Professional background
I joined the University of the Highlands and Islands in 2010 as Academic Skills Developer with the Educational Development Unit (EDU) leading their skills enhancement agenda for colleagues teaching on programmes of study identified for development through European Social Fund investment. This university-wide initiative aimed to bring together and develop networked teaching teams and programmes of study particularly in key curriculum areas relating to the sustainability of the region such as engineering, gamekeeping and wildlife management, archaeology and early education.
By developing these networks of teaching teams across the academic partner colleges, students are able to access a much wide range of programmes of study than offered by their local academic partner college. In fact it is said that, anyone in the region is never more than 30 miles away from 30 different degrees. My role in supporting the development of these programmes was to design, deliver and evaluate a wide range of skills development sessions with a key responsibility to support learning and teaching colleagues to being or continue to develop their practice in blended and online delivery.
I have strong learning and development skills, developed over 20 years in human resources and organisational development roles, working for public sector organisations including the Royal College of Nursing and BBC News. These roles were fascinating, demanding and provided opportunities to hone my professional values over time and my approaches to building skills capacity and nurturing colleagues within organisations.
Joining the University of the Highlands and Islands was, in many ways, a leap into the unknown: I had limited experience of educational development and the sector as a whole, apart from my first human resources role, early in my career, at Birkbeck College, University of London. In addition, although my family roots were deeply linked to the Highlands and I had spent much of my family life in the region, for the previous 17 years I had been living and working in London only relocating with my partner and young family to Inverness in 2007.
Moving into academic development
In 2017 I joined the university’s Learning and Teaching Academy (LTA) team which “aims to develop, share and recognise excellence, innovation and research in pedagogic practice at the university through professional development events and opportunities”. In this new role, as Organisational Learning and Development Lead, my remit widened considerably, taking on responsible for a range of university-wide learning and teaching development initiatives. I now manage the University’s staff development fund which provides funding contributions for accredited programmes of study; I lead the learning and teaching enhancement strand of the University’s Mentoring Scheme and I collaborate on the LTA’s annual programme of webinars; symposiums and networking opportunities. Within my remit, a key responsibility is to lead the engagement of academic and professional services staff on external leadership programmes including the Advance HE Aurora Leadership Development Programme.
My role in supporting the enhancement of skills in learning and teaching is both informed by and contributes to the embedding the university’s Learning and Teaching Enhancement Strategy; a value-based strategy designed to provide a ‘common language’ to support the development, sharing, and enhancement of learning, teaching and assessment practice across the university.
The EDU and LTA roles within the university underscored the start of my journey into academic development, although I was not aware of this at the time, comfortably belonging to my learning and development ‘professional tribe’. However, through continued study, including a PG Cert in Tertiary and Higher Education, reflective practice and the process of applying for professional recognition as Fellow and then Senior Fellow of the HEA, I found myself increasingly keen to explore the theory and practice of academic development. Undertaking the SEDA SLEC programme was the ideal opportunity to take this forward as part of a formal programme of study.
Professional development priorities
Through engaging in the learning on the SEDA SLEC programme, I identified several areas to develop my practice as an academic developer. These include:
- aligning my contribution to academic development within the strategic objectives of the university and national agendas;
- developing a more scholarly approach to my practice;
- exploring the use of more appropriate models to evaluate learning and teaching initiatives;
- building networks of colleagues in academic development beyond the university.
These goals have informed my Professional development action plan.
Learning portfolio by Ann Tilbury 