The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics: - Higher Education ...

The Scholarship of Engagement for Politics
b. Developing use of digital and non-digital learning resources relevant
to the teaching of politics.
c. Integrating use of IT including virtual learning environments to
support learning.
d. Collaborating to produce distance learning materials.
8. Quality assurance
a. Involving students more effectively in quality assurance processes.
b. Making better use of and responding to external examiners.
9. Professional development
a. Developing more effective professional development strategies –
including for established staff, postgraduate teaching assistants and
part-time staff in HEIs and FECs.
b. Designing and implementing forms of subject specific training for
new lecturers.
c. Helping staff to respond to the impact of widening participation.
Box 16.1 Politics subject priority areas. (Source: HEFCE 2003)
Before turning to explore the work of the projects, it is important to
record that this list includes only those who were successful in the bidding
round and that other politics departments also worked on preparing bids
and exploring ideas for teaching and learning development projects. In this
process, departments were supported by C-SAP, which organised a series
of workshops through which potential bidders could come together, share
their ideas and make contacts with like-minded colleagues. In addition,
between the first and second rounds of bidding, further developmental
events were organised by the HEFCE and the HEA which allowed those
who had reached this stage to meet together and share ideas. One of the
results of these events was to provide the opportunity for those who were
involved in putting together the projects to get to know each other better
and was to provide the basis for later collaborations.
During the course of their existence, the exact scope and sometimes
even the names of the projects evolved as a response to the work that they
were undertaking. On this basis, any attempt to outline the work of the
projects is likely to be partial, capturing only some of their activities, and
the work of the Scholarship of Engagement project in developing better
practice around the use of placements within politics courses is extensively
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