Support in your institution

 What support does your institution provide for you to develop your scholarly teaching?

Central learning and teaching unit - Does your institution have a central learning and teaching unit? If so, contact a colleague in that unit and ask to have a coffee with them. It may be useful to find out what support they provide. For example, they may provide support as you develop your units in the Learning Management System, or as you develop a learning and teaching award application. They might also teach a learning and teaching graduate certificate in which you could enrol.

Library - The librarian associated with your faculty may be able to help you with a database search on a particular topic (for example, if group work isn’t succeeding as you’d like it to), or to locate the higher education learning and teaching journals associated with your discipline.

Faculty support - Does your faculty have an Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching? If so, organise to meet with them to discuss what support they provide for new teachers. Does your faculty have a mentoring or peer review scheme? Does your faculty confer teaching awards? Is there help to evaluate your teaching? You will need evidence of the impact of your teaching when you apply for promotion or a teaching award. 

In the next section, we provide a very brief introduction to ways in which you can begin to collect evidence of the impact of your teaching. Evidence is key to scholarly teaching. You can collect evidence to improve your teaching practice or your students’ learning, or to demonstrate the success of your teaching for applications and career advancement. Your central learning and teaching unit or your Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching may be able to advise you on how best to collect evidence, depending on what you are trying to achieve and determine.