acceptance of knowledge to critically constructing one’s own perspective, however, is more complex than learning a skill set. It is a transformation of how we think – a change in our assumptions about the certainty, source and limits of knowledge” (Baxter Magolda, 2006, 50).

The Learning Partnerships Model provides guidance for the journey towards self-authorship by bringing together the curricula students experience in the classroom with its emphasis on knowledge, with what they concurrently experience outside the classroom, the co-curricula, with its emphasis on affect.

“Learning partnerships support self-authorship via three principles: validating learner’s capacity as knowledge constructors, situated learning in learners’ experiences, and defining learning as mutually constructing meaning. Validating learners’ capacity to learn and construct knowledge is necessary for them to realize that they can go back to the potter’s wheel. Situating learning in their experience instead of the experience of authority gives them a context from which to bring their identity to learning. Defining learning as a mutual process of exchanging perspectives to arrive at knowledge claims supports their participation in the social construction of knowledge” (Baxter Magolda and King, 2004, xix).

Miami University, Ohio, has drawn on Baxter Magolda’s ideas to map out a developmental journey for students (Table 1). Though as students go through these stages at different rates and many may not reach the self-authorship stage by the end of their undergraduate course, there remains a challenge in converting this framework into the curriculum. Bekken and Marie (2007) provide a useful illustration of the application of making self-authorship a goal of an earth science curriculum.

Table 1: The developmental journey of the studentDevelopmental level Student traitsReliance on external Knowledge viewed as certainreferences Reliance on authorities (e.g., professors, parents) as[Foundations] source of knowledge

Externally defined value system and identity Act in relationships to acquire approval

At the crossroads Evolving awareness of multiple perspectives and [Intermediate Learning] uncertainty

Evolving awareness of own values and identity and of limitations of dependent relationships

Self-authorship Awareness of knowledge as contextual[Capstone] Development of internal belief system and sense of self capacity to engage in

authentic, interdependent relationshipsSource: Hodge et al. (2008)

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3 Curriculum design through the analogy of an Ouija board

Ouija board “Board lettered with alphabet and other signs, used with movable pointer to obtain messages in spiritualistic séances.” (Concise Oxford Dictionary)

According to Jenkins (1998), at times the curriculum is shaped by forces over which we have little control and often little warning. Starting from the metaphor of an Ouija board, as something moved by such mysterious forces, Jenkins sees the curriculum as being moved by a set of forces which we both recognise and shape. These forces become strategies for creatively designing the curriculum. Naturally, different departments and individuals in different institutions will give greater value to certain forces, and at particular times certain forces may become more prominent. The strength of using an analogy with an Ouija board for designing a curriculum is that it ‘gives’ staff autonomy and creative choices: too often staff are told – this is the way to design.

Fig 2 Curriculum design through the analogy of an Ouija board Source: Jenkins (2009, 163)

Identifying the forces influencing curriculum designThey need to be politically realistic; based on good educational research evidence; appealing to academics’ values; multiple to ensure choice – but not overwhelming in number. Below are the list of forces Jenkins (1998) identifies for you to adapt to your circumstances.

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External quality requirements Strategically one can adjust the curriculum, including its presentation, to achieve what is required to meet the requirements of those with (political) power over the curriculum.

The discipline What do we consider is so important about our subject that students should be unable to graduate without having studied it, or had the opportunity to do so? Do we present a single integrated view of the discipline or a curriculum where many methodologies and perspectives collide and compete?

Research interests Many of us individually want to make an explicit link between our teaching and research interests. This strategy identifies how staff research interests and or current research in the discipline can feed into the curriculum. Also /or, it identifies ways in which a research-oriented culture and practice can be developed amongst students.

Costs and resources Focusing on costs and resources we emphasise what we can afford to do, and accordingly shift the curriculum in that direction. One starts by identifying the resources available, in particular the critical variable of staff time. We also identify what the current and possible curricula cost to run and identify the curriculum we choose to afford.

Student time Traditionally curriculum design has focused on what staff and students do inside class. Here the focus is on the time we can require/expect students to learn, both outside and inside class. Time in class is then seen as one means, albeit important, to direct and support learning outside class.

Learning methods and technologies In supporting student learning inside and outside class, we need to identify what teaching methods are most appropriate and what is their most effective balance and inter-relation. We may now need to give greater attention to those methods that support learning outside class and at a distance.

Educational theories It is important to consider key educational theories which illuminate how students learn most effectively and then decide which we find most convincing /useful to our context: are we convinced as to the value of ‘mastery learning’ ‘constructivism’, experiential learning – or do we give greater credence to our ‘tacit’ knowledge of how students learn?

Aims and objectives One powerful approach to curriculum design is for staff to identify the aims and objectives of the curriculum, for example, what do they want students to be able to know and do as a result of studying Discipline Y in this department. Just because external quality organisations often require this is the way we present the curriculum – that should not stop us seeing its values (and its limitations!).

A department assessment strategy It is not unusual for assessment to be considered as a final bolt-on element to the curriculum and to be separately decided by each member of staff. Here one starts by asking what evidence (assessment tasks) could students present to demonstrate that they had reached the levels of knowledge and abilities that we consider appropriate?

Student needs What do students need from the curricula that we design? This may direct us towards issues of employability, being able to work part time, lifelong learning, but that depends on what ‘we’ think students need! What about intellectual excitement and development?

Modular and credit structures Whether one works in a particular modular or ‘traditional’ single degree structures shapes what is possible. Recognising the particular features of our particular context we then use it to direct the curriculum in ways we consider appropriate.

‘Classroom’ research But perhaps the ultimate force we have to consider is what is the end result of all this effort? What impact does the curricula we have devised have upon our students? How can we evaluate and ‘research our courses to find out? What then are the messages we take from that how to redesign the curriculum?

Conclusion Seeing the curriculum as an interplay between these forces indicates that there is no required place to start and that you can creatively add forces that you consider more valuable.

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Appendix 3 Creative Methods for Planning Change

Michael Bradford based on techniques used by Fred Buining in Change Academy

The first of a set of activities which encourage divergent thinking involved a quiet round of ‘thought showers’. Individuals take a set of Post-its and write as many ideas as possible on separate Post-its in answer to the team’s question: ‘How can we …?’. (e.g. how can we improve the experience of students on placements?). After about 5-10 minutes, they individually put their Post-its up on the flipchart reading them aloud, but not commenting upon them. Every team member does this in turn. As they do so the rest of the team is encouraged to write more ideas as hearing those being read out stimulates further thought. These are in turn put up and read out. These ideas can be considered to be those uppermost in the minds of the team. Facilitators encourage teams to be as precise as possible in their ideas. Note that the initial activity is a very democratic process.

A second activity involved further divergent thinking to draw out other ideas which may help to ‘reshape the box’. This can be using metaphors. A set of animals is noted by the team. The facilitator chooses one and asks the team to write down a set of characteristics of the animal. The facilitator selects the most obscure characteristic and asks the team: ‘Thinking of this characteristic (e.g. a whale swimming along imbibing plankton) how can we …?’. There is usually a delay and then ideas come. These are each written on a Post-it (again as precise and detailed as possible) and added to the other set. At this event we combined the small teams so that two teams thought of an animal and each returned to their question with the same characteristics (two were used). After they had put up further Post-its each team looked at the other’s ideas which generated more Post-its. If there is time this sharing can be done with the first activity too.

The individual teams then inspected their set of Post-its and drew out a number of underlying assumptions. The facilitator then chooses a key assumption and ‘twists’ it. For example an assumption may be ‘all students benefit from placements’ and if twisted through 180 degrees would give ‘no students benefit from placements’. Such a full twist does not get you anywhere but there are positions between the two extremes that do. So there are a few students who do not want to go on placements and lack motivation. Post-its are then put up suggesting ideas that improve motivation. There are some placements that treat students poorly and consequently they gain little from the experience. Post-its are then put up on how to improve such placements. Further assumptions can be twisted and again new ideas generated. The identification of underlying assumptions can itself be very eye-opening for a team. Some members might not agree with these assumptions and other discussions and ideas are generated.

There are other divergent activities that can be used. Before the session ends, it is helpful to run an activity which encourages convergent thinking. At this event we classified some ideas according to their common/innovative nature and their feasibility. Each member of a team is given a set of coloured dots. They are asked to identify 5 ideas that are common and feasible; five that are innovative and feasible; and five that are innovative but not yet feasible. The facilitator has numbered all of the Post-its. Each member writes down the numbers of the Post-its which they are selecting as part of their three sets of five. When they have done this, they put up their coloured dots on the chosen Post-its. Note that again this is a democratic process with each team member making their own selection independently of the others. Some Post-its will have different colours on them. This can stimulate some discussion e.g. why does one person see this as innovative and another as common? Their different perspectives may result from them being from different departments. Once everyone has put up their coloured dots all the ideas with dots on them are separated from the rest and classified. This can help decide priorities along a time line. Some of the ideas which are not yet feasible because of current conditions may be reserved for later once the conditions have been worked upon to bring about change (e.g. increased resources).

Teams took this set of Post-its and the other Post-its back to their team room. They may look at further assumptions and generate more ideas. They may sharpen their ideas once they have classified them and placed them on an approximate time line. Teams usually find these activities very energising. Sometimes they can reshape the project in a major way. It is important therefore that they are completed relatively early in the process before the project has gone too far. Otherwise it can be quite disorienting. At this event these activities were found to be very stimulating and advanced the projects considerably.

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Appendix 4 GEES Department Change Case Studies

Aston University

1. Title of case study (such that it conveys to others the central aspects)Sustainable development and management: an interdisciplinary degree

2. Name of department and institutionInterdisciplinary Studies, Aston University

3. Team details (including names and roles of team members and contact email for team leader)

Role Name (if known) Email addressProgramme Lead (IDS) Dr Roy Smith r.k.smith@aston.ac.uk Sustainable Development Lead (IDS) Dr John BlewittUG Programme Director (IDS) Dr Suki PhullProgramme Director Built Environment Dr Peter HedgesHead of Curriculum Development Dr Anne Wheeler

Support from original proposalAt Aston University staff from each of the Schools, Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) and the Centre for Learning Innovation and Professional Practice (CLIPP) have already demonstrated a level of commitment to the development of a new programme through the time they have freely given to participating in lunchtime meetings to date. As the programme will be based and managed in IDS, IDS and CLIPP agreed to fund the team at the GEES departmental change event.

The Vice Chancellor has already indicated her support for the development of this programme as it underpins Aston’s Environmental Policy. Also Aston has signed the People and Planet: Green Education Declaration, which recognises the key role of the education sector in addressing the challenge of climate change and making the transition to a low carbon economy and society.

The University has a Sustainable Aston Working Group which is an interdisciplinary group of academics, student representatives and support staff. Supported by the Executive, in May 2007 the Sustainable Aston Working Group developed a vision (in the three key areas of community, teaching and research), Aston’s Sustainability Aims, committing the University to the concept of sustainability within and external to the institution.

4. Context (including key characteristics of department and university)The mission of the University regarding its culture and values is outlined in the Aston 2012 strategy and states:“Together, we are working to make Aston a great place to work, study and collaborate:

that values and respects the diversity of the Aston community that creates inspirational learning opportunities for its students, and relevant research outcomes

for society that enables all students, whatever their background, to develop as critical, reflective learners

who will make a difference in the global workplace that pays particular attention to student welfare and wellbeing that stimulates adventure and innovation and encourages enterprise that celebrates success that is fast, adaptive and responsive that promotes justice, integrity and sustainable growth in society and is safe and healthy, with a

good work-life balance.”The development of a degree in sustainable development links well with the mission of the University and can provide a programme for students that adheres to the stated core values. As the programme brings together staff with disciplines from across the university it would be inappropriate to focus entirely on one department.

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5. Aim and description of change initiative (the what?)The aim of the initiative is to develop a ‘half-degree’ in Sustainable Development at undergraduate level to compliment the study of other disciplines by Combined Honours students. The degree would be situated in Interdisciplinary Studies, where all Combined Honours students receive support and guidance during their studies at Aston.

6. Rationale (key external and internal drivers of change; the why?)There is no formal geography or environmental department at Aston University; however, modules on environmental and sustainability issues are delivered within a range of disciplines across the University. As a result IDS, in co-operation with staff from across the University, wishes to introduce an undergraduate half-degree in sustainable development and management which can also be taken as a combined programme of study by students from other disciplines within the institution.

The programme will allow students to tailor their learning within the programme by the use of innovative and flexible assessment. This will encourage the students to relate their understanding of environmental and sustainable issues to their other chosen discipline, e.g. business, sociology, languages, engineering, etc. Modules from the new programme will also be available to external participants through the newly established Lifelong Learning Centre (LLC) in IDS.

The new programme will have substantial implications for transformational change at Aston as currently there is no fully cross-University degree available. This programme will encourage and embed cross-disciplinary practices within a course framework and promote the networking of staff and students across the University.

7. Development and implementation process (the who and the how?)The development of the degree in sustainability, as mentioned previously, has been initiated and developed by the Sustainability Teaching Group (STG) and this group has included all members of the team that attended the departmental change event. Dr Peter Hedges has chaired the STG throughout, but Dr Roy Smith, as Head of IDS, has taken responsibility for the programme since the change event. The programme coordination and operation, following its implementation, will reside within IDS.

Stages of development from original proposalThere have been a series of meetings of the STG that were initiated and chaired by Dr Peter Hedges from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the group has met regularly over a number of months to discuss the feasibility and management of developing a degree in environmental and sustainable development for students wishing to take an environmentally focused degree in combination with another discipline. Staff who deliver modules with an emphasis on environment or sustainable issues across the University have been part of the STG on a purely voluntary basis.

A number of possible programme outlines have been suggested, based largely on existing modules within the institution. However, since the GEES departmental change event, a more robust programme for the ‘sustainability’ degree, going back to first principles of curriculum design, has been developed. This progress has been facilitated in part by the new Director of the LLC, John Blewitt, who joined Aston on 1st April 2009 and has a background in sustainable development and employer engagement. The development group has drawn on his experience to ensure consultation with employers and to help design a programme that addresses current needs and perspectives within the different disciplinary areas.

Stages of development GEES departmental change event onwardsThe GEES departmental change event provided focused time to hone the outline programme and concentrate on more detailed content design and delivery. The event also provided valuable time to network with colleagues from other institutions who are involved in curriculum development in the GEES subject areas and to exchange ideas and good practice. Also the different approaches employed by the GEES team facilitated thinking and challenged assumptions within the Aston team – it caused us to think more creatively.

Following on from the change event, where a provisional programme rationale, programme outcomes and a basic programme structure were developed, the STG met to discuss, fine tune and later endorse the outcomes from the event. There was support, and buy in, from staff across the institution to move forward to submit the initial paperwork to the University Programme Approval Sub-Committee (PASC) in January

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2010 for ‘in principle’ approval of the programme and permission to advertise. The programme has also been approved by the IDS Learning and Teaching Committee. Subsequent work has been on the development of new modules for inclusion in the programme and for a submission to PASC for full programme approval in April 2010. To aid the development of the modules and detail of the programme the STG has continued to meet on a regular basis.

8. Key outcomes (expected and unexpected ones)The key outcome is to develop a fully validated degree in Sustainable Development (or similar title based on market research) for delivery in September 2010.

Other outcomes include: To have modules that cover the key social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainable

development. That the programme is truly inter-disciplinary in delivery, with staff contributions from across the

university (including those staff directly involved in the sustainable initiatives within the institution). To have a degree that recruits students in the 2010-11 academic year.

The key outcome of the GEES change event was to provide a renewed impetus to develop the degree (see previous section). However, the team have also drawn on the experience to incorporate the aspects of the facilitation approaches into their own teaching and the experience of the whole event has been used as a case study on the Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice.

The benefit to students from original proposalAs the programme will have been designed by an inter-disciplinary group of colleagues it will provide an opportunity to ensure that the curriculum is current, relevant, innovative and inclusive both in content, delivery and assessment. The students will have the opportunity to meet and work alongside students from a variety of disciplines, drawing on each others’ knowledge, perspectives and experiences. The programme will have an underpinning enquiry-based approach allowing students to explore sustainable issues and discover the benefits of true interdisciplinary working both as individuals and as part of a team.

We believe that a coherent approach to the learning and teaching of environmental and sustainable issues can only enhance the student learning experience. As expertise will be drawn from all Schools and IDS at Aston the programme will have the benefit of providing a truly holistic and inter-disciplinary approach to the subject area.

9. Evaluation and measures of success (how do/will you know if your initiative has worked?)Two clear measures of success will be:

a) Programme approval by PASCb) Recruitment of students onto the programme in 20010-11

Other measures of success will be the continued contribution from staff in the University and an increase in student numbers over time. It is also hoped that individual modules will be taken up through the Lifelong Learning Centre by members of the local and regional community.

In the longer term the course will be evaluated through normal monitoring processes such as student feedback (module evaluation forms and student liaison), annual monitoring and external examiner feedback. The programme team will also undertake annual programme review.

10. Next steps (what remains to be done?)There are a number of steps to be undertaken over the next few months, including:

Module development to be led by designated module coordinators. Production of the appropriate paperwork for the PASC meeting in April 2010. Identification of an external adviser and subsequent external examiner. Marketing of the programme. Preparation for delivery of the first year modules.

11. What leadership issues have arisen? (In persuading colleagues / students / validation panels to engage with the initiative?)

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There have been very few leadership issues. The driving force of the programme development was very much that provided by Dr Peter Hedges, but ownership of the undergraduate programme has transferred to IDS. However, the regular meeting of the STG has still been initiated and chaired by Peter. Much of the day-to-day programme development communication is by email or telephone. As Aston is a small university on a single, compact campus there are always opportunities for staff to meet when necessary.

The validation of the programme will be overseen by the deputy chair of PASC in order to avoid any conflict of interest as Dr Anne Wheeler (Chair of PASC) and Dr Suki Phull are involved in the programme development. However, their knowledge of the programme approval process is an advantage to the team.

12. Key messages for others (reflections on what is transferable and adaptable by others)Reflections that have pertained to this initiative include:

A growing awareness that it can be more difficult to develop a half-degree than a full degree. Deciding what to leave out of the programme has been as taxing as what to put in to the programme.

Do not assume that things will be as easy or as difficult as one might expect. The team that attended the change event thought that there would be resistance by staff contributing to the programme if they had to develop new modules. This has not proved to be the case as staff have recognised that it will be a better programme if we do not try to construct a programme composed of existing modules.

Allocation of individual tasks to a timeframe has been helpful in developing the programme. Maintaining momentum following the event could have been, and still may be, an issue. However,

at Aston we have been fortunate to be ‘driven’ by the system, in that we are involved in core curriculum development processes and have PASC deadlines to meet.

13. Relevant references and Web sites (articles/web sites by you or others that give further detail about this initiative)Aston 2012: http://www1.aston.ac.uk/about/strategy/ Aston University’s Environmental Policy: http://www1.aston.ac.uk/about/environment/policy/environmental-

policy/ly ce Aston University’s Sustainability Aims: http://www1.aston.ac.uk/about/environment/policy/working-group/

March 2010

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Bath Spa University

1. Title of case study (such that it conveys to others the central aspects)Embedding external engagement in the curriculum

2. Name of department and institutionDepartment of Geography, Bath Spa University

3. Team details (including names and roles of team members and contact email for team leader)

Role Name (if known) Email addressTeam Leader Mark McGuinness m.mcguinness@bathspa.ac.ukExperienced Academic Esther EdwardsNew Academic Rebecca SchaafStudent Representative Shelly Nuth

Support from original proposalThe University redesigned the entire Modular Scheme for implementation in September 2009. The Department of Geography has a long history of industrial collaboration but had no strategy or overview to direct and develop it. The review of the Modular Scheme provided an opportunity to build a more strategic framework for student (and staff) engagement with non-academic external partners (business, NGOs, local and regional government) as placement providers, curriculum contributors and external advisers.

4. Context (including key characteristics of department and university)The department offers or contributes to a number of awards, namely Geography, Geographic Information Systems, Tourism Management, Environmental Science and Development Geography. The relatively recent introduction of vocational foundation degrees run by the department and elsewhere brought new opportunities in the arena of external engagement and our intention was to broaden this experience across all our awards, especially the traditional honours degrees. There are approximately 200FTE students and 11 staff in the department. The University is small by UK standards at approximately 5,500 students and has a heritage of teacher training and teaching excellence alongside modest research ambitions.

5. Aim and description of change initiative (the what?)1. To identify the benefits and challenges of a wider strategic engagement with relevant employers

and placement providers for our students, staff and the wider community.2. To bring key individuals together involved in developing external engagement opportunities for

students to develop support mechanisms for staff charged with developing these links.3. To enable student views on the benefits of placements to be built in to our arrangements for

supporting them whilst on placement.

6. Rationale (key external and internal drivers of change; the why?)We were concerned to address identified skills deficits and broad statements of intent from the funding body regarding greater engagement with employers. The opportunities envisaged would be designed to enrich the curriculum, not detract from it, and in that sense would act as a draw for recruitment. Graduate employability was the final aspect of the rationale, where workplace experience alongside specialist subject based skills and greater density of networks and experience were the identified benefits for students. The wider department team sought to develop integrated external engagement opportunities for all students whilst retaining ownership, distinctiveness and academic integrity of programmes.

7. Development and implementation process (the who and the how?)1. The Head of Department was a member of the project team and led the revalidation process to

completion throughout 2009. 2. The project team came together from March 2009 to act as a defacto ‘steering group’ for

implementation.3. The new programmes were implemented in their revised form from October 2009.4. Placements were sought generated throughout 2009 and into 2010.5. Students enjoyed their first formal work placements during early 2010.

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8. Key outcomes (expected and unexpected ones)1. Students report better preparedness for world of work. 2. Opportunities for guest specialist lecturers, secondments and live project work illuminate and enrich

the curriculum.3. Integrated work based learning opportunities now available in some of our programmes.4. Improved links between department and business/voluntary sector.

9. Evaluation and measures of success (how do/will you know if your initiative has worked?)1. Successful delivery of work placement opportunities to students (around 20 placements in the UK, a

further 10 overseas with international development partner)2. Long term sustainability of these opportunities for students, especially through repeat placements

each year, minimizing the need for large volume of new placement opportunities to be secured annually. It is too early to judge the success of this aim at present, though implementing this during a serious recession has made building productive links more difficult than anticipated.

3. Student satisfaction with their sense of engagement and readiness for the world of work. Although initial anecdotal and survey findings are broadly positive, this can only really be gauged through a survey to be enacted 12 months after graduation to see how the skills generated through work placement underpins (or doesn’t) graduate prospects.

10. Next steps (what remains to be done?)1. Survey of graduates who undertook work placements as second years in 2010 one year after

graduation (2012).2. Departmental participation in an annual Business Link event to meet colleagues in industry, secure

placement opportunities and, where appropriate, curriculum engagement through guest specialist lectures and contributions to course development.

3. Institutional evaluation of revised modular scheme implementation may bring further challenges. This reports in May 2010.

11. What leadership issues have arisen? (In persuading colleagues / students / validation panels to engage with the initiative?)

1. The progress of this project made clear that there were two distinct types of staff response to such engagement: the traditional academic response (‘we’re not training providers’) was present in this team but in small numbers. Counterpoised to that was the wholehearted embracing of the curriculum enrichment that partnership can bring, most obviously through the invited guest speakers and the work placements. On balance, the staff team were at best fully engaged, at worst neutral.

2. Administrative changes impacted the nature and pace of implementation at very late notice. The Department of Geography was merged with another department as part of unanticipated institutional restructuring in September 2009. Many modules had to be realigned to accommodate these new administrative arrangements at short notice. The rapid change of circumstances, implementation plan and guiding strategy led many staff to voice a sense of disenfranchisement as the long planned changes had to be ‘unpicked’ just before implementation. This resulted in some understandable resistance to change from staff concerned about the volume and pace of proposed changes without adequate time to consider their implications. Despite these frustrations, implementation of planned changes has been achieved.

3. The assumption that all students would jump at the chance of work experience proved to be misplaced. Whilst many did recognize the value and prepared thoroughly for placements, others found them to be an imposition and distraction from their courses. There was some evidence of disengagement from the placement preparation activities amongst a small number of students, who were then consequently less well prepared than they should have been. On the other hand, one group of students felt that they were not receiving enough preparation for their placements (with a major mapping concern) and petitioned for more support. We were fortunate enough to be able to secure a specialist employee on secondment to work closely with this particular group in the department, to considerable acclaim from students.

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12. Key messages for others (reflections on what is transferable and adaptable by others)1. Do not assume that those in industry can recognise the value that a student placement can add to

their organisation. The contribution a student can offer to a host organisation needs to be established and properly managed.

2. Do not assume that ALL students want to engage with industry in these ways. Where placements were made compulsory, we felt friction and even some change of route to avoid the placements! The expectations of and benefits to students need to be carefully managed.

3. Employer HR Departments are rightly cautious for reasons of insurance and liability. This needs central support and the time needed to resolve issues to mutual satisfaction should not be underestimated.

4. Most importantly of all: implementation of a change of this nature can never be considered complete. Only the long term sustainability of external engagements and of graduate employability will determine the success of this type of project. This is the continuing challenge for this team.

April 2010

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Lancaster University 1. Title of case study (such that it conveys to others the central aspects)Creating opportunities from a departmental merger: re-evaluating first year teaching across the GEES disciplines

2. Name of department and institutionLancaster University, Lancaster Environment Centre

3. Team details (including names and roles of team members and contact email for team leader)

Role Name (if known) Email addressGeography Part 1 Director Marilyn PooleyTeam Leader Jackie Pates j.pates@lancaster.ac.uk Previous Biological Sciences Part 1

DirectorBob Lauder

Current Biological Sciences Part 1 Director

Jackie Parry

Student Representative Penny CowellStudent Representative Andi Smith

Support from original proposal:There is support for this project from the LEC Associate Director for Undergraduate Studies. Staff across LEC are committed to the reforms engendered in the creation of the department. The principal resource committed to date is staff time, working through the problems and issues outline here.

4. Context (including key characteristics of department and university)Lancaster University is a pre-92, research-intensive University. It is relatively small (approx 15,000 students) and is campus-based. The Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) is a new department, having been created in 2008 through a merger of the departments of Environmental Science and Geography with the environmental half of Biological Sciences. LEC is one of the largest departments in the University and sits within the Faculty of Science and Technology. .Further details were given in the next section.

5. Aim and description of change initiative (the what?)The formation of LEC created an opportunity for us to think differently about the delivery of our Part 1 teaching. As outlined below, across the three former departments we devote a considerable staff effort to teaching our first years, with some overlap in content (particularly between Physical Geography and Environmental Science). The aim of the initiative was to work out how we could rationalize our Part 1, with benefits to staff of reduced teaching and to students of creating more flexibility in their degree schemes.

The new department consists of approximately 60 academic staff and recruits approximately 200 undergraduate students each year. One of the reasons for the merger was to exploit and encourage inter-disciplinary synergies for teaching and research and to prevent duplication of effort. The proposed project contributes to this high level departmental strategy.

Part 1 at Lancaster consists of three units of equal weight. In ES and BS these units each comprise 5 modules; there are 14 ES Part 1 modules and 6 BS modules delivered within LEC. GEOG has two integrated Part 1 courses in Human and Physical Geography, each worth 1 unit.

Students are typically required to take two units in their major subject and may take the third unit in a complementary subject or additional modules in their major subject. Prior to the merger, there were financial incentives for the individual departments if students stayed “in house” and a variety of additional modules have been developed. Now, these financial barriers have been removed and we would like to explore how we can streamline our Part 1 delivery. At present, many ES and BIOL students take all 3 units within the LEC programmes, whereas GEOG students frequently study a social science or language in addition to Geography. In AY08/09 there are the equivalent of over 3000 module registrations across the LEC Part 1 subjects.

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There are two inter-related areas that we wished to explore. Firstly, there is some overlap of subject-specific material, in particular in the area of Physical Geography / Environmental Earth Science. An initial look at the material implies that we could remove up to 5 modules of teaching (25% of our current load), merging existing ES / GEOG provision. Approximately 10% module registrations are for non-major LEC students, and removing overlap would provide these students with a wide range of opportunities. However, GEOG and ES have different approaches to teaching, with ES modules being more grounded in practical and numerical skills and GEOG modules being more grounded in critical thinking skills.

Secondly, we deliver skills training in very different ways. The GEOG units have tutorials and a geographical skills strand of lectures embedded into the programme. BIOL students attend tutorials outside the module framework, and attend a research methods module. ES students attend up to 4 skills modules, depending on their entry qualifications, but have no tutorials. All three schemes train their students in study skills, using the literature, effective communication, and basic statistics, again suggesting that we could develop a common framework. However, we also include more specific skills training; in ES students are required to take two numerical skills modules and an introductory chemistry module if they do not have the appropriate A levels and the GEOG skills component includes extensive material on cartography and qualitative research methods, as well as some quantitative methods. We have found that the more closely integrated our skills teaching is with our subject modules, the better the students learn, as they have a greater appreciation of the importance and relevance of these skills, and we are keen to pursue this approach further.

There are four things we wanted to explore during the event. We want to develop a plan to allow us to:

1) merge our teaching without sacrificing embedded subject-specific skills teaching; 2) manage the greater class sizes that would arise; 3) integrate skills training further into the curriculum; and 4) provide a common tutorial programme for all LEC students, which equips students with the

generic skills they need without duplication, while not omitting the more subject specific skills.

Throughout, we wanted to create a framework that will work for both major and minor students and for students taking a full LEC programme and those wanting to include a non-LEC component.

Our models of teaching have evolved over a number of years. We benefited from having the critical viewpoint of the GEES Supporters to challenge our assumptions about what is essential to our degrees, in addition to the valuable space that this event would provide.

There is an additional complication in that the Biological Sciences programme is delivered jointly by LEC and the School of Health and Medicine (SHM). We cannot make changes to the BIOL component of our programmes without considering the ramifications for the wider subject. One of our team will represent the SHM perspective.

6. Rationale (key external and internal drivers of change; the why?)As described above.

7. Development and implementation process (the who and the how?)The core team consists of Director of Studies (DoS) for ES, the Part 1 DoS’s for Geography and Biology, and two students (an ES and a Geography major). The Director of Studies developed the original proposal. The Change Event consolidated our team (actually created a team) and we are all now actively involved in pushing the proposal forward.

Since we’ve been back in Lancaster, the core team have met to formalize and develop our ideas from the event. We presented these to a wider group in the department involved with curriculum design and recruitment. This meeting accepted our broad proposals, but questioned our proposed timescale. We agreed to go for an implementation date of Oct 2011, in order to bring in a wider range of voices. We have since had a half day meeting to thrash out our proposed framework in more detail, and the subject groups have met to consider what the core requirements of their subjects are. Staff have been “getting to know” the different degree scheme structures over the past 6 months and have been establishing common structures for quality assurance and student support. We have had discussions about possible ways of

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stream-lining our Part 1 teaching, but have not yet been able to find a way through the complexities we face.

8. Key outcomes (expected and unexpected ones)From the event:

Expected: a framework on which to build our new structureUnexpected: greater understanding of the discipline differences within LEC; new and improved personal relationships with colleagues and students

The benefit to students:By stream-lining our Part 1 delivery, students in LEC would be enabled to take more subjects in their 1st year. For example, most students studying Environmental Science at present have no room in their timetable for Geography or Ecology modules, despite an interest being there. This results in a more narrowly focused degree for them. Opening up the timetable in Part 1 will give students more flexibility and choice, while also broadening their perspectives within and outside LEC. We also want to provide all LEC students with a consistent, quality experience, which would be further enhanced by this project.

9. Evaluation and measures of success (how do/will you know if your initiative has worked?)1) A formal proposal of curriculum change, accepted by the relevant committees.2) On implementation of the revised curriculum, its success will be judged by student and staff feedback.

10. Next steps (what remains to be done?)The next steps are to bring together the findings from the subjects, and develop a formal proposal for our new look Part 1. We anticipate these going through the committees at the start of new academic year.

11. What leadership issues have arisen? (In persuading colleagues / students / validation panels to engage with the initiative?) At this stage, we are mostly concerned with colleagues. The student representatives have continued to be involved, bringing the student perspective to the table. In general, the staff have been very open and supportive, and we have had positive responses to our proposals. The key emerging issues are:1) This process has highlighted a fundamental change in the way the department operates. In the old

department, all academic staff would have had the opportunity to get involved and the proposals would have been discussed routinely at staff meetings. We now have to rely on email communication about the process, and although some staff are responding the degree of interaction with the process is much lower. Consequently, the extent of buy-in is unclear at this stage. We are trying to involve key Part 1 staff as much as possible, but there are too many people for everyone to be part of every meeting.

2) Finding time to keep the momentum going, in the face of many other pressures is a major struggle.

12. Key messages for others (reflections on what is transferable and adaptable by others)1) Implementing this level of change in a unit of our size takes a lot of time and energy.2) Differences in the culture and way of working of the previous ES / Geography departments makes

implementing change challenging

13. Relevant references and Web sites (articles /web sites by you or others that give further detail about this initiative)N/A

February 2010

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Newcastle University

1. Title of case study (such that it conveys to others the central aspects)Making sense of postgraduate study – transition issues

2. Name of department and institutionSchool of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Newcastle University

3. Team details (including names and roles of team members and contact email for team leader)Role Name (if known) Email addressTeam Leader Liz Stockdale e.a.stockdale@ncl.ac.uk PGT co-ordinator Tina HuddartUniversity level skills training provider - SAgE Faculty Library Liaison Assistant

Julia Robinson

Student Representative - MSc graduate 2008

Busayo Akintade

4. Context (including key characteristics of department and university)The School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development (AFRD) is part of the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering at Newcastle University. The Faculty encompasses the largest and most comprehensive academic resource for teaching, research and commercialisation in North East England in the areas of engineering, agriculture and science, and also provides substantial services to industry in these areas. Reflecting the diversity of activity, the Faculty is made up of ten Schools, four Research Institutes and a number of research centres and networks. This structure supports close interaction between research and teaching, including that between postgraduates and undergraduates which is at the heart of our academic culture. The Faculty currently has around 1200 Postgraduate taught students. AFRD teaches a range of undergraduate programmes including Environmental Science and runs seven postgraduate taught degree programmes that attract a variety of students with differing skills and needs; Modules are also shared with programmes led by other Schools. AFRD programmes include Wildlife Conservation and Management, Agricultural and Environmental Science, Environmental Resource Assessment, Rural Social Science and Ecological Agriculture and AFRD modules are taken by large numbers of students on the Environmental Consultancy MSc.

5. Aim and description of change initiative (the what?)This project aims to explore postgraduate taught (PGT) students’ perspective on how they have received and processed information about university life, their development of expectations regarding the programmes and how these are met and also on their development of academic competencies in their first Semester. Participation in the GEES Departmental Change event allowed reflection on the issues raised in a survey of 2008/09 students and consideration of implications for development of effective transition strategies for this diverse cohort of students and to guide improvements in the management of information and learning approaches in the first weeks of these programmes.

The project seeks to find out from our students what the problems of transition are and then to use this information to drive and evaluate a programme of improvement. We expect that the largest problems will occur for international students; however, we want to take a broad focus as many of the problems perceived as acute by international students are also present at lower levels for UK students. An effective transition strategy for PGT will include the development of an effective multi-national PGT learning community. It is expected that the project will include: Diagnostic testing (e.g. establishing basic skill level such as English or numeracy or more subject

specific knowledge level) Web support or courses in study skills (e.g. credited or non-accredited materials to support specific

study/academic skills) Better use of personal development planning (e.g. more structured use of PDP at postgraduate level)

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6. Rationale (key external and internal drivers of change; the why?)Postgraduate students entering taught programmes are more diverse than undergraduate entrants. However, given the intensity of postgraduate taught programmes matching of student expectation and understanding of the required learning approaches must take place rapidly if students are to succeed. It has been found that overseas students often have the greatest difficulty in adapting to UK learning styles and are required not only to immerse themselves in academic work but also to adapt to a new culture and overcome language barriers, all of which may impact on a student’s overall performance. In recent years the number of cases of collusion and plagiarism on postgraduate programmes has increased markedly; ignorance and misunderstanding of academic requirements is commonly cited during disciplinary procedures. Student habits and attitudes to university life will have been formed in previous study at undergraduate level in a wide variety of institutions and countries. Attitudes to postgraduate study are integrated with these previous experiences within the first few weeks; bad experiences during this time often lead to withdrawal or failure.

Supporting transition at all stages of the learning experience is a key priority within the institution-wide University Learning and Teaching Strategy to ensure that the diverse learning needs of students are supported. Within the priorities identified for transition projects this project is directed at postgraduate taught students who represent a significant income stream to the University. The project also addresses other aspects of the University Learning and Teaching Strategy (relevant sections indicated in brackets): Providing support to international students to help them understand better what is required of them in

UK HE. (A2.6); Providing opportunities to enable students to reach their full potential and to access the support they

require to help them achieve this (A3.1); Developing services that support the acquisition of study skills (A4.3); Ensuring we have robust and appropriate forms of induction for all students (B8.5).

7. Development and implementation process including next steps (the who and the how?)

In AFRD we worked with the PGT cohort (April–May 2009) to carry out a questionnaire to provide feedback on their experiences and feelings about the way they received information throughout the application stage, their expectations regarding the programmes and how these are met after arrival and also on their perceived gaps in academic competencies for Masters level study.

Participation in the GEES Departmental Change event allowed reflection on the issues raised in this initial survey and facilitated consideration of the implications for the development of effective transition approaches. The team re-visioned the project and developed an action plan within a broader context including staff development and a review of postgraduate teaching structures, as well as transition activities per se.

Minor changes were made to the induction programme for PGT students in 2009/10, with a greater engagement of recent graduates from the programmes during induction week to answer student questions. The role of the Academic Administrator as non-academic tutor for PGT students has also been recognised officially. Follow-up work to date has focused on developments within the School context and this will culminate in a teaching strategy away day focused on PGT and Continuing Professional Development on April 15th 2010. It is expected that developments in transition support will follow and be implemented for entry in 2010/11.

In parallel, Julia reported back to the Liaison and Academic Services Team within the Library and used a lot of the information gathered at the event to inform the development of a set of pages on the Library website dedicated to international students and to supporting their transition to study in the UK – www.ncl.ac.uk/library/services/for/international. She was also able to use some of the ideas developed in the most recent Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering Postgraduate Research Skills Programme.

8. Key outcomes (expected and unexpected ones)The main outcomes outlined below are anticipated: Improved information and other support to new postgraduate students will develop and increase

academic and personal confidence in the first semester at university.

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Better match between personal needs for training in skills relating to academic competencies and delivery within PGT.

Students able to deliver to academic potential more quickly within PGT.

We also recognise outcomes that will provide stepping stones on our route: Explicit recognition within the project scope of broader curriculum and course delivery issues resulting

in redefinition (with increased complexity). Learning and practice with a range of techniques for group-based consultation and project

development which have been used by team members subsequently. Re-inforced awareness of the need to “Listen, listen, listen” to students and not presume attitudes or

opinions.

9. Evaluation and measures of success (how do/will you know if your initiative has worked?)The Library workshops and one-to-one support sessions gather both formal and informal feedback. This has been overwhelmingly positive in relation to the support provided by the Liaison staff in the Library. Julia also reports: “After our trip to Manchester I feel I am asking more of the right questions to ensure our new postgraduates are happy”.

The questionnaire used for the PGT cohort in 2009 will be repeated to provide continuing feedback on their experiences and feelings about the way they received information throughout the application stage, their expectations regarding the programmes and how these are met after arrival and also on their perceived gaps in academic competencies for Masters level study. Little change in the overall effectiveness of interventions at School level is anticipated; but by repeating the survey in subsequent years we expect to see changes. Achievement of student academic potential should be identified through more rapid achievement of good grades in assessed work – currently there is often a marked difference between Semester 1 and Semester 2 performance for some (especially international) students.

10. What leadership issues have arisen? (In persuading colleagues / students / validation panels to engage with the initiative?) It was understood at the start of the project that leadership with regard to PGT development in AFRD is dispersed with some issues resting with Degree Programme Directors, some with Postgraduate Strategy Committee and some with the School Teaching and Learning Committee. In addition some issues are not resolvable at School level and require Faculty level engagement. Engagement across the leadership teams in this area remains critical. Joint working with the Postgraduate Strategy Committee is in place – but key roles and responsibilities are not always agreed. However, the Undergraduate-focused Teaching Away Day held in December 2009 has received positive feedback and its outcomes have been readily assimilated into the School Teaching Strategy. It is therefore anticipated that the PGT focused Away Day should be able to build on this success.

11. Key messages for others (reflections on what is transferable and adaptable by others) Supporting transition is more about listening to where students ‘are’ than about telling them about

the course, the University or the skills they need. Transition for Masters students needs to be addressed, especially, but not only, for international

students. Induction needs to begin earlier than, and go on after, induction week. Skills development during transition needs to be personalised and to be available to meet the needs

of all – the challenge is to develop a flexible programme with drop-in sessions and support for a self-directed route through the process.

March 2010

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