University strategies Our aspirations and key priorities for enhancing teaching and learning quality We aspire to produce flexible and creative thinkers – leaders for Australia and the wider world. To do this, we need to provide an enriching university experience that equips our graduates with enquiring minds and essential life skills in critical thinking and communication. Our students must have excellent opportunities to participate in co-curricular activities if they wish to do so, and have access to high quality infrastructure and support services. To maintain and build on our success in these areas, our short- to medium-term priorities will focus on three complementary areas. Our plans Renewing our curriculum and learning environments We will continue to implement our curriculum renewal strategy by pursuing a coordinated University-wide process of reform of our courses. At the heart of this strategy lies a commitment to providing an 'engaged enquiry' learning experience for our students, in order to strengthen the development of our graduate attributes. Such learning experiences reflect the University’s reputation for both research and community engagement. They are consistent with our students' expectations as learners and our staff as teachers. 'Engaged enquiry’ provides the vehicle by which we will focus on further enhancing the research and inquiry learning outcomes that are central to our graduate attributes. We are currently mapping students’ reports of research- enriched learning experiences, and working with our Engaged Enquiry Scholars networks to identify and disseminate examples of approaches that xxxxxx effectively the development of research skills by our undergraduate students. The second aspect of our ‘engaged enquiry' curriculum strategy is the embedding of community- engaged learning, including work-integrated learning (WIL), in our curricula. This commitment will involve professional disciplines in particular, in further strengthening the engagement of employers in our teaching and curriculum development, and in further developing our pedagogical expertise in this area to inform curriculum renewal. One example of how we are pursuing this agenda is seen in the establishment of a new WIL research group in the Faculty of Health Sciences. Our approach to curriculum renewal will continue to be both holistic and sustainable. We will use University-wide agreed principles to link our faculties’ curriculum renewal work explicitly to the need for responsiveness to external drivers. These include employer needs, accreditation and regulatory accountabilities, changes in student and employment market needs, and the renewal of our physical and virtual teaching infrastructure outlined in Section 4.4.2 (Teaching and Learning Infrastructure) of this compact. Building on the findings of recent Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) projects we will seek, through implementation of our new assessment policy, to develop our assessment practices to provide better direct evidence of student achievement of our graduate attributes. Our unit and course evaluation processes will provide clear accountability mechanisms to assist in monitoring students’ development of graduate attributes, including generic skills. During the next phase of reform we will implement a systematic process of faculty-led curriculum reviews, and support faculties to refine their understanding of how research-enriched and community-engaged pedagogies can deliver an engaged enquiry experience for students in different disciplines. This pedagogical work will build on the substantial body of excellent practice already in place in many parts of the University. It will also respond to the outcomes of relevant OLT projects, and will be supported by the development of new institutional datasets on our students’ experiences of the development of graduate attributes through engaged enquiry. There will also be new support for enhanced curriculum governance and review through our central teaching and curriculum committees. We will initiate new strategic curriculum projects and establish additional Teaching Scholars Networks to develop agreed curriculum benchmark standards and xxxxxx curriculum and teaching expertise across the faculties. Through collaboration between disciplines and faculties, our curriculum renewal projects will generate new resources and benchmark standards for use in future curriculum reviews and professional development for our staff. Enhancing teaching quality, support and recognition Alongside and supporting the process of curriculum reform is our work on enhancing and further valuing the high quality of teaching and curriculum across the institution. Following consistent improvements over the past five years in our performance against measures of student experience of their courses (Student Course Experience Questionnaires) we recently developed and introduced the first stage of a new University-wide strategy to enhance the quality of our students' experiences in all units of study. Through compacts on faculty teaching standards, we will continue to use a University-agreed teaching standards framework to help faculties address teaching quality issues. This process will be supported by new institutional data reporting processes. Each year, faculties will be required to negotiate improvement targets aligned to University-agreed standards and their own strategic priorities, and will be supported to identify and address quality issues. Longer term, we will embed these compacts in an annual cycle of planning, reporting and monitoring. We will extend the scope of our faculty teaching compacts to draw on a broader range of data than that relating to units of study, and will include additional institutional standards in relation to other institutional teaching priorities, such as engaged enquiry. During the life of our 2014-16 compact, we will extend this support to individual teachers through the rollout of the new Academic Planning and Development process for teaching, as well as through research and ongoing enhancements to our range of professional development opportunities for University teachers and research higher degree supervisors. This will complement the University’s enhancement and support for the career opportunities for teachers through the University’s new academic promotion process. It will also allow us to develop further the University and faculty teaching award and grants schemes. We will build institutional recognition for our talented teachers by engaging them in our curriculum renewal process, connecting them with each other through the establishment of additional Teaching Scholars Networks and by providing opportunities for their further professional development. Recognition of the importance of excellence in teaching will also be supported by the annual Sydney Teaching Colloquium, a successful initiative launched in 2011, which brings together the university teaching community to celebrate their achievements, critically debate key educational initiatives and share their expertise and exemplary practice. Improving the student experience Our Teaching and Learning strategies recognise that student wellbeing and the general quality of their experience while at university must underpin our efforts to improve teaching and learning. During the timeframe of our 2014-16 compact, we will deliver a greater coherence across all aspects of the student experience. This will include improvements in priority areas such as: enhancing the student enrolment and ongoing administration process by completing the Sydney Student project providing specialist services and resources to support the emotional and mental wellbeing of students, such as personal counselling and psychological resilience resources establishing early identification systems for students, particularly those from underrepresented groups and international students, who may be struggling in the early phase of their studies developing and expanding existing formal and informal support networks through consistent mentor training and staff development programs collaborating with our student representative organisations, to ensure that income from the Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF) is used effectively to enhance access to amenities such as sports and cultural activities, the social dimensions of clubs and societies, and also to improve the quality and affordability of food and beverages available on campus endeavouring to maintain the high ratings we have received from the National Union of Students for our approach to involving students in decisions about the allocation of SSAF funds expanding affordable accommodation options around our campuses. Note: All calendar year references below relate to projects and awards in that calendar year. Principal Performance Indicators Baseline 2012 Progressive Target 2013 Progressive Target 2014 Progressive Target 2015 Target 2016
