Category Archives: HEA

Applying for Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (Professional Recognition Route)

November 9, 2012HEA, learning, SoTL, teachingjohn

Added 17/12/2013

This post is only about becoming a Fellow by Application. The alternative route to Fellowship is through accredited provision (e.g. a Postgraduate Certificate course taken by early career lecturers). I do not discuss the Senior and Principal Fellowships here.

Disclaimer: I don’t work for the Higher Education Academy (HEA) or assess Fellowship applications. These are all my own thoughts/ opinions.

From time to time I have discussions with colleagues asking for my advice about applying for Fellowship of the Higher Education. In some cases they have been advised that it would be a good to get the Fellowship. The application route is aimed mainly at experienced teachers in higher education who have not yet got a fellowship through the professional recognition routes or through membership of the Institute of Learning and Teaching (ILT) prior to about 2005.

Why apply for Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)?

There are many reasons why you might apply for the Fellowship. Some universities are aiming to ensure that all academic staff either have the FHEA or are on their way to getting it. After all students do not want to be paying up to £9,000 to be taught by people with have never studied teaching in some form. An increasing number of jobs are listing FHEA as an ‘essential’ job requirement, as opposed to a ‘desirable’ attribute as was often the case in the past. Those without FHEA may find themselves being unsuccessful in applying for jobs and promotions they are otherwise well qualified for. Even if your university has no requirements for FHEA there is the possibility that this could change or that you may wish to apply for a job in a university which does have the requirement. With many academics facing redundancy and re-deployment being FHEA-less at a time of great uncertainty could be a potential barrier to taking the next step.

Most of those who talk to me about FHEA are experienced academics or educational developers who have ‘never got around to it’. (Newer colleagues tend to get theirs through the accredited provision route). They find the application form somewhat daunting though it is only around 3000 words in total. Unless individuals are strongly encouraged/ forced by their managers, more pressing professional and personal activities take over and the FHEA application is always at the bottom of the ‘to do’ list.

The application process

The HEA website helpfully lays out the application process. The centrepiece of your application is the Account of Professional Practice (APP). This is laid out in five sections under which you need to write your evidence. It can seem daunting at first, but all you are really doing is writing about your own practice. Writing about the things you do shouldn’t really be that difficult. The sub-questions in each section are actually there to help and give ideas.

Evidencing A1: Design and plan learning activities and/or programmes of study
Evidencing A2: Teach and/or support learning
Evidencing A3: Assess and give feedback to learners
Evidencing A4: Develop effective learning environments and approaches to student support and guidance
Evidencing A5: Engage in continuing professional development in subjects/disciplines and their pedagogy, incorporating research, scholarship and the evaluation of professional practices

Things to remember.

Essentially the guidance notes and sub-questions are telling you exactly what to write, removing some the ambiguity in the previous form (I got my fellowship in 2008).

‘Learners’ are not just 18-22 year old undergraduates, but could be academic colleagues, evening class students, community learners. I was not involved in teaching undergraduates when I applied and my ‘learners’ were the academics I ran and organised workshops for.

Similarly assessment and feedback are not just assessed summative assessments, but also formative assessment and feedback. This might include feedback to colleagues, evaluation work or providing academic support to students outside the formal boundaries of their course.

Most importantly the FHEA is a benchmark for all those who teach or support teaching in higher education. In short this is not about being the best, most popular or innovative teacher, but about showing that you are competent to teach in higher education. Awards such as the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme exist to recognise and reward excellent learning and teaching. The FHEA is about competence, not greatness .

Finally

Crucially, this is about you and the things you do and think . Writing about yourself, your experience and your practice can only be beneficial for your development as a teacher in higher education. Don’t see it as a burden. See the Fellowship application as a great opportunity.

Glossary, Websites and Further Reading: Student information and surveys

September 19, 2012HEA, Key Information Sets (KIS), LLAS, National Student Survey, research, student choice, surveys, transition to HENSS, student surveysjohn

NSS: National Student Survey. UK survey of final year undergraduate survey undergraduates conducted annually since 2005. Results are published at institutional and disciplinary level within institutions is minimum threshold of 23 students and 50% response rate is met. http://www.thestudentsurvey.com/

PTES: (Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey) and PRES: (Postgraduate Research Experience Survey). Annual surveys of finishing taught and research postgraduate students run by the Higher Education Academy, though not every institution participates every year. Findings are confidential to the individual institutions though overall reports are published. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/student-experience-surveys

Key Information Set http://www.keyinformationsets.com/

“Key Information Sets (KIS) are comparable sets of information about full or part time undergraduate courses and are designed to meet the information needs of prospective students. From September 2012 all KIS information will be published on the Unistats web-site and will also be accessed via a small advert, or ‘widget’, on the course web pages of universities and colleges. Prospective students will be able to compare all the KIS data for each course with data for other courses on the Unistats web-site.” Source: HEFCE http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/lt/publicinfo/kis/

Higher Education Academy http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/student-experience-surveys

Further reading

Canning, J. et al. (2011) Understanding the National Student Survey: Investigations in Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. Southampton: Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. Available from: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/197699/

Child, A. (2011) The perception of academic staff in traditional universities towards the National Student Survey: views on its role as a tool for enhancement. MA Dissertation, Department of Education, University of York. Available from: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2424/1/Final_Thesis_Version.pdf

*Maringe, F. (2006). ‘University and Course Choice: Implications for Positioning, Recruitment and Marketing’. International Journal of Educational Management 20, 466–479.

Ramsden, P. et al. (2010) Enhancing and Developing the National Student Survey. London: Institute of Education. Available from: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/pubs/2010/rd1210/rd12_10a.pdf

Renfrew, K, et al. (2010) Understanding the Information Needs of Users of Public Information About Higher Education. Manchester: Oakleigh. Available from: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/pubs/2010/rd1210/rd12_10b.pdf

*Richardson, J .T. E. et al. (2007) The National Student Survey: development, findings and implications. Studies in Higher Education 32, 557-580.

*Richardson, J.T.E. (2005). Instruments for obtaining student feedback: a review of the literature. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 30, 387-415

Surridge, P. (2009) The National Student Survey three years on: What have we learned? York: Higher Education Academy. Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/research/surveys/nss/NSS_three_years_on_surridge_02.06.09.pdf

Williams, J. et al. (2008) Exploring the National Student Survey: Assessment and Feedback Issues. York: Higher Education Academy. Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/nss/NSS_assessment_and_feedback_issues.pdf

*Subscriptions may be required. Other items are open access

I have made a word version of this list available in humbox.

12 actions language lecturers are taking to engage with the National Student Survey.

September 10, 2012area studies, HEA, languages, LLAS, National Student Surveyjohn

I have just been looking back at the NSS project I was involved with LLAS last year. The report concluded with 12 actions colleagues from nine institutions were planning to take. Not everyone will agree with all of them, I though I would post them here for interest.

1. Using the NSS questions on first and second year questionnaires.
2. Encouraging students to make more use of timetabled advice and guidance sessions.
3. Providing a more comprehensive introduction to the library resources. One colleague plans to recommend making library sessions obligatory.
4. Informing Level 2 students about previous actions taken in response to the NSS.
5. Discussing ways in which the NSS can feed into broader staff development, including courses for early career teaching staff.
6. Promoting more staff use of discussion boards in the institution‘s VLE as a means of providing feedback.
7. Encouraging tutors on skills modules to put more emphasis on transferable skills.
8. Developing a better understanding between staff and students of staff availability.
9. Communicating assessment criteria more clearly in order to relieve pressure on office hours.
10. Harmonising teaching and assessment for different languages. Where there are exceptions a case should be made to the students.
11. Fostering a 'personal tutoring' culture in the department.
12. Promoting awareness to students of the importance of the NSS.

John Canning, et al (2011) Understanding the National Student Survey: investigations in languages, linguistics and area studies. Southampton , GB, LLAS (Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies), 13pp. Available from: LLAS website

SEDA Fellowship CPD report 2012

July 17, 2012Debut, HEA, Islamic Studies, Key Information Sets (KIS), LLAS, Open access, SEDA, subject centres, Sustainable development, undergraduate research, Yazikopenprofesional developmentjohn

Background

As part of my Fellowship of the Staff and Educational Development Association I have to write an annual review of what I have been doing and what I’ve learnt and what I plan to do for the future. We are then alloated 'triads' of other fellows and we will comment on each other's reports. I wanted to do something a bit different year as we don't have to submit as a written report. I couldn't think how I might do it differently, so I decided to make my report public, crowdsource my professional development I suppose.

Angst

The scream — I didn't think of "The Scream" when I used the word 'angst', but this image appears on the wikipedia 'angst' page.

This year has been the most challenging of my career so far. Last year the Higher Education Academy took the decision to withdraw funding from its 24 subject centres. The decision focused my mind somewhat. What had we achieved as a team in the lifetime of the subject centre? Where were we going to go from here? More crucially what had I achieved in the eight years I had been part of the team? Where was I going?

Subject centres, LLAS at least, was very much a we organisation. This was great on one level, but I had found it increasingly difficult to distinguish myself from subject centre. I have also learnt a lot about how people see subject centre staff, and I don’t always like it. In 2010 I wrote a short piece for the Teaching in Higher Education about the identity of subject centre staff in the educational development community. The anonymous referee was adamant that subject centre academic coordinators are essentially administrators though one or two do some good pedagogic work (we need adminstrators of course, but I sensed very negative undertones in the reviewer's use of the word). I wanted to raise awareness about the job I did and somebody seemed to be suggesting that I had misinterpreted my own job. The reviewer said that he/she was a member of a subject centre advisory board—my first response was that I hoped they weren’t on our advisory board. I have always wanted to be taken seriously as an academic. I'm not sure that I am.

As the 2010-11 academic year drew to a close my angst increased. Our director did some good work in persuading the powers at be in Southampton that it was worth keeping LLAS work going as an independent unit—another opportunity though painful reflection was involved too. Who were we? Could we continue as we were? (How) would we have to change? The team, which had grown through Routes into Languages and Links into Languages would have to be much smaller. We had to reapply for our jobs. I was fortunate in this process, but lost a day of week of hours. We still had some funding from the HEA, but we needed to start charging for the sorts of activity which used to be free or low cost. And we had to start getting the funding in to keep going.

What have I done this year? What have I learnt?

Innsbruck. Location of our second SPEAQ project meeting, May 2012.

The LLAS work

One of the challenges with the subject centre goings on has not been the changes which have taken place, but the continuity. As usual I organised and participated in workshops for Heads of Department, a workshop for new academic staff and a workshop on sustainable development in the humanities. I have received funding from the British Academy to produce an online statistics books for humanities students under the Academy’s Languages and Quantitative Skills Programme. I have long been dissatisfied with statistics textbooks. In my opinion they explain too little and assume that the reader will take concepts such as the normal distribution as an article of faith. The book uses the sorts of examples that humanities students will use such as historical and population data. I hope that by providing a more verbal resonating approach the book will help students (and academics) who find quantitative data difficult to deal with.

I edited two further editions of Debut: the undergraduate journal of languages, linguistics and area studies. In the latest issue my editorial reflects on the concept of publishing undergraduate research, how good it needs to be and how undergraduates journals help students to complete the research cycle. I am also part of LLAS’s EU-funded Sharing Practice in Enhancing and Assuring Quality(SPEAQ) project which, in my view at least, seeks to allow students and academics to reclaim ‘quality’ for themselves. I often feel that the term ‘quality’ has become increasingly associated with ‘tick-box’ approach to teaching which has little, if anything to do with the learning experience. We have developed a workshop to enable students, lecturers and quality managers to come together to reflect on the concept of quality.It has been interesting to learn about the experiences of academics from other countries who are our partners in the project.

I also headed up the organisation of the main LLAS biennial conference, the first of the post-HEA era. This year it was called 'Language Futures' and was held in Edinburgh.

Islamic Studies

One of my first tasks of the 2011-12 academic year was to provide maternity cover for my colleague Lisa who was coordinating the HEA’s Islamic Studies Network. As a non-expert in the field I knew this would be challenging, but with the closure of the subject centres most team members left the project too. Lisa was kind enough to draw up a plan of what had been done and what needed to be done. My main task was to begin the post-Islamic Studies Network (funding is about to end) sustainability plan. I drew up the consultation questionnaire over the Christmas period and we received over 50 responses. Now that Lisa is back this work is her capable hands and it looks likely some sort of scholarly association for Islamic Studies will be formed in the near future. I was fortunate to be able to draw on the wisdom and enthusiasm of the Advisory Board members.

Other University of Southampton work

I have been part of the University of Southampton’s participation in Green Academy, a scheme run by the Higher Education Academy to support institutions in embedding sustainability in the curriculum and overall life of the institution. One of the key achievements of our participation is that we have secured funding for full time programme assistant who is working on embedding sustainability into the CORE (curriculum, operations, research, experience) of the University of Southampton.

I will also be involved in teaching on a new Southampton-wide module: Sustainability in the Local and Global Environment. As in previous years I have also contributed sessions on employability and writing book reviews to the Faculty of Humanities Doctoral Training Programme.

The entrepreneurial John

I have used my 'non-working' time to develop skills in new areas. I have developed a website in Drupal called yazikopen a portal for open access research into learning and teaching modern languages. This has been a steep learning curve on the technical side of things as I do not have a background in web development. I am pleased that the website is functional, but I would like to work out ways to grow the website and see if there is any way enabling the website to generate revenue to cover its costs. I have also been being doing some freelance work and hope to develop further in this area.

Hope (Future plans)

At LLAS I am again organising a workshop for Heads of Department which will focus on the growing sources of public information about teaching in higher education (e.g. National Student Survey, Key Information Set etc.). I will also be putting in bids for various projects. I would like to continue development of the yazikopen website and will look for further freelancing opportunities.

I also hope to have a say in the open access debate. If true open access is to become a reality universities have a greater role to play in academic publishing.

Language Futures: Languages in Higher Education conference 2012

May 16, 2012HEA, languages, LLASjohn

Date: 5 July, 2012 - 6 July, 2012
Location: John McIntyre Conference Centre, Edinburgh
Event type: Conference

Language Futures is the sixth biennial conference organised by LLAS Centre for languages, linguistics and area studies (LLAS), The University Council of Modern Languages (UCML) and the Association of University Language Centres (AULC). It aims to bring together language teachers and researchers from across languages and related disciplines. It will be of interest to those in higher education and related sectors including secondary schools and further education.It is also aimed at representatives of business, language professions and any other employers who wish to develop closer links with education in the field of languages. It is intended as a forum for networking, sharing ideas and resources ,and exploring ways of meeting the challenges of sustaining good quality language education.

Event website

T S Eliot, Spiderman and the ugly apples: sustainability in the humanities

April 30, 2012HEA, Sustainable development, teachingjohn

A report on "Nature and the natural in the humanities: Teaching for environmental sustainability"

As the organiser it is predictable that I will be biased but the LLAS-organised, HEA-supported workshop on environmental sustainability and the humanities was an excellent event which far too few people attended.

Peter Vujakovic spoke about Christ Church Canterbury University’s Bioversity Project. Although the campus is modern it is located on a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A sense of place and a connection with history was very much at the heart of Peter’s talk. One of the highlights is the planting of an orchard with local Kentish varieties including Pride of Kent cooking apples, apparently considered too ugly to sell in supermarkets (I can’t find a picture of one online, even in this otherwise illustrated leaflet).

The place theme continued with Alun Morgan’s talk on sacred places. Sacred places can be of any scale from a tree to an entire landscape. Alun’s sharing of a personal sacred space from his childhood, aided by OS maps and Ariel photographs led to thoughts about my own sacred places.

Adrian Rainbow provoked an interesting discussion about whether science is reductionist and whether storytelling offers a way forward. He quoted from Greg Garrard that we need “…ideas, feelings and values more than we need a scientific breakthrough”. In a second literature paper Elizabeth Harris spoke about how she has engaged urban students with sustainability issues through the study of T S Eliot’s the Waste Land. Elizabeth argued that locating sustainability in the rural (e.g. through the study of the Romantics) can serve to exclude students from more urban backgrounds.

The key thing I’ll take from Arran Stibbe’s discussion on discourse analysis was his comment that with exception of hot sunny days most weather is defined as ‘poor’ and in negative tones. After the workshop I tried to gauge Arran’s reaction on the opposite platform of Birmingham University station as we were warned to take extra care on the station platform “…due the poor weather conditions” Rain is poor weather, not wet weather.

Paul Reid-Bowen set up his talk though talking about the “post-everything” discourse and the human evolutionary ability to manage anxiety – however this attitude is maladaptive when we reach overshoot. His ecological philosophy course focuses on reconceptualising and rethinking economy, nature life, ethics and what is valuable in the world.

Andrew Stables drew on the work on Kant discussing whether sustainability could be said to be a moral principle and universal ethical law.

A couple of good quotes from his paper:

In effect, it is unsustainability far more than sustainability that prompts human action. Furthermore, we are often most strongly prompted when the illusion of sustainability is shatter by the reality of unsustainability.

…

… it can be argued that the arts, humanities and critical social sciences have a disillusioning role. They serve to perpetually disabuse humanity of its naïve, often vainglorious commitments, to remind us of the limits of our ambitions, even of our ambition for sustainability”.

Bertrand Guillaume teaches humanities to engineering students at Universite de technologie de Troyes. Engineering students need insights which go beyond the technical and he draws on philosophy, ethics, poetry and graphic novels in his teaching, including the Peter Parker (Spiderman) quote "with great power comes great responsibility". Sustainability has changed the nature of ethics—traditionally ethics has not engaged with reciprocity to future generations and non-humans.

I hope to be able to organise a similar workshop next year. The opportunities for the humanities are tremendous. We need to get more people involved.

The 5th issue of Debut: Thoughts and observations on undergraduate research

April 18, 2012area studies, Debut, HEA, languages, LLAS, Open access, research, teaching, undergraduate researchDebut, undergraduate researchjohn

7 thoughts

I have spent this afternoon editing the next volume of Debut: the undergraduate journal of languages, linguistics and area studies. I am pleased that the journal has kept going and is now in its fifth edition.

Many colleagues complain that students do not like putting effort into work that does not count towards their degree. Much of the work submitted to Debut is based upon assessed work (I know this because they don’t always remove the lecturer name and course number). In most cases the student will have received a good mark (they often tell me this when they submit) and in some cases their lecturer has suggested they submit their work to Debut.

Their work is then reviewed by an academic in another institution who makes comments and recommends whether or not the work should be published in Debut. Few of these students, if any, will have experienced this double-blind review process. It is daunting enough for those of us with experience but for undergraduate students this is unknown territory. Last year I conducted a small-scale consultation on whether Debut should maintain the review process. I was fairly surprised that those who responded said that the review process should be kept.

After five issues I have the following thoughts and observations on Debut and undergraduate research in general.

Undergraduate research publication completes the research cycle (Walkington and Jenkins) but only a very small number of students seek to get their work published.
The review process not only prevents weak work from publication, but also good work on which the student is not willing or able to put in the necessary work to bring the work up to a publishable standard. In these cases I encourage students to persevere.
What is the standard for publication in an undergraduate journal? This remains the critical question for me. Work on the linguistics of a ‘less-widely taught/ used language which received a first class mark on a general linguistics course often gets a harsh review from experts in the language itself. In retrospect I feel that many articles submitted in the first year of Debut did not make it to publication when they probably should have.
Some reviewers think that certain topics should not be attempted by undergraduates (the subject of my editorial in this issue).
Undergraduates do not necessarily know that multiple submission is not customary. On a couple of occasions it has been revealed by a student that their work has been accepted for publication in another journal and “is this a problem?” I don’t think that this means the student is a bad person—it merely shows that the student has not been told that this not considered the proper etiquette in most disciplines (I now mention this in the ‘Instructions for Authors’ page). It reminds me that undergraduates do not automatically know how academic publishing works, it does not automatically occur to them that this is something they should find out about and I suspect that few academics teach students about how academic work comes to be published.
We allow students to submit up to a year after graduation. Sometimes reviewers suggest additional reading, sometimes from items to which the student no longer has access – another issue about closed access.
As a journal of languages, linguistics and area studies Debut has a very broad remit. As editor I have to rely very heavily on advice from reviewers and it can be difficult to separate reasonable and unreasonable judgements.

In conclusion

I believe that discussions of academic publishing should be included in any undergraduate degree. Detractors might see it as ‘another thing to teach’, but surely an awareness of the process by which the articles and books they read came to be published must be seen as essential. Lecturers often complain about students citing unreliable sources in their essays and teaching them how to identify a good and bad source. However, a better, more detailed understanding of the process of academic publication may be a better way forward than teaching students to use context to discriminate between sources.

Goodbye subject centre, hello LLAS Centre

July 20, 2011HEA, languages, LLAS, subject centresjohn

The new LLAS: Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies will come into existence on 1 August. Despite the withdrawal of most of our HEA funding we are fortunate to be able to carry on with some of our activities as a ‘not for profit’. We will continue to work with HEA as well as with subject associations in LLAS.

We have a programme of workshops and conferences lined up already and we are planning further workshops on areas such as employability, language teaching and sustainable development. We will also be available to provide staff development in departments and will continue to publish Début: the undergraduate journal of languages, linguistics and area studies.

Nevertheless, this is very much the end of an era. I will greatly miss the many colleagues in other subject centres I have worked with over the years though I hope that I will continue to see them in other settings.

A license to teach in HE? Maybe yes, but...

July 19, 2011HEA, learning, teaching, trainingjohn

Craig Mahoney’s call for a Higher Education Teaching ‘license’ predictably polarises opinion. Any article in THE about ‘training’ (don’t like the word) for teachers in higher education inevitably leads to comments along the lines of “I haven’t had any training and I get great evaluations for my modules”.

I have mixed feelings about Mahoney’s call. As an undergraduate and postgraduate student I had many great teachers, the vast majority (or possibly none) of whom had ever done any training in how to teach. Their lectures were interesting, even inspiring. They encouraged me to think for myself about the material. They asked interesting questions and challenged conventional wisdom. Sure, there were a few who were a bit boring but I never believed that teaching in higher education was broken and in need of fixing. Nothing I’ve seen, read or heard in eight-and-a-half years working for a subject centre has ever led me to seriously revise this opinion.

On the other hand it seems right that people who teach should have some sort of support as they embark on their academic career. Perhaps the students deserve to know that their lecturer is a ‘fit and proper’ person to teach just as one needs to be a fit and proper person to run a minicab firm, a football club or a multinational media company – OK bad analogy—or that their lecturer is competent to teach just as a person who passes their driving test is competent to drive. No doubt when the driving test was introduced there were those who said “I’m a good driver and never had to take any lessons or a test—all my friends and family think I am a good driver”. On the other hand we all know that the driving test has not eliminated poor driving. And whilst there are claims that public exams are ‘dumbing down’ the driving test only gets longer and more difficult.

Along with their warnings about not going under a car supported only by a jack and not changing a tyre in the fast lane of the M1, the Haynes car manuals have a section in the front about advanced driving. To paraphrase, those who learn by experience react to problem situations when they arise often depending on the quality of their ABS brakes. However, the advanced driver will avoid getting into the problem situations in the first place. The ‘experience-led’ driver may see themselves (and be seen by others) as a good driver and be accident free, but the advanced driver will foresee problem situations before they have the opportunity to arise.

I think the advanced driving metaphor is really what learning to teach in higher education is about. I find it impossible to believe that good (notice I say good) courses about teaching in higher education can be anything other than a good thing. However, licensing will not prevent poor teaching any more that driving tests prevent poor driving. Most of those who learn to teach by experience will probably not be ‘found out’, but when the syllabi change, students expectations change or leadership change the experience-led teacher will be unprepared and stressed out. However the thoughtful the lecturer who invests his or her time in becoming an advanced teacher through thoughtful reflection on teaching, reading about teaching and continuing to learn about teaching will be a good teacher whatever the difficult situations arise in the future.

Life after subject centres

February 14, 2011HEA, subject centresHEA, subject centresjohn

I have an unstated objective to write something for my blog at least once a week. Preferably that something should be fairly interesting. Now I realise that two weeks has past since I wrote anything at all.

Not that nothing is happening. In subject centres there is a lot happening. We face an uncertain future as the HEA withdraws our funding. Whatever I am doing on 1 August 2011 won’t be what I am doing now.

In 2010 I had an article published in the Points for Departure section of Teaching in Higher Education. The Invisible Developers: Academic Coordinators in the UK Subject Centre Network sought to draw attention to what I saw as the neglect of subject centre staff in narratives about educational development in the UK. With the impending closure of subject centres the whole point of the article is largely redundant. Even when I wrote that article at the end of 2009 I had imagined a bright future for subject centres, a (relatively) inexpensive alternative to sporadic rounds of short term project funding.

What next? I don’t know, but in a few years time some report or other will recommend a UK-wide network of discipline-based centres to support teaching and learning on a national basis.