student feedback and leadership - Office for Learning and Teaching

Part A: Developing a Distributed Leadership Model - Secton 3: Building Leadership Capacitycapacity building that links educational and leadership principles andpractices. Through this it was hoped that actively engaging leaders (bothformal and informal) in leadership development could transform how leadershipis conceptualised and provide powerful ways of enabling leaders to re-thinkboth their leadership and their learning and teaching practices. It was hopedthat this in turn would enable the rethinking and systemic adoption of studentfeedback as an integrated aspect of leadership work in improving learning andteaching. To ensure the project met the RMIT research ethics requirementsa Research Ethics proposal was submitted and received RMIT ResearchCommittee approval.i) Project TeamImplementation of the project approach commenced with the establishmentof a Project Team consisting of the DVC(A), the Director Learning and TeachingDevelopment, 4 Heads of School, an Academic College Dean of AcademicDevelopment, 3 ART Leaders and 3 Facilitators and a Project Officer appointed.It was agreed that the Project Team would meet monthly in this initial phase.The role of the Project Team was identified as principally to assist the ProjectManager to plan and scope project details and to manage the activitiesof project stakeholders.One of the initial meetings of the Project Team (December 2006) consideredand endorsed a theoretical position presented by the Project Managerconcerning the development of distributed leadership for learningand teaching.ii)The ARTsBy December, with the encouragement of the DVC(A) via a letter to Headsof School to nominate teams, three ARTs and their facilitators had beenappointed, one from each academic College. The ARTs covered threebroad disciplinary areas that had targeted specific courses with lowlevels of satisfaction for improvement.––School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences,College of Science Engineering and Technology (SET).Two courses in Mathematics are taught as ‘service’ course acrossa broad range of Programs, each with 220 students from mixeddisciplines. The issue chosen was service teaching large classes.The ART was assisted by a Facilitator from the University Learning andTeaching Development Unit as there was no School-based Learningand Teaching expertise.– – School of Property, Construction and Project Management,College of Design and Social Context (DSC).Two courses were chosen, one a final year course in ConstructionManagement with 85 students and the other a first year coursein Computer Aided Drafting with 212 students. The issue chosenwas teaching capabilities in course delivery, including how teachingcapabilities were affected by the learning environment.Page 37