As teaching excellence become part of the HE vocabulary and with university KPIs concerning teaching qualifications becoming a growing concern for all departments, more colleagues are applying for fellowship via the Greenwich Opportunities in Learning Development framework (commonly referred to as the GOLD scheme) than ever before.
The GOLD (Greenwich Opportunities in Learning and Development) Professional Development Framework provides a flexible route to professional recognition for all staff (academics and professional services), against the UKPSF, provided their role involves teaching or actively supporting learning. It is accredited by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and recognised by HESA as a teaching qualification. The GOLD framework stimulates professional development through peer and mentor dialogue, by the sharing of good practice, and through critical reflection. It encourages staff to update their scholarship of learning, teaching and assessment. The GOLD Professional Development Framework forms part of continuing professional development (CPD) and builds a case towards gaining professional recognition with the HEA. Staff can gain Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy at one of four levels: Associate Fellow, Fellow, Senior Fellow or Principal Fellow. More information can be found here: https://www.gre.ac.uk/offices/edu/he/framework
While GOLD guidance materials are available to applicants online and support is given via the guidance workshops and by mentor, it has been noted that for colleagues who are not engaged with full time teaching duties and/or whose responsibilities focus more on the supervision of students, the general GOLD guidance on offer does not address in detail how colleagues in such specific roles can approach the application form.
Together with Dr Mary McAlinden, Head of the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Greenwich, we decided to create a bespoke guidance application specifically for colleagues in the Mathematical Sciences Department with roles heavily focussed on research activities, including research supervision.
This was completed in a two-step process:
Step one was coming up with a list of the typical duties which many academic staff applying for D1 (Associate Fellowship) and D2 (Fellowship) complete as part of their role.
Step two involved populating a blank GOLD application form with trigger questions to help the applicant consider what approaches they employ when teaching/supporting students, why they use such strategies, and to consider the benefit and impact this has on their students. Rather than writing examples of activities and case studies, this guidance application was designed to support individual applicants to critically reflect upon their own role and to better understand how their various work roles are in fact suitable evidence and experience for the fellowship application.
While working together on the guidance application, we realised that there were central issues which required attention. Firstly, within each department and discipline there are often commonly used phrases and terminology, and it was important that we used these when creating the guidance document to ensure that the information was being communicated clearly and in relatable terms for colleagues working within a particular area. The use of questions rather than statements throughout the guidance application was also a conscious choice – as we did not want to create a template of an application, as this would prevent applicants from being creative with the choice of their case studies and limit the application to a certain number of typical examples. Instead, the use of trigger questions was employed to help guide applicants to consider how their particular approach to providing student support can be examined in light of the criteria of the United Kingdom Professional Standards Framework.
The bespoke guidance application has now been made available to colleagues in the Department of Mathematical Sciences. Our hope is that the bespoke guidance will offer a sense of the key ingredients which are required to successfully populate a GOLD application, along with giving a flavour of the type of evidence and critical reflection which is intrinsic to the application process.