Many thanks to those of you who’ve already contributed to the current sparqs staff development project. The project is progressing well and we are delighted that we can now offer an opportunity for institutions to get involved in piloting project resources during March and April 2025!
This project contributes to sparqs’ role within Scotland's TQEF (Tertiary Quality Enhancement Framework) alongside other sector agencies. It aims to support Scottish tertiary institutions with embedding the Student Learning Experience model and Scotland’s Ambition for Student Partnership within staff development for academic, quality and professional services staff. We aim to achieve this through co-creation of resources and/or activities with the sector, and through alignment with existing staff development initiatives within Scottish colleges and universities.
Prof Catriona Bell is leading this project for us on a part-time consultancy basis throughout academic year 2024-25. She has completed a desk-based review as well as a Needs Analysis exercise with more than 30 stakeholders drawn from 18 tertiary institutions, networks and sector agencies. This has identified existing staff development initiatives and professional development routes within Scottish colleges and universities, and has helped to refine potential target audiences and preferred formats for project outputs (resources and/or activities).
How to get involved!
We’re now at the stage of developing project resources and/or activities and we are keen to pilot these during March and April 2025 with colleagues across the Scottish tertiary sector, particularly those from academic development and organisational development teams.
If this might be of interest to you or your colleagues, please get in touch with Catriona - catriona.bell@sparqs.ac.uk.
We’ll share further updates with you as the project progresses, and final outputs will be shared with the sector during summer 2025.
In the meantime, an initial resource has been created during the initial stages of the project! We hope that our new Acronym Buster will be useful to anyone new to the sector.
Queries
If you have any queries around the project, or if you are interested in piloting resources or activities as noted above, please contact Catriona Bell, External Consultant – catriona.bell@sparqs.ac.uk.