Leadership Foundation

Leading Teaching Teams

The course has been well run, engaging, enlightening! Excellent Tutor- good to be so flexible as to cater to the group’s needs and interests. All aspects were relatively new to me. I found them at a good level/easy (relatively) to understand. I would definitely recommend this course to teaching team colleagues.

Lynda Moore,
Director of Teaching
University of Bristol

Leading Teaching Teams is offered as a bespoke programme. It is designed to develop participants’ skills, capabilities and beliefs as leaders of teaching teams, at a time when they may be new to leadership and may not be line managing the team. The programme is run within your institution, and thereby has the added value of developing a community of leaders who can share and debate issues together. 

• Potential participants
• Focus and benefits
• Special features of LTT
• Programme structure
• Programme outline

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Potential participants

Participants will be established lecturers, new lecturers or academic teachers with responsibility for leading academic programmes and modules. Researchers or academics who would like to move into a teaching role will also find this programme both suitable and beneficial.

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Focus and benefits
Leading Teaching Teams will enable participants to discover how to build, lead, motivate and support any team, specifically within an applied context of academic teaching. It will enhance participants’ capabilities as academic leaders, and so build their career potential.

The programme is led by facilitators with an extensive experience of academic team leadership and a thorough knowledge of the challenges involved in higher education teaching and learning. Moreover the programme will provide the participants with questions and tools to reflect on their own practice, and with a plan for continuing self-development. Consequently, this programme will help prepare participants for the many challenges of building and leading a team of teaching academics.

Benefits for the institution include:

• Clearer alignment with university priorities
• Potentially better team morale and motivation
• A network of leaders working together

Benefits for the team include:

• Improved outputs in teaching quality and student satisfaction
• A greater sense of shared endeavour with mutually supportive colleagues
• A reduction in potentially unproductive conflict and misunderstanding across the team

Personal benefits for participants include:

• Clear and identifiable team leadership attributes
• An ongoing action plan of personal development

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Special features of LTT
Leading Teaching Teams has a number of special features including:

• Use of various well-established diagnostic tools, delivered by accredited facilitators
• Experiential learning techniques
• Delegate-focused
• Case study-based exercises and discussions
• An exploration of the contribution that leaders of teaching teams can make to the institution and the teaching environment
• Facilitators with a good knowledge of UK higher education

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Programme structure
Institutions can pick from the following days (or design a day with elements from the following). All days have all been developed to incorporate a mixture of experiential learning, case studies, discussion and personal reflection.

• Day A: Developing your leadership skills
• Day B: Building an effective teaching team
• Day C: Finance for module leaders and programme leaders
• Day D: Leading a high quality module and programme
• Day E: Networking with internal and external stakeholders

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Programme outline

Pre-course
Participants will be required to engage with the issues that will be delivered and shared on the programme, and asked to explore what they believe about leaders and leadership. Participants will also be asked to examine their institution and department’s strategic vision for teaching and leadership. Materials and specific questions will be provided prior to the course. Each day is offered separately and can be undertaken in the order that best meets the institution’s or team’s needs.
 
Sample content for day A
9.20am arrival and registration for a 9.30am start. Teaching sessions conclude at 5.00pm
 
Areas covered:

• What leaders actually do and how they do it
• Different approaches to leadership
• Team activity and review
• Motivating teams and individuals
• Improving communication
• Personal action planning

Post-course
Participants will be strongly encouraged to support one another in implementing their personal action plans, and will be given the opportunity to review their learning and personal vision with a member of the programme team.

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Contact solutions@advance-he.ac.uk to find out more.