Knowing what you know now, what is the one piece of advice you would give to HEFCE about the planning and implementation of the CETL initiative?

When we asked this question, people were quite blunt in their answers, as you can see...

• Be more inclusive, don’t discriminate between the haves and the have-nots

• Do it again

• Give the opportunity to others to develop and strengthen creativity and innovation in T+L, so that they can grow too...

• Make it a requirement of core funding to report on how the institution has

i)             Learned institutionally from the CETLs that it has hosted

ii)            Specifically developed policies for rewarding excellence in T&L

iii)           Provide annual reports on how it operates its learning & teaching excellence strategy.

• In other words link HEFCE teaching money to quality not just quantity

• Make the embedding of outputs into subjects / institutions a requirement for the end of the projects

• Although the light-touch strategy allowed for risk-taking, creativity, and mistakes it would have been helpful to have had more direction from the beginning about the objectives to be measured in the final evaluation.

• Clean rules on long-term vision that should be evaluated each year

•  Support heads of CETLs in leadership and change strategies

• Continue to champion the initiative and especially, capitalise on the formative (interim) evaluation in a positive way

• Helping the CETLS get started
• The time taken in employing staff and starting the CETLs meant less time was available to conduct research, innovative practices...etc.

• Do it again but ask for more ‘buy-in’ from VCs – maybe matched funding from the University

• DON’T INSIST ALL THE CAPITAL IS SPENT IN THE FIRST TWO YEARS – ESPECIALLY IN I.T.

• Very strong northern Irish presence in the panel. Ivan Moore is also from Northern Ireland

• Think earlier & clearer about ‘success’ factors away from traditional measures of impact. Innovative projects used innovative forms of impact assessment

• Prioritise boldness, risk-taking and transformation

• More networking events like this to share good practice throughout the CETL initiative

• Insisting a system/mechanism that equate the statistics of LTA scholarship with that of RAE/REF

• HEFCE need to find a way to make institutions accountable – not just to take the money and run

• Encourage incentives / awards for teaching and learning

• Provide more coordination of plan re sectors needs not individual whims!

• It was important not to micromanage and to give us autonomy. But we needed more support at times to maximise effectiveness (as CETL Directors) but also to capture the learning that was emerging from the initiative as a whole

• Make institutions more accountable in sustainability of CETLs – create new funding council for T&L so people can apply for small/med/large grants as in USA

• Don’t ask for the capital to be spent ‘immediately’

-       Give more time for it to make a bigger impact

• In future, avoid the situation where all funding ends at the same time. The consequence of which is loss of momentum for lots of very good, innovative and exciting work

• Not to have gone for the approach to evaluation which hefce chose to do – ineffective outcomes for an immense amount of output – there are better models out there!

• Hold some money back to facilitate networking (including socialising) between projects. Where this has happened it has been hugely beneficial

• Clear outcomes of expectations identified for each CETL

-       Capital spend should be phased over lifetime of initiative

-       The second three years would have been less productive had I not had ways of finding additional equipment

-       Follow up on institutional support for CETL

• Integration of teaching research outputs into RAE/REF

• More freedom in terms of time as to when large amounts of money had to be spent in the early stages of the programme

• Integrate planning of the process of dialogue between those instigating change and their institutions

• Marry such an initiative with a lobby of Government and Universities and wider society that teaching and learning must be valued and supported to bring the UK prosperity and a vibrant future

• Don’t tie the initiative to the bureaucratic structures of their host institutions

• Support from outset towards developing legacy of CETLs given such huge investments (too much left to institutional decision-makers)

• Top slice some of funding to allow central coordination of the CETL initiative. There could have been more central support and coordination bringing together CETLs to share experiences and practice. Also clearer about no funding beyond 5 years and so necessarily to embed in Uni.

• We should have had greater clarity about the expectations of the research outputs of the CETL programme (it’s not research but...)

• Don’t be put off by the loud shouts from those HEIs who didn’t get the money: Instead, work hard to link them in to the CETL project – as critical friends, mentors, members of Advisory Groups...?

• Take earlier ownership of the value being created by the CETLs and ensure its public recognition.

• Strong leadership needs to be guaranteed throughout the life of the CETL (possibly through holding back funding to fulfil exit strategies / embedding processes)

• Exit strategy          including a way of pulling together all of the outputs and learning for us to share.

• 5 years is not enough – things just started to take off (in terms of wider dissemination, adoption of CETL models, etc) and how it is more difficult to sustain all these...

• HEIs should have been required to ring-fence follow on funding

• Have a mechanism to capture and share learning from the initiative

• Be more hands on with getting different CETLs to collaborate from the start. After all it’s supposed to be about disseminating good practice isn’t it?

• Devising an approach to ongoing steerage and management of the initiative to leverage institutional learning as widely and productively as possible

• Dissemination and support integrated more into the programme, at a subset level; would enable greater showcasing of success across the initiative.

• Re-adjust timescales:

-       Lead-in longer

-       Activity (5 years ok)

-       Outduction phase – should have been explicitly built in

• Be more involved. Maintain a clear interest (apparent to the sector as a whole) and do the interim evaluation better so it has value to the initiative

• To have engaged more with institutions as partners to have a vision for the future of CETLs and their work

-       Coordinate it better

-       Facilitate the creation of networks

-       Be proactive in relation to sustainability (this is not necessarily linked to extra resources)

Return to main event page