student feedback and leadership - Office for Learning and Teaching

Part A: Developing a Distributed Leadership Model - Secton 3: Building Leadership Capacity
The importance of the Plenary sessions as a forum for ARTs to share their
progress, engage in discussion and obtain the support of senior leaders was
identified as an important advance. The major outcome from the second plenary
was discussion of the need to develop increased opportunities to disseminate
knowledge about changes being made and positive outcomes that were resulting
across the university. The comment was made that the project was providing the
link to develop change processes that can be shared with other schools to lead
towards a cultural change across RMIT.
3.2.5 Reflect
Reflection on the Leadership issues that emerged in this cycle suggest a second
element in a leadership model for enhancing student learning and teaching
practice through responding to student feedback. This COLLABORATIVE
LEADERSHIP element is illustrated in Figure 10.
Figure 10 Distributed Leadership Model Element Two: Collaborative Leadership
A collaborative approach includes all relevant services across the university
in leadership designed to develop joint problem-solving. The importance of
joint collaboration was also demonstrated in the ARTs experience of developing
meaning by sharing individual experiences. This led to the identification of small
changes to teaching practice that had significant effects for the students.
It was recognised that while collaboration requires time for trust to be developed
and blame removed, once the move to a more collaborative teamwork approach
occurs it is easier to attach meaning to student feedback and develop strategies
to improve the student experience. This involves a more shared systems
approach that links various student service providers and academics, an issue
that emerged as a central factor in improving student feedback.
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