Meet the team: Learning and Teaching Staff Development

Meet the Team is a series of articles to introduce the teams of the Learning and Teaching Portfolio following the recent organisational restructure. This week we meet the Learning and Teaching Staff Development team.

L to R in the above photo are Alison, Agnes, Kylie, Fidel, Mathew, Olga and Karina.

We are passionate about learning in higher education, which for us, includes continuous learning for teaching staff. We also want to showcase the excellent teaching practice happening across the University and provide evidence-based professional support to the University’s teachers and educators. 

The team was established in April 2020 and since then we have been working to support the University’s teaching staff in many ways, including: 

• coordinating and facilitating professional development programs for teaching
• developing resources and providing support for teaching capability enhancement and technology-enhanced learning
• contributing to curriculum, assessment, learning design and governance
• leading scholarly reflection and collaborative practice
• recognising, rewarding and sharing good practice in learning and teaching across the university.

The team comprises:

• Associate Professor Agnes Bosanquet – Director, Learning and Teaching Staff Development 
• Dr Mathew Hillier – e-Assessment Academic 
• Dr Karina Luzia – Professional Learning Program Coordinator 
• Dr Olga Kozar – Senior Learning Designer 
• Fidel Fernando – Learning Designer 
• Alison Hayward – Educational Resources Developer 
• Kylie Coaldrake – Learning and Teaching Development Coordinator 

In 2020 we introduced the Professional Learning and Capability Enhancement (PLaCE) framework which makes explicit the capabilities for the professional practice of teaching and teaching support. The framework recognises the need for staff to be provided with opportunities to enhance their own learning and be able to integrate their teaching development and evidence achievement.

The team had fun creating a series of Personas for staff to interact with the PLaCE framework and identify professional development offerings and resources relevant for their role. This will be an ongoing aspect of our work as further workshops, training and resources will be developed and added over time. For example, new staff can now access a learning and teaching specific induction module which provides a contextual overview of learning and teaching practices at Macquarie and outlines organisational knowledge, roles, policies, procedures and support for ensuring teaching quality to help them on their journey.

Right now we are focusing on developing a process for the summative peer review of teaching which is currently in the ‘consultation’ stage ahead of being implemented later in the year.

You will generally be able to find us (or hear us) laughing our heads off in the tearoom in 2 First Walk during our twice-weekly team afternoon tea break where we nibble on healthy (and sometimes unhealthy) delights.

Keep up to date with what we are doing:

Further information about the team can be found on the Teaching development and recognition website. For updates about professional learning offerings, make sure you Subscribe to TECHE, Macquarie’s learning and teaching blog (anything written by L&T Development is from our team). 

Footnote:

You can contact the Learning and Teaching Staff Development Team with any questions or requests via professional.learning@mq.edu.au .