World-Class Education

This is a current project where, as a School, we are looking at how we define what world-class education looks like for us. The intent is to give us a framework for decision making as we go forward rather than try to define exactly what this means as clearly there would be no one, specific answer to the question. This framework would also have to answer the question “how will we know if we are being successful” so that we can chart progress towards our stated goals

The work with the staff started with the following principles:

• The most important
  • Open, creative thinking, without worrying about practical constraints
    • It is imperative that everyone came at this without being constrained by what is the current status quo or what is felt is possible.
• Upfront info on the sessions and what is expected from each session so people come prepared.

The first session focused on what staff felt the dimensions of the problem where so what factors we were actually looking at. In this session, the challenge was to not get too far into solutions before we had defined the direction we wanted to go – however, some of that is useful as it feeds in ideas for discussion.

Unsurprisingly the factors identified were:

• Environment
  • Physical
  • Virtual
• Teaching
  • Delivery
  • Assessment
• Support for learning
• Pastoral support
• Recruitment

The second session then looked at these factors and what success would look like under each one for us which came. One of the key elements that kept returning in the discussion was – what was the transformation we wanted to see in the students? and our holistic answer was:

“A graduate is set for life in terms of self-sufficiency and the ability to self determine and be successful at whatever they choose.”

So it is completely agnostic as to the specific discipline which was somewhat surprising.

This will now be tested with the student course reps to get a sense of their understanding of what high-quality teaching looks like for them