The three-day SEDA Summer School provides high quality personal and professional development for colleagues working as staff and educational developers in higher education – including HE in FE. It is aimed at individuals with less than three years experience in this role. The course is suitable for people working in a range of contexts, including:

• Institutional educational development units
• Colleagues with education/curriculum development roles within Faculties/Schools/Departments
• Higher Education Academy Subject Centres
• CETLs

The Summer School also provides a great starting point for further professional development for colleagues – including those offered through the SEDA Professional Development Framework. For those who are interested, the Summer School will count towards the formal award ‘Staff and Educational Development’ within SEDA’s Professional Development Framework. Successful completion of an additional course will enable participants both to receive the award within PDF and become eligible to hold an Associate SEDA Fellowship (AFSEDA).

In response to feedback from previous participants, we have adopted a revised timetable and approach to the Summer School this year.

Very positive feedback from previous participants indicates that they have particularly valued their opportunities to step back from day-to-day business; to gain new skills and professional confidence; to network; and to leave with focused, practical plans ready for implementation. They also indicated two areas for improvement:

• they rated the quality of the inputs as excellent, but would have liked more time to reflect on the sessions and to consider how what they were learning might apply in their own contexts;
• they would like the Summer School to allow more space to take full account of the increasingly varied contexts in which “education developers” now operate, and the different challenges these create.

In responding to this feedback, we have aimed to retain the high standard of input, but have woven this into a very active and practical learning context, drawing on elements of both Problem Based Learning and Action Learning. Participants will focus their learning through developing their own projects. Increased time for peer learning and small-group / individual interactions with the facilitators has been built into the programme. We have drawn on the highly successful Swedish “Summer Institute” as a model of effective practice. This is a national pedagogical development initiative to support early career academics, which has run a Summer School since 2000 at which participants learn through developing their own projects to take back and implement at their home institutions.

We are delighted to have attracted a highly experienced facilitation team for our Summer School, which brings together experienced practitioners from a range of education development backgrounds. Click here for further details of the facilitation team.