student feedback and leadership - Office for Learning and Teaching

Part B: Building Leadership Capacity - SET: Mathematics & Geospatial Sciences ART Report
What were the central themes or issues being addressed in the project?
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Our focus was on improving our teaching and assessment practices
for large service courses using student feedback;
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Analyse and identify the key issues arising from student feedback
on large classes, assessment and good teaching strategies;
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Develop learning and teaching interventions to improve practice and
student learning experiences and outcomes;
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Evaluate the effectiveness of the student feedback evaluation tool
in obtaining service teaching data;
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Critically analyse success factors for and barriers to effective leadership
practices and policies at a broader level of academic work;
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Contribute to RMIT implementing a leadership culture that enables
informed approaches to using student feedback, development
of personal perspectives and organizational change;
How do these relate to student feedback?
The changes were all based on the student’s comments in their feedback
and their comments received through student’s consultation meetings in their
home departments. The aim was to deliver more student centred courses
by incorporating the most effective ways of teaching, assessment and
feedback into our teaching practices by using student’s feedback as well
as successful practices that were adopted by other members in the group.
10.4 Actions
How did the team structure itself, how has this changed during the project?
Staff were selected by the Head of School. Staff who are involved in this
project are either teaching large classes or co-coordinating teaching of large
courses. However, the team had to reconfigure as a research group due to a
change of membership and leadership of the group brought about by massive
staff redundancies in the school. The new team members went through a self
leadership process – concentrated on self teaching practice and on taking
up academic leadership roles within the school. They needed to further work
on what leadership capacity building activities are required by all members who
have acquired new academic roles in the second semester especially those
who have taken up program, discipline and course coordination/leadership
roles. Our facilitator and our original ART leader left during the first year.
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