I had the pleasure of being a part of the department of Econometrics and Business Statistics (EBS)'s retreat earlier this month in the beautiful Red Hill. It was the first one after almost two years of uncertainty and radical changes due to the pandemic, and it was fantastic to see colleagues excitedly catching up and bonding over shared experiences. In the spirit of wrapping up and reflecting on 2021, I facilitated a session titled "Enhancing communication within teaching teams" which saw EBS colleagues engage in buzzing discussions and share great ideas.
To offer some contexts for the session, let's turn back time to the beginning of 2021. Charanjit Kaur and I have been working on developing an Education Training Pathway that focuses on long-term and structured teaching development for tutors at EBS.
EBS's Education Training Pathway
In undertaking this project, we conducted a series of discussions with tutors to better understand their needs for teaching development, and found that the theme of communication within teaching teams kept surfacing. As a result, we sent out a survey from the department's tutors to gather more feedback and suggestions for their team's communication. Below are some of the most commonly proposed ideas from survey responses:
- More regular updates and meetings among teaching team members
- Information related to weekly teaching to be communicated clearly and far in advance to tutors
- Collect and discuss feedback for the unit from teaching team and students
- Expectations, plans and changes to be communicated to head tutor in advance
- Utilise online communication platforms (Slack, Whatsapp, MS Teams, Moodle forums)
- More opportunities for team learning to share experience and exchange ideas
We also had the chance to hear from Ari Handayani and Julie Cook, two very seasoned Head Tutors in the department, about how they communicate with Chief Examiners and other tutors in their teams.
Ari Handayani, an experienced Head Tutor, sharing her team's approaches to communication
And finally, colleagues in the room and those attending online had some time to join a group to discuss what had been presented, as well as to reflect on what they can take away. It was a pleasure to see many lively conversations, many ideas exchanged, and much food for thought. And I hope that the session served as a reminder for everyone to slow down, look back and think forward about how 2022 can be another year of improvements and innovations.
