12.00 – 12.45 Lunch and registration12.45 – 12.55 WelcomeSetting the Scene: Current Developments in Higher Education Professor James Wisdom, HE Consultant and President-elect, International Consortium for Educational Development.Since the then Minister, John Denham, started the debate in 2008 on the future of Higher Education, a series of enquiries and reports have challenged, supported and proposed the re-shaping of the sector, and there are more to come.This session will take six aspects of the sector (qualifications, methods of delivery, academic culture, lecturers and teaching, the processes of learning, and students) and – through a process of discussion – attempt to make reasonable predictions of how we might expect them to change over the next five years. Reviewing a PGCert: Balancing Internal and External Agendas Gail Langley, Reader in Educational Development and Acting Director, Programme for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, London South Bank University.The focus of this workshop on reviewing a PGCert Learning and Teaching in Higher Education hangs on balancing internal and external agendas. But we have to keep in mind a whole range of issues in the process of the management of change. Having given a thumbnail sketch of our current course and its issues, I’ll ask you to comment on what you think of first, the approach we have taken and second, how you would react to the process being imposed upon us. We’ll look at how we find a balance between internal and external stakeholder demands, issues of quantity and quality and the whole issue of managing change positively and developmentally. Internal stakeholders divide between the course team and senior management within the university; the key external stakeholder discussed will be the HEA, though the NMC (Nursing and Midwifery Council) is also claiming our attention and will get a brief mention. I’m sure I can depend upon you for a lively exchange of views and experiences in reviewing a PGCHE course! Adapting a PGCert in Higher Education Practice: the Bradford ExperienceIn this session we will describe the re-design of one of the modules of our established PGCHEP to suit two new audiences, namely Graduate Teaching Assistants and colleagues in partner institutions abroad who are delivering franchised courses. In both cases the module, Learning and Teaching in HE, has undergone a significant re-design in terms of its mode of delivery and content. Graduate teaching assistants undertake a large proportion of undergraduate teaching at the University of Bradford, but many have little or no experience of teaching in a higher education environment. The postgraduate teaching assistants at Bradford are from diverse backgrounds both culturally and academically, and their teaching roles are often more practically focussed than their lecturer colleagues. These factors have been key challenges in re-designing the course for this particular audience.A different set of challenges has arisen in adapting the module to be delivered entirely online for the University’s collaborative partners around the world. These relate not only to cultural and language differences, but also to the collaborative and reflective nature of the online module.We will discuss the challenges and issues involved in designing these two new modules for entirely different audiences and describe how we have dealt with them.
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