Standards for Scholarship in Higher Education: a solution-focused approach so scholarship is visible, monitored, measured and met
Tuesday 2 July: Pre-conference parallel workshop, 1:30pm – 4:30pm
Venue
Room 206-314
Facilitators
Andrea Carr1
University of Tasmania, Hobart
a.r.carr@utas.edu.au
Jo-Anne Kelder1
University of Tasmania, Hobart
jo.kelder@utas.edu.au
Deborah King2
University of Melbourne, Melbourne
dmking@unimelb.edu.au
Catherine Moore3
Edith Cowan University, Perth
C.moore@ecu.edu.au
Melanie Williams4
William Angliss Institute, Melbourne
Melanie.Williams@angliss.edu.au
Presentation type
Pre-conference workshop
Overview of workshop
“A higher education provider registered in any category must be able to satisfy TEQSA that its staff are active in scholarship of some kind that informs their teaching.” [1]
The workshop is highly interactive and solution focused. It will begin with a presentation on the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA)’s ‘Guidance Note: Scholarship’. Facilitators will lead workshop participants in discussion focused on three key questions:
- To what extent are higher education institutions paying attention to the national standards and guidance on requirements for scholarship?
- What are the challenges and barriers to scholarship standards being visible, monitored, measured and met?
- What opportunities and strategic actions will support an institution to incorporate scholarship into their infrastructure for learning and teaching (quality framework, governance instruments and monitoring and reporting schedules)?
Participants will be invited to form small groups and work on structured activities designed to collectively identify strategic initiatives and develop an action plan.
Target audience
The workshop is relevant for teachers (unit and course coordinators), Heads of Learning and Teaching interested in exploring how to enable and demonstrate ‘scholarship’ in their institution.
Intended outcomes for participants
- Understand the specific threshold HESF standards referencing scholarship, and the implications for their institution and its quality frameworks (in particular TEQSA Guidance Note: Scholarship).
- Identify the problem dimensions: standards for scholarship visible and acted on by individuals and institutions?
- Develop an action plan.
Outline of activities
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 20 min | Presentation – TEQSA Guidance Note: Scholarship |
| 50 min | Discussion – three questions, sharing examples from the field |
| 20 min | Activity 1 – Micro-level strategic actions (focus on a course) |
| 20 min | Activity 2 – Meso-level strategic actions (link and leverage institutional levers) |
| 20 min | Activity 3 – Macro-level strategic actions (linking cross-institutionally; collaborative actions) |
| 20 min |
Bringing it together Develop a personal action plan Invitation – join our network for building scholarship capacity |
Conference Sub-themes
The workshop addresses Sub-theme 3, Tertiary Institutions: Governance and Management. The requirement to undertake scholarship is embedded in the Higher Education Provider Category Standards, the Australian University Category Standards, the Provider Course Accreditation Standards and the Criteria Authorising Self-Accrediting Authority. Compliance with these standards should fall within the remit of higher education institutions’ governance arrangements. Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that scholarship that informs teaching and learning is an undervalued and largely invisible activity at best; at worst it may be neglected altogether. This workshop addresses the Governance and Management sub-theme by aiming to assist higher education providers develop strategies to incorporate explicitly the scholarship of teaching and learning into their governance structures, processes and instruments so that it can be made visible, monitored, measured, met and reported.
References
[1] TEQSA (4 December 2018). “Guidance Note – Scholarship” Version 2.4. Last accessed 4 December 2018 https://www.teqsa.gov.au/latest-news/publications/teqsa-guidance-note-scholarship
