Support for School Leadership Teams

Each School leadership team has two designated liaisons from CQSD to provide a central access point for continued support for 2021/22.

We can support you with your ongoing thinking around coherent curriculum design, supporting students online and technologies and tools for online learning. This support may be via meetings and/or sitting on working groups at Programme, Departmental or School level.

Working with your School liaisons will also enable CQSD to signpost the range of central guidance and support available. This approach will also help us to ascertain any discipline specific requirements to support targeted exploration of solutions, the sharing of good practice, and identify the training and development needs of colleagues so that the ongoing support and resources provided centrally are fit for purpose.

List of CQSD Liaisons for School Leadership Teams

Collaboration and co-ordination

• Assemble a team to provide strategic leadership and co-ordination giving thought to delegation and shared responsibility.
• Promote individual and collective ownership (colleagues and students) of the design and quality of on-campus and online student experience.
• Identify and empower T & L ‘champions’ (e.g. colleagues with expertise in online learning) in your Programme team/Department/ School to support you in leading on application of the Framework.
• Ensure proportionate demand on colleagues and resource.
• Plan early to give colleagues sufficient time to prepare and include plans for evaluation from the outset. The 2021/22 Teaching & Learning Framework planning and evaluation template can help you to do this.
• Communicate expectations and plan for quality assurance across the programme, taking into consideration institutional policies and processes and requirements of professional, statutory and regulatory bodies.

Consistency, coherence and contextualisation

• Take a programme level approach to ensure a coherent and consistent online learning experience whilst maintaining ‘module personality and academic voice’*, for example:
  • Adoption of a regular pattern for the release of weekly plans and associated online learning materials and activities across all modules (for example releasing supporting material for the next week’s interactive session the day after the previous week’s session).
  • Use of a shared Blackboard module template with default menu headings agreed at Department/School level to provide a well organised, logically structured, and easy to navigate consistent Blackboard layout (The Blackboard Threshold Standards can help you do this).
  • Use of an appropriate range of technologies across the programme balanced with the need for appropriate support and structure.

Support for colleagues and students

• Be proactive in anticipating the needs of colleagues and students who may be unfamiliar and unconfident with teaching and learning in a flexible way.
• Signpost (and adapt to your context where appropriate) the centrally available guidance and support for colleagues and students.
• Consider staff training & development requirements and plan for (team) development of skills required. Provide regular opportunities for colleagues to get together to discuss teaching and share good practice. Celebrate and disseminate your success in your School/Department and beyond.
• Consider how you will support students with new ways of learning and plan for ongoing development of skills required (e.g. digital and time management skills), through embedding and coordinating support at programme and module level.

Adapted from Obexer, R. (2018). ‘Scaling Online Learning: The Case for a Programme-level Approach’, in Altmann, A., Ebersberger, B., Mössenlechner, C. and Wieser, D. (ed.) The Disruptive Power of Online Education. Emerald Publishing Limited: pp. 7-25

*Terminology from University of Surrey’s Active Digital Design approach