Teaching Group Parameters

During most focus group sessions the participants were asked about the number of members that make up their groups. For 19 teaching groups this information was collected. The smallest number of members named was two. This was for a group that had five members a few years ago but has now shrunk. The largest teaching group size stated was 15 to 20. This calculates to an approximate average size of eleven teaching group members.

Teaching groups do not exist in isolation but are surrounded by wider group- ings. The importance of connections to others outside one’s teaching group was emphasised. Participant P14 describes the layers of their teaching groups. While most participants stressed connections across courses, degrees and teaching groups, tutors seem to be a group of staff who are much more restricted in their interactions, as the statement of participant P7 indicates.

P14: You’ve got your little immediate group, but you’ve got these concentric rings of umbrellas that get bigger and bigger.

P7: Tutors tend not to get the opportunity very often to go across [courses].

When talking about the composition of their teaching groups, a number of participants mentioned the employment status of group members. It seems that some areas of the University employ a fairly high number of part-time and fixed- term staff. Some programmes of study are taught with the help of non-university staff who are seen as members of the respective teaching groups. An issue with regard to group member status is that in some areas academics are members of a large number of teaching groups. This occurs in settings were organisational units are based on research interests and academics are spread across a larger number of courses to accumulate sufficient teaching loads. These issues were not explored in this study but it could well be that there are implications for teaching groups.

The participants were not asked directly how long their teaching groups have been together or how frequently membership changes. Yet, several comments made allow for some insights into the fluidity of teaching groups. For tutors, it seems that there is a relatively short period of a semester or a year in which a decision about staying or leaving in a tutoring position is made. Tutors who stay beyond this initial period seem to be involved long-term. For the other groups of academic staff, it is not possible to draw comparable conclusions from the data collected. Some participants explained how their groups had shrunk over the last years, no new appointments are made and staffing has become tighter in general. There were indications that the remaining academics stay with their units for long time. On the other hand, some comments alerted to changes in staffing, the consequences of which were particularly noticed in cross college collaborations. Changes in staffing seem to impact on communication

across campus boundaries, making it difficult to maintain working relationships, as participant P24 described.

P24: Sometimes as fast as we develop relationships with people in [college name] they seem to leave.

As indicated by the participants, frequent changes in staffing, and reductions in staff numbers, have an important impact on teaching across the university, beyond the units that are the immediate focus of the changes. This impact will have informed the experiences of participants, but has not been addressed more directly in focus group discussions and analysis.

The researcher’s definition of teaching groups presented to focus group partici- pants (see Figure 3.1) contained the assumption that academics cannot choose the colleagues they teach together with: ‘We cannot choose the members that make up our teaching groups.’ Only a few participants commented on this assumption. One participant thought that the multi-campus nature of the University provides some form of choice in as far as it is up to the individual to decide how closely to collaborate with colleagues at other campuses. On the other hand, a different participant saw exactly the multi-campus nature of the University as argument in support of the statement that one cannot choose members of one’s teaching group. No further discussion on this issue took place and no further comments were made that would indirectly challenge or confirm the assumption. As the participants presumably would have challenged a disagreeable statement, it can be assumed that the participants agreed or at least do not have strong objections. The participants made frequent references to the multi-campus nature of the University. Mostly, the same courses are delivered on multiple campuses. In some cases, all deliveries are given by the same group of academics who travel or deliver online. In most cases, staff located at each campus deliver the courses on their campus. Often, but not always, one academic will have an oversight role to ensure the equivalence of the deliveries. Beyond individual courses, collaboration is required on subject area and programme levels. In many cases, one subject area is represented on multiple campuses. Often, there is an imbalance in the number of academics of an organisational unit per campus. This was mostly, but not only, pointed out by participants located in the smaller sub-groupings of an organisational unit. Also, as the strategic directions on each campus differ, there can be a difference in support for the subject areas and programmes. There are historical differences across the campuses, looking at how long a group has

been in existence, who has developed the material and who traditionally had the ownership of the courses and programmes. Each campus has its own development focus and as a consequence, it happens that subject areas find themselves in different organisational units across campuses. There are differences in how well units and individuals manage to share and work together, with some groups experiencing difficulties, yet others finding collaboration easy. Participants P20 and P18 described the respective experiences.

P20: Some people have a different sense of ownership of the courses they’ve developed than others and if this can be problematic, for example with questions about equivalence.

P18: We’re really good at sharing content so and that’s across campus and across within our small group content is easily shared and isn’t proprietorial.

The multi-campus nature of the University seems to have a strong impact on teaching and on teaching groups. This was felt especially strongly by academics in the smaller sub-groupings. This finding suggests that questions on the distri- bution of teaching groups across campuses should be included in the survey.

As indicated by the numbers in Table 4.1, a lot of teaching takes place in multi-disciplinary contexts and is delivered by academics from multiple units. Teaching across discipline boundaries requires a high level of coordination. What is taught needs to be adjusted to the requirements of the subject area that receives the teaching. Concern was raised with the situation of academics teaching topics from disciplines they are not specialists in. Challenges arise from the cultural differences between the disciplines, affecting both the communication between staff and how the students perceive a course. Bridging the differences between disciplines seems to be not always successful. While certainly interesting, these issues have not been followed up in this research.