Abstracts

Leading From Behind: Strategies for Leadership in Educational Design Provision

Monday 4 May 2009, 1030 - 1100

Presenter: Barbara Cram,

University of Canberra, ACT

Presenter Biography

Barbara Cram works as an Educational Designer at the University of Canberra, leading projects that support academic staff across a range of disciplines. Her projects derive from Faculty needs and include curriculum design and mapping, assessment design and the application of educational technologies to enhance teaching and learning practice.

Abstract

Higher Education Institutions invest substantial resources in professional teaching and learning support units. Amongst the range of roles that these groups play is one of supporting the professional design of educational programs across the institution. A common pattern emerges with regard to these groups, where a small number of teaching staff use a disproportionate amount of the resources provided. In areas of educational design the opportunity exists for this small number of staff to become empowered and expert in their faculties, seeding communities of innovative practitioners who are committed to continual improvement of teaching and learning practice and resources. In this way even a small central support group can have a significant impact on the quality of teaching and learning that occurs throughout the institution.

At the University of Canberra (UC) the Faculty Partnership Program (FPP) was introduced during a time of major organizational change to ensure that scarce resources were leveraged to support strategic organizational goals. Conceived as a sustainable, capability-building, university-wide program, the FPP acknowledges academic managers’ responsibility for determining Faculty teaching and learning priorities and offers support from within the Teaching and Learning Centre (TLC) to accomplish prioritised goals. The approach draws on the experience of FPPs adopted at other institutions. Reports of both beneficial outcomes and operational challenges arising from these programs provide a useful platform for launching the FPP in the UC context.

At the UC, challenges were experienced that pointed to the critical role of distributed leadership in the success of implementation – leadership that facilitated the emergence of leaders in pockets throughout the university and supported these distributed leaders to take ownership of projects and outcomes in their local context. This paper describes the role of the FPP in providing an opportunity for important change in difficult circumstances in an Institution under pressure, highlighting the leadership issues and implementation challenges that define the experience for organizational members.