Over the last few weeks I have been holding forums to consult with the ANU community on a new learning and teaching strategy. This has provided a great opportunity to connect with staff around what matters to them.
At the beginning of each session I asked what motivated academic and professional staff to attend and I heard about their commitment to learning and teaching and their genuine desire to be actively involved in what the University is planning.
We talked about why this is a great time to be thinking strategically about how we move forward in learning and teaching, and we reflected on how the disruptions of COVID offer us opportunities to design a better future for our staff and our students.
Everyone was very frank about things that currently work for them and the things that don't. A good strategy certainly should help us address things that are broken by streamlining how support services are designed and delivered. It should also resolve some of the questions that COVID has left us with, such as how flexible our teaching delivery modes will need to be in future, what our digital learning and teaching ecosystem should look like, and how we will ensure our on-campus learning experiences are distinctive.
Importantly, we also talked about the kind of work a well-designed strategy can do in helping us to define and communicate ANU's distinctive approach to learning and teaching, to establish shared expectations, and to provide clarity on our direction as a University.
Through polls staff were asked what teaching and learning issues mattered most to them, as well as their three wishes for topics we should be exploring in more detail as a university community. A top choice was the status or value of teaching here at ANU, followed by establishing what we need in terms of technical and design support for learning and teaching, and how we can better co-create learning experiences with our students. Plenty to think and plan around!
I really want to thank everyone for sharing their ideas and experience across these sessions. If you have yet to engage, there’s still one more online forum on 12 April from 2pm to 3pm. You can access the Zoom link at the ANU Teaching and Learning Strategy SharePoint.
You can also send any feedback on the discussion paper to academic.project@anu.edu.au.
April 2022
Professor Maryanne Dever is the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education and Digital) at ANU