student feedback and leadership - Office for Learning and Teaching

Part B: Building Leadership Capacity - BUS: School of Economics, Finance & Marketing ART Report
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Support and encouragement from our project Facilitator, John Milton,
and his assistance with ethics approvals, the LTIF application, facilitating
the teaching team discussion forum and ongoing advice.
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Support from various areas within the University and the Business
College, in particular Dr. Rae Subramaniam from the Academic
Development Group(ADG) within the Business College for undertaking
the task of conducting student focus groups and also Laurie Armstrong
and the Survey Services Centre for the provision of CES data tables.
It was also commented that “A major contribution to the success of the project
was the contribution of the Learning & Teaching Director, Kate Westberg
in providing:
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the essential mediation between the ART project team and the University
project team
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constructive communication with each of the Course Co-ordinators.
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advocacy for the team including in relation to the issues faced by courses.
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critical bridge between project team and Head of School.
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positive, opportunity-seeking outlook with support for local initiative.
All were important for the achievements of the team and course teams in the
past two years - and will remain so.”
What were the impediments to success?
Impediments or challenges to the success of this project included:
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Workload commitments of the ART members and course team members.
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Facilities/IT issues which can hamper the best efforts of teaching staff
(i.e. DLS problems experienced in Semester 1, 2008). These issues
appear to be ongoing, but the increased attention and plans to address
these issues are encouraging.
––
Lack of student responsiveness and willingness to participate in focus
groups, despite offering inducements of movie tickets, and irrespective
of whether the groups were conducted in class time.
– – The complexity or difficulties in using student feedback to direct course
development, for example the ability of students to articulate what they
want in a way in which we can respond (e.g. it was noted that despite
students stating that they wanted more feedback, there was limited
response to the opportunities provided for students to receive
this feedback).
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