Alison Purvis, Head of Learning Enhancement
The Learning Enhancement Team was formed in October 2016 from the former Learning, Teaching and Assessment Team and Quality Enhancement Team. The two teams were combined to provide Faculty with the capability to address current and future academic development challenges.
Since then the new University Strategy has given us all a renewed direction and purpose. The emerging priorities are now becoming clarified and the team is realigning our activities and services to the priorities of the Shaping Futures pillar, and a programme of work; the Achieving Consistently Outstanding Outcomes Programme (ACOOP).
The key priorities in the programme are retention, Black, Minority and Ethnic (BME) attainment gap, employability and graduate outcomes (our Destination of Leavers in HE (DLHE) results), and assessment and feedback (NSS outcomes).
The Learning Enhancement Team is made up of educational practitioners with considerable expertise in all of these priority areas and we will be supporting departments to meet and exceed the key performance indicators (KPIs) in these areas.
The team refresh in 2016/17 was also an opportunity to rethink the way in which we work with colleagues across the Faculty to cultivate innovation and creativity in learning and teaching. So, in November 2016 we implemented Communities of Enhancement which use the principles of communities of practice and are characterised by collaborative sharing of skills, mutual dissensus to drive inquiry, are outward facing and prioritise the ‘noticing’ of ideas from elsewhere.
They do not follow the committee-style meeting format that we were familiar with. Instead they are vibrant, participant-driven communities where agendas and changes in practice are driven from the ground up. It is about all of us making a difference for our students by sharing practice and driving the agendas that matter to us.
For more about what we offer and how you can use our services and get involved, visit our Learning Enhancement Team blog and our Communities of Enhancement (CoEs) website.
