Participant Information:
Outline of changes to the teaching of the 2008 second semester graduate certificate units of study

Arising from the ITL’s 2007 review of its academic development activities, changes have been made to the teaching of the second semester units of study in the graduate certificate.

The two units of study, known as the “Scholarship Unit” and the Professional Development Unit” will be facilitated by Simon Barrie & Keith Trigwell this year with the usual contributions from faculty based mentors. The mentoring this year will be developed to explicitly recognise and make better use of the teaching and learning expertise that exists in the faculties. There will also be a greater range of relevant and authentic tasks which participants can choose to work on.

The revised tasks are intended to accommodate and support:

  • The diversity of participants’ motivations and workloads
  • Different levels of pedagogical expertise of participants
  • The different disciplinary teaching practice contexts of participants’
  • The strategic needs and priorities of participants’ faculties and the university
  • The distributed teaching and learning expertise that exists within the university
  • New institutional teaching and learning management structures
  • Emerging and existing faculty teaching enhancement structures and groups.
The teaching in the Scholarship unit this year will:
  1. Retain the common introductory sessions on higher education scholarship and evidence based practice
  2. Provide greater flexibility in the nature of the group inquiry task. This is a group Work Based Learning (WBL) style project of the participants’ choosing. The projects chosen by participants will ideally be based in the participants’ own faculty or cluster and will be negotiated with relevant people in the faculty/cluster. The projects might involve participants working on existing faculty TIES projects with other faculty colleagues as well as their colleagues on the course, they might work collaboratively with staff from their faculty/cluster on a new faculty project - identified in advance by the faculty or a project identified by the university / ITL for this purpose, they might work with a unit of study team in their faculty to improve practical teaching strategies in particular settings etc. The WBL elements will be mentored by staff with teaching expertise (eg past ITL Graduates, teaching award winners etc) in the faculties, which is an adaptation of the previous mentoring arrangements. As an alternative this mentoring might be a role for the cluster coordinators in those faculties were these individuals are in post by second semester.
  3. Assessment will still be based in a report of the ‘task’ to the class and a wider audience invited by the course participants.
  4. There is scope for faculties to set up and negotiate preferred choices of projects on behalf of their staff. For instance a faculty might wish to negotiate with course participants and the course coordinators, for faculty participants to contribute to a faculty TIES project or a cluster T&L action point as their WBL task.
  5. Mentoring remains an important aspect of the second semester but the mentors will be drawn from the participants own faculty. Mentoring will continue to focus on local support for the WBL task.
  6. Participants will also be able to access additional scholarship development through attendance at a modified ITL research seminar series in second semester which is open to all university staff.
The teaching in the Professional Development Unit will also change to allow participants to focus on a professionally relevant task of their choosing. Rather than all participants completing an individual learning journal, course participants will be able to choose to complete an authentic teaching portfolio task such as:

  1. Developing a teaching portfolio for a promotion application
  2. Developing a portfolio for a university or national teaching award application
  3. Developing a professional learning plan and portfolio for PMD
  4. Preparing a learning journal
  5. Preparing a HERDSA Fellowship portfolio
  6. Another appropriate task by negotiation
The development of this portfolio task will draw on the participants’ general development and achievements as a teacher but in particular on their learning in the Scholarship unit.

An ITL based project option will continue to be provided as an option for staff from faculties which do not wish to provide faculty based learning opportunities and as an alternative for those staff members who would prefer this. The ITL task might be a based on a central teaching development initiative (e.g. GGA / RLT etc) or it might be based in an academic development issue.

These changes are described in the draft unit of study outlines which are available on the ITL website http://www.itl.usyd.edu.au/programs/gradcert/

The ITL is currently discussing with the Associate Deans Learning and Teaching, what sorts of activities might already be available for this year’s participants.

Simon Barrie
16th Aril 2008