student feedback and leadership - Office for Learning and Teaching

Part A: Developing a Distributed Leadership Model - Secton 2: Engaging Leadership
2.4.2.3 Managing Workshops
This project utilised five Plenary sessions as a Community of Practice for the
project. Plenary sessions were scoped and planned in consultation with the
Project Management Team, the Project Team, ART Leaders and Facilitators,
and input from the Project Reference group.
2.4.2.4 Relationship Management
The Action Research nature of the project, as well as the distributed focus,
meant that relationship management between the various participants was
crucial to ensure ongoing commitment to the project over the two years of its
activity. The active engagement of all participants at every level of the project
resulted in a positive approach, and positive outcomes, for relationship
management.
2.4.2.5 Documentation / Information Management
(including budget tracking)
Regular reports were made by the Project Leader to the ALTC in accordance
with the requirements of the leadership grant. Annual reports included
a summary of budget tracking. Positive feedback was received regarding
the progress reported in each Report. This was helpful in assisting the
Project Management Team to confirm that the project was proceeding
according to plan.
Regular written reports were also provided by the Project Manager to the
Project Reference Group during the first year of the project. These were
changed to verbal reports in the second year of the project as it was found
that circulation of the Project Reports to the ALTC was sufficient to inform
the Reference group of progress. This enabled more open and fruitful
discussion to occur during Reference Group meetings.
The fluid nature of action research (especially in a university environment
governed by formal institutionalised, hierarchical leadership that relies
on targeted outcomes governed by structures, rules and regulations),
is challenging. It required a systematic, concise and clear approach
to documentation and communication. The excellent documentation
of all Project events and meetings of Project Team by the Project Officer
was a key factor in assisting participants to accept the challenge of an action
research approach that was established to explore a more distributed, less
hierarchical, approach to leadership. Formative documentation of Reference
Group, Facilitators & ART Leaders meetings was also extremely helpful
in providing a detailed record of the cycles of change as the project evolved.
A website was developed to assist in project documentation. This was
not as effective in disseminating information across the university as had
been hoped, with the face-to-face Plenary sessions being more useful.
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