The first attempt….
June 27, 2008 by Kevin O'Brien
Since I was appointed Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning I have been meaning to set up a regular communication with all staff in the Faculty who want to know about teaching and learning efforts. So, I would like to start off by apologising that it has taken me just over a year to set up this Blog. When I was Head of the Dental School I updated the School on important matters via a weekly update. I am not sure that there is a need to update you all on a weekly basis, but I will update this Blog regularly.
To give a historical update, when I was appointed as AD we decided to form a new team who would be responsible for all teaching and learning activities. We asked for volunteers who would take on pan-Faculty roles. The people who were successfully appointed are:
Iain Mackie (Dental School). Iain’s responsibility is Quality Assurance and Enhancement across the Faculty and QA liaison with the University. He has streamlined processes and made QA more responsive.
Tim David (Manchester Medical School). Tim runs the Faculty Fitness to Practise procedures. This is becoming an increasingly important and complex area. Tim has great experience externally with the General Medical Council. He has used this to great effect and made our Fitness to Practise mechanism very fair and transparent. He has also organised a national conference for other Health Care Faculties and it is clear that we now have one of the best systems in the UK.
Chris Bundy (Translational Medicine). Chris is in charge of the New Academics Programme, which is essential for the development of our new academic appointments. When she was appointed a year ago, we did not have a New Academics Programme and so from a standing start she and Marion Philbin have created an excellent programme which is now in its second year.
Julie Andrews (Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences). Julie has responsibility for the strategic development of E-Learning. She played a major role in all the work that was necessary to create our Faculty
E-Learning team from a workforce that was distributed throughout the Faculty. The other major players in this development were Diane Bennett (our e-learning team leader), Sally Bray (Head of Academic Services) and Kay Day (Head of Faculty Administration).
Liz Theaker (Dental School). Liz’s area is Widening Participation. This is becoming a major area of our activity and Liz is working hard with the Student Recruitment, Admissions and International Development Division (SRAIDD) to improve our performance in this crucial area.
Carol Porteous (Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work). Carol is the most recent member of our team and she is responsible for Student Support and Retention. She has starting working hard identifying our practices across the Schools. This is an area that is central to one of the major areas of the Review of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning (more of that later).
In addition to the people who take on the pan-faculty roles we have members from each of the Schools. These are:
- Paul O’Neill and Caroline Boggis (MMS),
- Leon Aarons(Pharmacy),
- Christine Lowe (School of Psychological Sciences),
- Iain Mackie (Dentistry, wearing his School hat this time) and
- Geraldine Main(NMSW).
They are School appointments and are responsible for teaching and learning in each School.
Student involvement in the team’s work is absolutely crucial, and we are also very fortunate to have the active involvement of Chris Jenkinson (Academic Affairs Officer) and Ali Yazdi (Students’ Union MHS Representative).
Finally, the organisation would not work with out our administrative staff of Sally Bray, Geoff Carter (Teaching and Learning Manager) and Wayne Bulbrook (Teaching and Learning Officer). In addition to stopping me from doing anything stupid, they carry out an amazing amount of work in moving our Faculty forward.
The learning and teaching committee: From left to right: Tim David, Leon Aarons, Geoff Carter, Caroline Boggis, Wayne Bulbrook, Julie Andrews, Iain Mackie, Kevin O’Brien, Liz Theaker, Sally Bray, Geraldine Main, Janet Pennington, Christine Bundy
As this is an introduction, I would just like to list our major achievements over the last year and then finish.
- The development and implementation of a Faculty teaching and learning strategy.
- The creation of a Faculty E-Learning team, which will lead to uniform and effective E-Learning support throughout the Faculty.
- Increasing the effectiveness of Faculty disciplinary processes, such as Plagiarism and Fitness to Practise committees.
- Streamlined and responsive Quality Assurance and Enhancement procedures.
- Considerable input into the Review of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning.
- Providing personal advice on academic promotions.
- Starting an evaluation of the effectiveness of our Widening Participation activities and keeping up with a changing central administration in this area.
- Holding a teaching and learning away day, which was attended by 90 members of staff. This was twice the number that attended our first away day last year.
We have come a long way in a year….now we have the challenge of the Review of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning. More of this later in the week……
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
Do you know, as a student, I have absolutely no idea who you are and what you do? How are you related to the medical school? Perhaps you could do a post on that? (by you I mean your group)
This is quite an interesting idea, I wonder if more couldn’t be made of such an idea.
Look forward to seeing where this goes, I wonder if this will be the one and only post.
This is a great comment and an illustration to me to communicate better. In brief, this is what I do…I am Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences. This means that I have a strategic role in undergraduate education across all the Schools in the Faculty, including the Medical School. As a result, I am responsible for some of the successes and all of any (rare) failures in each of our Schools. I sit on the Faculty Management Team and also several University central committees and I am, therefore, a link between the University centre and the Faculty and Schools. I will expand on this in a later post.
Do not worry about this being the only post, I have written another two already! This will run and run!
Hello Kevin, i read your first attempt communication with great interest and found it really useful in updating me about the important work of the undergraduate teaching and learning committee. I was particularly interested in the Fitness to Practice element since this seems to be gaining a higher profile across the school and the faculty which is crucial in terms of quality assurance. However, i wondered whether the Fitness to practice Committee prioduces an annual reaport on the number of cases held as not fit to practice and whether lecturers could access this report? Aslo, i noted that Tim has experience externally with the GMC which has facilitated a fair and transparent mechanism. However, I would be interested to discover whether there is a Midwifery representative on this panel since we also have colleagues that have expertise in sitting on Nursing and Midwifery Council FTP panels externally. Our mechansim for FTP and Clinical Governance shares some similaritties in professioanl accountability with medics but is discretely different with respect to the specific statutory provision governing midwifery practice. It would therefore to stimulate further debate in this respect and help to ensure that all professional groups are represented adequately at U/G FTP level and demonstrate a more inclusive and multi-disciplinary approach to U/G provision.
I think this is a fantastic development -is there an equivalent for those invovled in post graduate teaching? If not it is urgently needed if there is …where is it
many thanks
Carol, thanks for the question. You have raised good points and raised some communication matters. We have included members of staff of all Schools on the Fitness to Practice Committee, as a result, we feel that we have covered most cases. The new Fitness to Practice procedures have been in place for almost a year and we will produce a report shortly that will be freely available. I will do a posting on Fitness to Practice at some point when I can, so that it is made more clear.