Understanding Teaching & Learning - Survey Report
Across June and July 2022, the team ran the inaugural Teaching & Learning Survey, seeking to gain insight into the various experiences of teaching staff across the collegiate University. The survey was tremendously successful, and provided a number of insights which are being used to guide future developments and support provisions, to ensure these are relevant to the needs of staff and as effective as possible.
The full report can be viewed from the link in the sidebar.
The following themes were identified:
Bright spots
- High commitment and confidence; staff reported a very high level of commitment and dedication to teaching
- Effective local support mechanisms; local mechanisms for staff to seek support from a colleague or professional services staff are working well
- Centrality of student experience; benefits and purposes of different types of teaching experiences highlight a focus on the student experience, and providing the best possible learning experience for students
Areas of focus
- Unsustainable staff workload and lack of time; overwhelmingly, the number one concern throughout the survey was how time-poor staff are, and how this impacts their will and intention to develop their teaching practice alongside other activities
- Lack of recognition and incentivisation of teaching; our results identified that a large number of staff felt that their contributions to excellent teaching were unrecognised and under-incentivised
- Lack of effective knowledge sharing and collaboration; while local mechanisms are working well, the majority of staff identified that more needed to be done to support staff to share, discuss, and collaborate across the collegiate University, not just locally
- Variability of staff needs and lack of relevant support; staff identified a broad range of areas where the University can better support and enhance teaching practice, including technical support, available case studies or examples, bespoke guidance more relevant to discipline, hands-on training for blended learning, mentoring and shadowing schemes, developing own teaching practice, the design of teaching more broadly, and much more.