Teaching and Learning Goals, Objectives anb Strategies
Teaching and Learning Goals
So as to ensures a buoyant student intake, in both quality and quantity, the College of Social Science is committed to
- providing teaching and learning of the highest quality;
- providing choice and flexibility in its programs of study; and
- achieving and sustaining innovation in the way it delivers its programs of study.
Teaching and Learning Objectives and Strategies
The specific teaching and learning objectives and their implementation strategies are:
- To promote teaching and learning in a supportive yet challenging environment enriched by scholarship and research, achieved by:
- recognizing the value to the College of having faculty who have earned the esteem of peers through teaching excellence;
- increasing the recruitment of postgraduate research students, as teaching assistants;
- providing a well-maintained physical environment for teaching and learning; and
- developing and maintaining a socially and culturally diverse environment, which ensures that students have the opportunity to be exposed to new and challenging experiences.
- To encourage students to become independent learners and to take responsibility for their own learning, achieved by:
- developing strategies for teaching and learning that foster deep approaches to learning and that recognize the teacher as a facilitator of other people’s learning;
- promoting interactive learning with staff and collaborative learning with each other;
- having access to resources that will support students as individual learners;
- having appropriate and clearly defined learning objectives/outcomes for students that are documented for all program of study and individual courses;
- diversifying strategies for the assessment of student learning; and
- developing alumni activities so as to continue the benefits of the learning experience with those who have benefited from and then left the College.
- To achieve the highest possible quality in educational provision, achieved by:
- working within a devolved quality framework that ensures that quality management is embedded as close to the point of delivery and possible;
- promoting and supporting an integrated approach to quality enhancement initiatives across the College;
- monitoring the implementation of departmental teaching and learning strategies and
- reporting progress to a CSS Quality Enhancement Committee.
- To provide the best possible range of modern learning resources appropriate to the needs of students, staff and relevant to the programs of study, achieved by:
- keeping under review all aspects of the teaching environment so as to provide the best possible teaching and learning to students;
- ensuring that students study in well-equipped, well-maintained teaching accommodation where up to date technological resources can support innovative teaching methods; and
- providing library services with access to a wide range of electronic resources.
- To exploit the potential of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to facilitate flexible approaches to teaching, high quality learning and assessment, achieved by:
- taking full advantage of the potential of the available technology in teaching, learning and assessment and to take part in collaborative ventures in borderless education and the e-learning;
- widening the provision of higher education through collaborative partnerships;
- reviewing and enhancing ICT support for the delivery of teaching, facilitation
- of student learning and assessment;
- developing the use of the available Virtual Learning Environments to support teaching and learning;
- To enhance the employability of all students by the development of their powers of critical thought, reflection and the ability to express themselves orally and in writing in English, achieved by:
- enhancing the development of reflective practice as part of the learning process; and
- encouraging students to recognize and record the development of their own skills and to be aware of the importance of these in the development of their professional careers.
- To deliver teaching by faculty who have had access to initial training in the pedagogy of higher education, or previous experience, and thereafter opportunities for continuing professional development, achieved by:
- providing raining program for new and inexperienced faculty;
- encouraging the development of international teaching collaborations and exchanges, in the context of personal development of teaching and research; and
- recognizing and promoting high quality teaching and through the annual Awards for Excellence in Teaching.
- To be flexible so as to be able to respond as and when is necessary to changing patterns of student need and student recruitment, achieved by
- maintaining rigorous systems for program approval and change, which are, however, flexible enough to allow modifications to be made promptly to curricula when necessary;
- reviewing the needs of potential students at undergraduate and postgraduate level so that this can inform the design of taught courses.
- encouraging new initiatives in Departments that improved academic standards;
- keeping the student recruitment strategy under review to ensure that all aspects of the College’s marketing, public relations and alumni development activities contribute to student recruitment in an integrated fashion and meet the needs of academic disciplines.
- To be sufficiently inclusive so as to be able to meet the needs of all stakeholders, achieved by:
- fostering links with employers;
- engaging with parents;
- encouraging the active involvement of students in all aspects of the academic life of the College.
Human Resource Issues
One of the strengths of the College is the quality of the frontline faculty and the support provided by CSS advisors in the Advising, Internship and Careers Center. They are the agents of change necessary to fulfill the strategic requirements for enhanced teaching and learning. Thus, the recruitment and development of high quality faculty and the admission of students able to flourish and succeed in the College’s distinctive environment are of central importance.
It is recognizes that there is a need for a coherent and strategically aligned program of staff and educational development especially with regard to discipline-specific development, including teaching quality enhancement interventions. The development of a Teaching Performance Enhancement plan is a central development.
Curriculum Issues
The College is in the process of reviewing all its curricula to ensure that they are relevant to the needs of disciplines and to respond to market forces. Once completed, the College will begin to identify teaching best practices, which will be disseminated in various ways, including through a Learning Technology Bulletin. The College will encourage innovation in teaching and learning in different ways, including through the provision of Best Instructor Awards to reward new developments in teaching and learning.
The College will seeks to make the development of abilities and attributes connected with employability more transparent to its students by making key skills more explicit in its various programs of study. This is being achieved through the articulation of assessable learning outcomes related to skills and attribute in the various program specifications. The development of assessment strategies for such key skills requires further attention.
Quality Issues
College must implement a quality enhancement system that ensures teaching effectiveness that enhances the students’ learning experience.
Implementation of the Teaching and Learning Strategy
The Teaching and Learning Strategy forms a College-level framework for use in Departments. They will develop their own action plans, which will combine the generic College-level objectives with the specific discipline- level objectives.
Three action areas can be identified for the implementation of the generic College-level teaching and learning objectives:
- identifying and disseminating Good Practice in Learning and Teaching;
- developing and implementing a Teaching Performance Enhancement plan;
- developing and implementing a quality enhancement system that ensures teaching effectiveness.
The activities in the action areas commenced in 2010.
