student feedback and leadership - Office for Learning and Teaching

Part A: Developing a Distributed Leadership Model - Secton 3: Building Leadership Capacity
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Several RMIT internal projects, Work Integrated Learning and Graduate
Capabilities, have a adopted a participative and collaborative multi-level
leadership model to inform new policy and procedures.
A further important change has been the development of supportive systems
and procedures to recognise and reward academics for taking leadership
in learning and teaching:
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In December 2008 the DVC(A) announced a new emphasis on the weight
given to the contribution of teaching in promotion decisions. This is to be
achieved by a broadening of emphasis that will require some combination
of teaching, leadership and scholarship in all academic promotions (except
in the case of research-only appointments). The new approach relies upon
the following definitions of teaching, leadership and scholarship:
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Teaching refers to the practice of teaching and requires evidence
of excellent performance in student outcomes, such as progression
rates, student feedback measures and, where applicable, success
in higher degree supervision.
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Leadership refers to motivating, influencing and inspiring others
to achieve the goals of the University. The promotion application
should evidence leadership aligned with the emphasis the applicant
has placed on his or her teaching, research or both. For those
wishing to emphasise teaching, there should be solid evidence
of leadership related to teaching, such as performance in course
or program innovation, design and/or co-ordination; or in mentoring
or supervising teaching staff.
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Scholarship refers to the generation of knowledge and its
application to the solution of real world problems. It includes
Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) indicators and/or learning
and teaching inputs and outputs. Learning and teaching inputs
and outputs can be operationally defined as those that would
be accepted by ALTC as teaching citations, ALTC grants, new
courseware, websites, presentations, and dissemination strategies.
This important change illustrates the opportunity to triangulate reward and
recognition of academic excellence via internal and external awards. Figure
13 presents a framework to provide such an accreditated process. The 2008
RMIT University Teaching Awards included an award for Student Centred
Learning in the Business discipline to one of the ART members. This award
was made for the innovative teaching practice he introduced as part of this
project.
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