Skills development workshops

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The HEA’s Skills development workshops are aimed at universities who wish to develop the professional practice of their teaching staff.

The HEA offers workshops on the following topics:

Embedding employability skills in the curriculum

The HEA has conducted a great deal of research into how developing curricula can support graduate employability. Our framework for higher education institutions was released in October 2013. This framework supports higher education providers in developing and implementing their employability strategies.

The framework supports HE providers in:

• considering interpretation of employability
• applying strategy
• engaging students and staff
• reviewing current practice
• taking action and monitoring progress

It can also be used in the same way to develop a more comprehensive, cohesive and consistent approach to enterprise education.

Developing assessment and feedback

The HEA works with higher education organisations and their students to improve approaches to assessment and feedback, including emphasising the importance of assessment for learning. We also advise on institutional strategy, policy and practice.

The HEA recognise it is time to significantly re-think assessment policy and practice, drawing on a wide body of scholarship and data to inform such changes. Engaging in a process of transforming assessment can have a positive impact upon student learning, as well as on student satisfaction. It can help ensure that staff and students have a greater understanding of, and confidence in, academic standards.

We have designed a framework for a wide range of staff in HE, including those who teach, those tasked with changing assessment policy and practice as well as those responsible for quality assurance or enhancement, centrally or in particular discipline areas. This framework, aligned to the UK Professional Standards Framework, can be used in different ways and adapted to your particular context. We provide a complementary toolkit to help you apply it into policy and practice.

This workshop is for universities who want to improve their students’ engagement with learning, by refreshing their approaches to assessment and understand the importance of giving them high quality and effective feedback to students, both to maximise achievement and to support retention.

Developing innovative pedagogy

This programme has been designed for staff looking to redesign and refresh their degree programmes in order to:

• Help students to become more independent learners
• Encourage better staff/student interaction in the classroom

Supporting teaching staff who are looking to use a wider variety of technologies, it includes a variety of sessions which explore the latest concepts and new and occasionally radical approaches to learning and teaching.

By the end of the programme, participants will have refreshed and updated their teaching practice. They will develop attributes including creativity, risk-taking and reflection and be better equipped to work in demanding teaching environments and to respond to today’s fast-changing learning needs.