Academic Development Toolkit - sparqs

This 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:

1.  Introductory resources
2.  Enhancing your own practice
3.  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. 

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.

The toolkit was developed as part of an extensive project carried out during 2024-26 - read more about the background of the project on the 'Student Partnership in staff development' webpage.

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.

 
For further information, please contact: 

• Name: Catriona Bell
• Role: sparqs External Consultant
• Email: catriona.bell@sparqs.ac.uk

(March 2026)

Item Number:305