Parallel panel session - Change Academies: a flexible approach to providing support and professional development for facilitating change at the national, institutional and discipline level. Abigail Flint, Steve Outram, John Stockwell, Natasha Taylor (Higher Education Academy)

Steve Outram via voice over on slides introduced the first section. The change academy programme has been developed by the HEA and the leadership foundation. They started in 2004 as year long programmes based on the American Association for Higher Education Summer School programme. They are focused on changing cultures in universities and colleges. The process was outlined with the starter team leader meeting, the residential and the final meeting with a facilitator linked to each project for the duration. The objective is to enhance the student experience and creativity is a vital element. There is a need for a senior champion within the organisation. Effective teams have a range of staff and often students. Team working is important and an emergent model of change. Teams are challenged about their ideas and use a range of approaches to develop their plans including rich pictures and world cafe. Other tools such as forcefield analysis are used and appreciative inquiry. Impact and success of projects has been good across institutions that have taken part.

Abbi Flint then introduced the second section which focused on internal change academies some institutions have started to run. Abbi and Ann undertook a project with some SEDA funding and they used benchmarking methodology (OHBE/ACU). There were 8 institutions that took part in the project and there were four questions asked in the interviews which were face to face with individuals. There was one phase in 2008 and then a follow up in 2011 but only 4 institutions took part then. The rationale for starting these as internal activities were wanting to support large scale change initiatives, innovation for small scale projects, offering professional development for staff and fostering cultural change. All those who ran internal change academies had been part of a national project and had some watchful anticipation about this but had undertaken extensive groundwork and had senior management support. Structure was still team based with 5 – 7 people in each team. The teams had staff of varying levels and again some students were included. There was a bidding process to undertake this and the process had a starter day, a residential and a final day. The projects gained varying support within their schools. The impact of these was found to be at three levels. Individual impact enabled some career development and progression, transformational change and permission to do things differently. For the teams there was the time away to focus on the project, creativity and innovation was encouraged and applying different tools. For the institution there was evidence of barriers being broken down, networks being built, a more critical approach to issues and embedding of the ethos. Challenges for all were demonstrating the impact and value for money. The evaluation also found that these academies were time limited in that they might run for a few years and then have a break before doing more.

Natasha Taylor then introduced the final section which was focused on the new change academy which was now discipline focused. This was open to all 28 subject areas and this first one had to focus on issues of the NSS. Fees changes introduced this year it was recognised may have further influence on these programmes. This process again used a starter meeting, a two day residential and a final meeting. All projects are allocated a supporter. 11 teams started this first wave of these projects which started in November 2011 but one team did have to drop out. Each team had five people but only three of the teams had a student. There were a range of projects but many focused on assessment and feedback. Some challenges of supporting this process had been the range of projects, the risk of scope creep, different needs at different times, mixed awareness of the NSS, different ways of thinking about concepts and reluctance to involve students. There has however been evidence of collaboration between projects and sharing of good practice. Lessons learnt to date include this can be done at departmental level, there is a need to get to know the projects well, nimble design and clarity about the workshops and programme.

The team then drew together some conclusions from the various approaches which were that this was a flexible model with different loci of change, different scale/scope works, time is important, creativity and dialogue and student involvement/engagement.