Spheres of Influence: Ventures and Visions in Educational Development*

3-6 July, 2002
The University of Western Australia
Perth, Western Australia

Abstract

Lean times a catalyst for building learning communities, opportunities for scholarship of teaching and collegiality in an educational development program

Janice Orrell, Flinders University, Australia

By comparison with established educational development programs in many universities, Flinders University has a lean staff profile. While there are inherent problems in this level of resourcing, it has compelled an innovative approach to identifying and utilising expertise already present with in the university faculty. While this utilisation of expertise began as a resource management strategy, unintended benefits have emerged. These benefits include a regeneration of interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary academic communities; a more explicit ownership and public recognition of expertise, and an increase in the scholarship of teaching.

In this presentation examples of constructive, collaborations that have been generated and concrete beneficial outcomes that have resulted from them will be described. Strategies for harnessing and further enhancing these unintended benefits will explored.

Key words:
Resource management; Community development; Collegiality

Objectives, outcomes and activities:

To outline the problems of resources and addressing the diverse development needs in a period of scare resources;
To explore alternative strategies to the construct of large educational development units;
To explore the innovations and opportunities that scare resources can generate.

Janice Orrell has a PhD in Educational Psychology and is the Academic Coordinator in the Staff Development and Training Unit. Since 1997 she has developed an institution wide academic development program in teaching and research. Her major field of scholarship is comparing assessors' thinking while assessing student learning products with their personal, practical beliefs about assessment. Another field of scholarship is teaching and assessing work-place learning and transfer of learning between clinical contexts and classrooms.

Contact: Janice Orrell, email: janice.orrell@flinders.edu.au