student feedback and leadership - Office for Learning and Teaching

Part A: Developing a Distributed Leadership Model - Secton 3: Building Leadership Capacity
3.4 Cycle Four: Participative Leadership
3.4.1 Introduction
The fourth action research cycle involved the consolidation of a participative
leadership approach in the building of leadership capacity by sharing the
achievements that were being made and including more stakeholders,
including students, in the project. Table 4 presents a summary of the
action research process, identified as Participative Leadership, that
occurred in this fourth cycle.
Table 4 Action Research Cycle Four: Participative Leadership
CYCLE FOUR
PARTICIPATIVE
Stakeholders
LEADERSHIP
Consultation
Two-way
Communication
PLAN ACT OBSERVE REFLECT
Facilitate
understanding of
student feedback
challenges
Lecture visit program
Support Services
leaders attend
commencing classes
Need for regular,
centralised,
systematic process
to inform
Joint process for
shared meaning
Facilitate reflections
and analysis of
leadership critical
success factors and
barriers to building
leadership capacity
ARTs
Plenary – Systematic
changes support
services
L-SAG
Need formal and
informal discussion
across Colleges
Centrally managed
system, locally
provided L&T
support
LTIF grants
Proposals for change
Increased focus
in Schools on L&T
Link local action
to central policy
and process
Student feedback
process
Students attend
plenary
Engage students
more actively –
students as leaders
in feedback
3.4.2 Plan
Given the challenges that emerged in Cycle Three related to the active
engagement of all staff in transferring lessons learnt from one discipline
to another, the importance of undertaking action to consolidate the leadership
capacity in student feedback became the focus of the fourth cycle. This was
appropriate given that the ARTs had finalised their analysis and were introducing
trials of a series of specific changes to learning and teaching. It was
also relevant as the University was planning to introduce a series of related
changes to improve the student learning experience that would benefit from
this consolidation. This included finance to improve infrastructure and services
to centralise the management and provision of various student services and
the expansion of on-line learning tools for improved use in learning and
teaching.
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