Talking Teaching across the Globe

This popular webinar series brings together Oxford Brookes staff (and invited colleagues from across the sector) to discuss and explore inspirational practice in teaching and learning. The series provides an opportunity to keep abreast of developments in the way we create effective student learning environments. Each webinar or workshop offers the opportunity to share practice, ask questions and consider ways to enhance your academic practice.

Throughout the 2022/23 academic year, we will focus on educational leadership:

We started the year with a focus on the way institutions, programme teams and individual programme leaders could bring Lawrence, Morón-García and Senior’s ‘Manifesto for sustainable programme leadership’ (2022) to life within their institutional contexts and, in so doing, establish programme leadership as ‘central to a contemporary academic career’ (Lawrence, Morón-García and Senior, 2022).

You can access presentations by following links at the bottom of this page.

We will continue to offer perspectives on this in the New Year and then continue by looking at the way educational leadership can be effectively practiced and supported in contemporary HE.

We welcome contributions from external and internal colleagues, so get in touch via ocaed@brookes.ac.uk if you are interested in contributing.

Academic agency, power and transformation: programme leaders making positive change

Friday 26 May 2023, 13.00 - 13.50

Dr Jenny Lawrence, PFHEA. NTF, Oxford Brookes University
Prof Letizia Gramaglia, PFHEA, NTF, Warwick University
Dr Marios Hadjianastasis SFHEA, University of Birmingham
Professor Martha Caddell, Heriot Watt University
Dr Christine Haddow SFHEA, Edinburgh Napier University
Dr Kimberly Davies, SFHEA, University of Glasgow

In this panel a group of colleagues, from different institutions, who have worked with programme leaders across the UK and those that support programme leaders across the globe will discuss the professional challenges and personal rewards of this important role. We will explore how programme leaders might use their experience to shape the institutional structures they work in, and consider the evidence outlining how this important role can be brought into the light so it might be fully recognised and rewarded in our institutions and across the sector (Caddell, Ellis, Haddow, Wilder-Davis, 2022).

An extended abstract and further details about the panel members is available here.

Previous webinars this year

Facilitating and Leading Educational Change in the Netherlands, Tuesday 28 March and Thursday 30 March 2023

Alexia Luising is an Educational Advisor at the Technical University of Delft and co-leads the Educational Leadership programme that takes participants from TU Delft, Leiden and Erasmus MC. Her disciplinary background is architecture and the built environment.

Joni Reef is an Assistant Professor of Criminology and a Research Fellow at the Department of Criminology, Leiden University.

Sam Riedijk, PhD, medical psychologist and Assistant Professor at the Erasmus MC department of Clinical Genetics.

Part 1: Tuesday 28 March 2023, 12.00pm - 12.50pm - Facilitating Educational Change in the Netherlands

The educational leadership programme under discussion is organised by three Dutch universities. It aims to facilitate the development of the leadership skills of academic staff. Alexia will talk to us about the way she works with academics on this programme and how they foster a learning environment to develop these skills. Joni and Sam will share their experiences as participants and reflect on what helped them in this learning journey which resulted in two inspiring innovation projects.

Part 2: Thursday 30 March 2023, 12.00pm - 12.50pm - Leading Educational Change in the Netherlands

The companion session focuses on leading educational change. Moving on from the discussion about the development of leadership skills Joni & Sam will recount how they have become educational leaders and are a driving force behind educational change in their institutes. And they are also curious about you: how can you link what they share to your own context?

A professional development framework for programme leaders, Thursday 16 February 2023

Dr Petia Petrova is an Associate Director of Academic Practice at UWE Bristol and leads UWE’s Programme and Module Leader Development Programme

Dr Elizabeth Staddon is Reader in Higher Education Practice and Development at St George’s University of London, with a special interest in discipline-based teaching and learning.

This session will share the findings of a Heads of Educational Development Group (HEDG) funded project into the programme leader role.

We will outline how we have used two theoretical models on professional development to design and test a staff development template specific to the programme leader role, and discuss how it might be used for structuring bespoke programmes for novice course leaders within institutions.

Programme leaders as agents of educational change: Developing middle leading practices and enabling practice conditions. Lessons from an Australian University, Tuesday 31 January 2023

Louise Maddock SFHEA is a Senior Learning & Teaching Consultant in the Centre for Learning Futures at Griffith University, Australia. She leads strategic university-wide learning and teaching initiatives and academic development programs for Program Directors focusing on academic middle leadership practice enhancement. Louise’s research interests include academic middle leading for learning and teaching and critical educational praxis.

Programme leadership is recognised as being crucial for enabling learning and teaching innovation in universities.

This session is based on our chapter ‘Developing programme leadership in an Australian university: An institutional approach to professional learning and development’ (Maddock et al., 2022) and subsequent research.

We will explore how a holistic approach to academic professional learning and organisational development led to purposeful, collaborative and inclusive programme leading practices and practice conditions that enabled transformative educational change in our university.

Taking the lead: Creating an undergraduate programme to meet the benchmarks and expectations, 13 December 2022

Dr Bethan Wood FRSB, CBiol, PFHEA is a Senior Lecturer at the Dumfries Campus, University of Glasgow. She created, and led, two degree programmes (undergraduate and postgraduate) at the School of Interdisciplinary Studies. Her research interests include employability and graduate attributes - primarily through credit-bearing placements.

This session is based on one of the case studies in the book (6) where I explain the process of creating a degree that meets the benchmarks and expectations of stakeholders.

Key factors in designing an undergraduate programme as the future programme lead.
Adhering to the benchmarks.
Making consultations count, meeting expectations, and on-going monitoring.

Practically Facilitating Educational Leadership, 29 November 2022

Eva Malone SFHEA is an Associate Professor within the School of Applied Sciences at Edinburgh Napier University, and National Teaching Fellow. She leads a suite of biological sciences undergraduate programmes accredited by the Royal Society of Biology (RSB) and contributes to the immunology teaching within the suite.
Steve Yorkstone is an internal coach and consultant for Edinburgh Napier University. He has published on humanising higher education and chairs Lean HE the worldwide continuous improvement community for universities and the International Association of Facilitators (Scotland). He co-hosts a weekly facilitation vlog: #BærekraftigFacilitation.

In our chapter we focus on the impact that creating a responsibilities matrix, based on a RACI model, had in creating space for educational leadership. This enabled the team to clarify what they needed to do (and not do) and when. We learnt that the process of creating the tool was essential.

In this webinar we will give you the backstory behind the tool, show it in action, and invite you to consider how you could apply what we learnt to your practice.

A manifesto for the sustainable development of course and programme leaders in Higher Education, 18 October 2022

Dr Jenny Lawrence PFHEA & NTF is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Academic Enhancement and Development at Oxford Brookes University, UK.
Dr Sue Morón-García SFHEA is a writer, researcher and educational developer who has designed, led and advised on a variety of programmes.
Dr Rowena Senior SFHEA is a Reader in Higher Education within the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Education, University of Hertfordshire, UK.

Our work draws together a variety of chapters, case studies and commentaries about the experience of being and supporting course and programme leadership in higher education (HE) across the globe. We use the evidence-based approaches generously shared by colleagues to postulate a manifesto for the sustainable development of programme leaders:

We take the position that this is a collaborative mission employing the whole HE community. This requires all those involved with programme leaders and leadership (senior leaders, programme leaders, heads of department/faculty/school, programme team members, professional and support service staff, educational developers) to ask a number of questions of themselves and the context in which they work.