Our ‘Student partnership in staff development’ project took place across 2024-26, culminating in the publication of the sparqs Academic Development Toolkit, which was officially launched on Tuesday 10th March at the first of three invitation-based events for academic development colleagues within the Scottish tertiary sector.
The toolkit comprises a variety of different Resources which have been curated into a suite of staff development Activities aimed at different target audiences and three levels of professional practice. The resources and activities focus around the following:
- Enhancing quality assurance (QA) and quality enhancement (QE) priorities at course, programme, and institutional level.
- Embedding student partnership within professional practice in Scotland’s colleges and universities.
- Developing critical reflective practice within taught academic development programmes.
Resources
Individual project resources include the following bitesize, asynchronous formats, and these can be accessed through our Index of Project Resources.
- Acronym Buster – written and downloadable webpage.
- Screencasts (narrated PowerPoint presentations): <10 minute overview, video format.
- Summary papers (short guides): <4 sides of A4, written format (both PDF and Word versions).
- Self-directed activity – activities to download and work through individually.
- Podcasts – audio format, including case studies.
- Session plans - guidance for academic development colleagues to run their own staff development workshops.
- Diamond 9 Activity packs – Example activities and printable cards for Diamond 9 card sorting activities to prioritise, rank and discuss key issues relating to student partnership.
Activities
Resources have been curated into a range of Activities for three levels of target audience and professional practice:
- Introductory resources
- Enhancing your own practice
- Enhancing others' practice
Curate your own resources
The toolkit resources and activities have intentionally been developed using a range of bitesize, asynchronous formats so that colleagues can curate, adapt and contextualise them to create their own Student Partnership resources for academic development activities if they wish.
Copyright
Each resource is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial 4.0 licence. You are free to copy, communicate and adapt the work, so long as you attribute sparqs.
Project background
The project began with a needs analysis exercise to identify potential target audiences and preferred formats for project outputs. Colleagues asked us for bitesize, practical, asynchronous resources that could be a) contextualised for their own institution and b) embedded into existing staff development activities and programmes for a range of target audiences, from ‘new starts’ through to ‘senior management’. An extensive pilot of draft resources then took place with colleagues in Scottish colleges and universities, following which the toolkit was further developed, including developing newly-identified resources. Many thanks to everyone who took part in the pilot and contributed to the project.
This project aimed to put the experience of students at the heart of how we develop professional practice in Scottish colleges and universities. It has initiated and supported staff development activity that enables the Scottish tertiary sector to take collective action towards achieving Scotland’s Ambition for Student Partnership as part of Scotland’s Tertiary Quality Enhancement Framework (TQEF).
The project aims included raising ‘awareness of’ and ‘engagement with’ student partnership concepts across the sector, and particularly embedding these into existing staff development (also known as academic development) activities for academic and professional services colleagues with student-facing roles.
The toolkit has been explicitly aligned with Scotland’s Ambition for Student Partnership and the Student Learning Experience (SLE) model, both of which form key sector reference points within Scotland’s Tertiary Quality Enhancement Framework (TQEF).
The resources and activities are also mapped to relevant Professional Standards for academic colleagues working within the Scottish tertiary sector:
Professional Standards for Lecturers in Scotland’s Colleges (GTCS)
Professional Standards Framework for teaching and supporting learning in higher education 2023 (Advance HE)
Please give us your feedback
We'd value your feedback on the activities and resource within this toolkit. Please use this 2-minute Feedback Form to share this with us.
Contact us
If you have any queries or would like to discuss any of the resources, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Catriona Bell, sparqs External Consultant – catriona.bell@sparqs.ac.uk.
You can also contact our team via admin@sparqs.ac.uk.