Working with Institutions

TELRI has been particularly successful in increasing interest, understanding and uptake in research-based learning approaches at the level of the individual lecturer. Working with the grain of academics own interest in research, TELRI has identified successful ways to bring academics into the educational development arena. In doing so, TELRI has also served to strengthen the links between teaching, research and learning in the working practices of those participating as well as contribute to the national debate on research-based learning and teaching. Embedding of new practice beyond the individual tutor's own courses, that is at department and institutional levels, requires more insight into the context in which academics must operate. Institutional structures and support mechanisms are complex and can present considerable barriers to influencing institutional learning and teaching strategies more widely. It is essential that institutional operational contexts are better understood if educational development projects, particularly external ones, are to be cost-effective and result in enhanced practice and quality.

The transferability funding will allow us to extend the work of the TELRI project at the institutional level rather than focus on uptake by individual lecturers directly. TELRI has a wealth of experience in helping departments and institutions to incorporate new ideas and to identify relevant drivers and barriers. We offer this to the participating institutions in identifying with them additional assistance in undertaking the requirements of their institutional learning and teaching strategies. From this experience, we will identify more detailed insight into generic issues, produce possible models of effective operational approaches and share the understanding with the wider sector. Some of the issues are well known to educational developers and learning technologists across the sector, but have rarely been documented and are usually evidenced on the basis of individual projects rather than generic studies. We believe the work provides a useful vehicle for exploring the process of implementation of educational innovations in HE institutions in general.