FLeXchange has had a busy few weeks and one of our early activities has been the evaluation of identified programme areas against strategic plans and the prioritization of these – one of our identified project outputs. For the purposes of both FLeXchange and our own Flexible Learning Project, we needed to identify one or two masters level programmes to develop which will also enable us to identify staff development needs alongside teasing out the detail of the process of creating flexible or distance learning programmes.
The programmes we had identified from our initial research share the following characteristics:
- Staff enthusiasm and motivation
- Potential market worth exploring further
- Potential scalability
And also meet one or more of the following broad objectives:
- To increase student numbers
- To improve the efficiency of delivery
- To enhance the quality of teaching and learning and the student experience
The challenge we were facing was the differing needs and priorities of the departments within the faculty, thus it was proving difficult to get consensus on the selection of one or two programmes. However, by bringing together the various stakeholder groups, including the relevant individuals with strategic decision-making authority, and our academic colleagues who are contributing to the programmes, we were able to prioritise the programmes we had proposed. We now have a ‘green light’ to proceed to the next stage for two of the programmes, both of which are inter-departmental which will really help us to look at the complexities of working across the faculty. This was also a useful meeting for sharing the details of the project, updating everyone and encouraging others to share the responsibility of participating in and progressing the project.
As well as programmes we have also identified several mini-projects at the unit level, which have been much easier to progress since they don’t have such a broad stakeholder group or require the same level of approval. These have already helped us to begin thinking about staff development needs and following our recent meeting we have been actively encouraged to develop our plans for a series of staff development workshops which fits neatly with our plans for FLeXchange (and a free lunch was also mentioned!).
Melanie – Project Officer
Image credit: add1sun on flickr
FLeXchange 