Change Academy helps transform higher education practices
In a partnership between the Higher Education Academy and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, institutions take part in a residential programme which helps teams of academics to develop the knowledge, capacity and enthusiasm for achieving complex institutional change to benefit the student learning experience.
Change Academy is a year-long programme which supports teams from higher education institutions, responsible for effecting major programmes of change within their university.
A key event of the Change Academy programme is the four-day residential experience, designed to encourage the teams to focus their attention on their planned project, encourage them to be creative, and develop and practice a range of techniques to ensure they can successfully deliver their project when they return to their institution.
All higher education institutions throughout the UK can apply to Change Academy, and since it began in 2004, over 50 institutions have taken part in the programme.
Projects have covered diverse issues such as student induction and transition; embedding a culture of learning and teaching excellence, and putting assessment at the heart of learning. Whatever the project, the Change Academy programme provides the techniques and support system to enable institutions to be better able to create successful plans that lead to the desired change outcome.
The History
During September 2004 the Leadership Foundation and the Higher Education Academy collaborated on a new approach to institutional problem solving and change. This involved bringing together project teams of around six members each - representing a diagonal slice across functions - from sixteen UK HEI's, for a 4-day residential event - during which the teams focused on their own organisational assignment. They also benefited from occasional plenary sessions relating to change management; open space and expert facilitation and the opportunity to benchmark and swap ideas with the other one hundred or so delegates from UK higher education institutions. The event was declared by participants to be highly effective. Following this success, Change Academy has become an annual event.
What Next?
Some HEIs that have participated in the national event have gone on to use the Change Academy approaches to support change programmes within their own institutions. Details of these internal Change Academy programmes will appear on this section of the website shortly.
If you would like more information about using Change Academy within your own institution please contact Bob Thackwray for an informal discussion.
For more information about Change Academy, including details of participating institutions please visit the website of our partner, the Higher Education Academy.