Support staff enhancement fund

• 2004 round
• 2005 round

Overview

The Subject Centre for Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences (GEES) is committed to providing professional development activities and services to all who teach and support learning in these disciplines across UK HE (including HE in FE).

We recognise the valuable role that support staff have in enhancing the student learning experience and that many such staff are also often engaged directly in teaching in the laboratory or in the field.

Support staff are very welcome to participate in any of our activities, e.g. attend conferences, bid for small-scale project funding, use our on-line materials, participate in projects, write for our publication ‘Planet’ and so on. In addition, we also provide specific activities:

In 2004, the GEES Subject Centre ran a very successful, one-day conference for support staff in the disciplines. There were over 100 participants including:

• Lab Technicians
• Cartographers
• Departmental / school administrators
• Subject Librarians
• Learning Technologists.

This event highlighted the key role such staff play in supporting the student learning experience but also indicated that relevant development opportunities are not always available to them.

As a follow-up to the 2004 event, the Subject Centre offered departments the opportunity to enhance their own strategy. To this end, in December 2004, each department that sent a participant to the event was offered £500 enhancement funding. Whilst this was only a small gesture it was hoped that it would provide pump-priming for department’s further activities with respect to support staff’s professional development, and stimulate ideas for encouraging academics to work more closely with support staff in curriculum development. This one-off funding was guaranteed, however, in order to receive it, departments were required to submit a short statement (~200 words) signed by the HoD, containing the following information:

• How do you intend to spend this funding?
• How will you ensure that the use of the funding will add value to your current activities?

24 departments took up the funding (though 2 subsequently failed to claim or spend the money). In September 2005, a brief email survey was undertaken to see how the money was spent and to gather ideas on what activities the Subject Centre might provide for support staff in the future. 14 departments responded to the survey which asked the following questions:

1. How was the funding used?
2. Who benefited (how many staff) and in what ways?
3. In what ways will the department continue to provide professional development for support staff?
4. What other professional development needs do support staff in your department have?
5. Any other comments or information to help the GEES Subject Centre develop its strategy?

The funding in 2004 was used in a variety of ways including joint academic-support staff away days, training courses, museum visits (discussions with curators) and conference attendance.

Varying numbers of support staff benefited from the funding depending on the size of the department and the ways in which the funding was used (an away day, for example, would involve many more members of staff than paying for a training course). Some departments used the funding for one activity whereas other split it between different activities. The Subject Centre felt that it was important for departments to have the freedom to allocate the funding as best suited their context. This freedom was also very much appreciated by the departments themselves:

Events

I did get very positive feedback from our representatives at last year’s conference and we would support a similar venture again.

The conference for support staff was a great success. Another would be good!

Meetings such as the GEES "Supporting the Supporters" should be repeated on a regular basis and not seen as a 'one-off' event.

It would be great to see events / funding opportunities specifically for Support Staff continue – they provide an opportunity to boost morale, they enable Support Staff to ‘get together’ and ultimately probably make Support Staff feel more ‘valued’ (at a level which extends beyond their Subject/Institution).

Funding

More of the same please. It is good to be able to assist these support staff without worrying about financial constraints.

This modest sum of money was excellent. To be able to spend freely on an important piece of training that otherwise would have needed bidding for and justifying elsewhere. Very many thanks.

Direct access to GEES funding has proved to be very important to our cartographers as a means of making attendance at technical meeting or conferences possible during a period where internal funding is restricted.

The Support Staff Enhancement fund was a really excellent opportunity for funds to be made available to our Geography Technician. Such funds may have otherwise been very difficult to acquire (and probably not placed as a top priority).

Keep up the good work. Small amounts of funding, especially where we can match the funding, are useful to have access to at minimal cost in terms of application procedures etc

 

2004 Use of Funds

• Canterbury: Support for staff development of department technician to start a degree by Work Based Learning (Level 1). Provision of learning resources (e.g. text books, travel to workshops). The degree will develop his skills as technician, but also his ability to contribute to demonstration, and other teaching and learning activities.
• Cardiff: Conference attendance; training in UNIX system – 3D stereo presentation facility (teaching); professional skills development course; risk assessment course (£40); data protection course
• Derby: We planned a trip to London for our entire GEES technician support team….. We spent the morning being guided around the conservation studios for fabrics, sculpture, paper and paintings as well as the analytical labs so familiar to many of us.
• Edgehill: It was and still is our intention to use the funding to develop a department intranet site to support undergraduate teaching and learning, and the overall student experience of studying in the department. The funding was going to be specifically used for a department away day for both support and academic staff to design and plan the intranet site; appropriate training for support staff on intranet site management, document development, formatting and uploading. When we began organising the away day and thinking about the intranet site in June, we were all of the opinion that there should be some student input into the initial planning to get a feel of what they would like to see included on such a support facility. Therefore, we have deferred the away day until the end of Semester 1 this year.
• Glamorgan: The funding was used for training technical staff on the processing of Quaternary samples using hydrofluoric acid. This involved academic staff time to introduce them to the lab, practice and COSHH/H&S procedures. The money was then also spent on a first aid course specifically for first aid on HF and oxygen administration.
• Glasgow: The funding was used directly to support the attendance of two technical support staff members at the Annual Summer School of The Society of Cartographers hosted by the University of Cambridge in September 2005. Additional funding was also supplied by the Department of Geographical & Earth Sciences.
• Gloucestershire: The £500 financial support for administrative and technical staff associated with the delivery of broadly geographical and environmental disciplines was greatly appreciated. This was used to enhance existing arrangements for staff development, but focussing explicitly on supporting teaching and learning. The fund was used in two complementary ways. Firstly, all the support staff were offered the opportunity to visit a newly developed teaching and learning facility at Glasgow Caledonian University, to establish aspects which could be transferred effectively into the Gloucestershire setting. Two support staff (one from ICT support, and the appropriate subject specialist from the library services) accompanied the (then) Head of the School of Environment on the visit. Detailed feedback on the use of a Cyber Café, philosophies of engaging students and reducing dropout, and ‘seamless’ student services were considered. This supplemented detailed consideration of the design of the new buildings at Glasgow Caledonian, where there are resonances with the approach to designing new learning facilities as part of the University of Gloucestershire’s Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Secondly, an ‘away half day’ for all support staff was held on 12th July 2005 at a local hotel in Cheltenham, firstly to review ways of working to enhance students’ learning experiences, and secondly to consider how these might change into the future as new buildings came onstream at Cheltenham. Since the ‘Supporting the Supporters’ conference, changes in the managerial arrangements for support staff have come into effect, and they are no longer managed at School level. Whilst there are challenges associated with this organisation, the event provided opportunities to consider the opportunities afforded by the new arrangements. The activities included a presentation and review of the HE sector trends in teaching and learning (eg widening participation, disability issues, dropout rates), evaluation of personal support provided to students, discussion about new styles of teaching and learning (including ‘active learning’), discussion on implications of new building developments, plenary discussion and a review of individual and personal activities to follow up. The meeting concluded with lunch, and offered good opportunities for induction of new staff into the issues surrounding effective student support. It also provided feedback on further staff development needs to staff concerned with management.
• Marjon: To purchase a digital video camera, accessories and video processing software.
• Plymouth Geography: Funding was used to support technical staff attendance at the School Away Day 12 May 2005. The idea was to engage with academic staff on curriculum development and marketing issues and in particular to identify technical support required for the new validated Geography programmes. Additional value was to continue to foster the strong positive relationship between technical and academic staff and to help identify future staff development opportunities.
• Plymouth SEOS: A very useful ‘Away Day’ for technical staff in the School was held on 30th June in the Mount Batten Centre. As the first such away day, the agenda was left as open as possible, but training needs and the new pay and award structure were amongst the topics discussed.
• Reading: We very much appreciated the funds allocated. We have used the bulk of the funds to train our technical staff in preparation for the introduction of the new strictly regulated QAR regime which we and indeed all Universities and Research Institutes are introducing as part of our Research training support and the research within the Department. To this effect we sent one of our most senior Laboratory Technicians on a specialist Statistical Training course so that she more fully understands the statistical
  requirements indicated by QAR and is in a stronger, more informed position to discuss the results arising from the analysis she undertakes and supervises, with research students and more senior research staff. We see this as an important career development action in addition to addressing the pressing demands introduce by the QAR regime. In an addition we have invested in small amounts of training for our technical staff related to QAR.
• RHUL: To support 50% of the costs (remainder paid by Royal Holloway) of staff attendance at a training course in the use of the latest ArcGIS software provided by ESRI.
• Sussex: The funding was used in a variety of ways: to attend a course on electronic mapping arranged by the British Cartographic Society, to buy training materials for new cartographic software, to subsidise support staff attendance on undergraduate field trips - the staff are otherwise self-funding, and without this contribution could not have attended.
• Worcester: To send two members of support staff from ASGA to training courses in their subject areas.

---

2005 Proposals

• Brunel: The grant from the support staff enhancement fund would be used for training in new laboratory methods. Appropriate courses have been identified and are run by the Science Training Centre at the University of Hertfordshire. Attendance at these courses will contribute to the professional development of the relevant staff, as well as enabling them to support the wide range of teaching and research activities in the Institute in a more effective manner. The staff will be then encouraged to share their experiences with the other members of the Institute, thus ensuring that the new laboratory methods are set up and utilised correctly. We have found that this type of informal communication is extremely effective in promoting a culture of good practice and ensuring that a standardised methodology is employed across the group.
• Cambridge (Sedgwick Museum): The funding will be used to help support one or more members of staff to achieve Associateship of the Museums Association a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme for the work place. The scheme focuses on identifying development goals and the activities necessary to achieve them with help from a mentor and the MA.
• Chester: The fund would be used to provide training for the Geography Technician in laboratory techniques, as the Department of Geography and Development Studies at the University of Chester has a new Soils Laboratory. Training in this area is essential in order to support lecturing staff and students, and to ensure that full and effective use of the laboratory is achieved. In line with this, training for both Administrator and Technician on the matter of Health and Safety is also needed to ensure the safe and smooth running of the laboratory. This knowledge will be cascaded through the Department to ensure all members of staff are aware of current Health and Safety issues, and the most appropriate way of dealing with them.
• Coventry: The grant will be used to facilitate the upgrading of a software teaching tool which was originally produced in 1996. This unique tool is a virtual company designed to train students to conduct environmental audits before they visit real companies. Over 300 students have used the tool to date. The tool is in urgent need of updating to reflect recent environmental directives and formal management systems such as ISO14001. It is also no longer supported by the university computer service as it is in a now obsolete software format. The money would be used to facilitate a member of the support staff travelling to various industrial sites to acquire new data and images of industrial processes and to incorporate them into a new version of the tool. It is envisaged that the new tool will be a self study package, with the student able to navigate around the virtual company at will and to obtain information at any part of the company.
• Glasgow: The Crichton University Campus in Dumfries, south-west Scotland is a multi-institutional campus, shared by the Universities of Glasgow, Paisley and Bell College. The institutional arrangement at the Campus is unique in that whilst curricular matters are retained by individual institutions, all support activities (the Careers Service, Effective Learning, the Library and IT support) are a shared resource. A new programme in Environmental Sustainability is being developed by the University of Glasgow, and integral to this course is the advancement of employability, information literacy and the enhancement of the student learning experience. The award of a support staff enhancement grant would provide the means to have an away day in which academic and Campus support staff could work together in the development of the new programme. A key aspect of this discussion will be to map the core skills and competences of the programme, identify areas for development and develop strategies to ensure that the programme is responsive to the needs of students and future employers. The modularisation of programmes often means that component courses are developed in isolation: rarely is there the opportunity for a holistic examination of the programme. An away day would provide an excellent opportunity to undertake this important activity, thereby ensuring that all staff can contribute to the design and delivery of the new programme.
• Gloucestershire (1): The Department of Natural and Social Sciences regularly undertakes field trips and site visits for students at both undergraduate and postgraduate level during their period of study. These range from a few hours to several weeks, covering both local and more exotic destinations such as Uganda and the Alps. At present amateur photography and video resources are used to record the visits however little professional use is made of the data other than for general marketing activity. The proposal for the bid is, therefore, to use the funds to finance the following activity: Deliver a training course to support staff associated with the GEES Subject areas to use video recording equipment effectively; Deliver training to the support staff in video editing.
• Gloucestershire (2): The Department of Natural and Social Sciences utilises specialist Inorganic Analysis Instrumentation (ICP OES) in the support of students at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. At present limited technical support is available for this instrumentation, however the level of support available could be improved with a 2-day formal training course offered by the manufacturer (Perkin Elmer Instruments). The proposal for the bid is, therefore, to use the funds to part finance a member of the technical support team to attend the formal 2-day training event.
• Gloucestershire (3): The Department is applying for a grant for a Biology Technician to attend the following training events: ‘Beekeeping for All’ 5-day course, Hartpury College, Gloucestershire. This course will provide the knowledge to set up and maintain beehives. Beehives will provide an invaluable resource for students taking the animal behaviour and social insects modules, as well as final year dissertations. The course will also provide the knowledge of how a hive functions and how the bees interact with each other throughout a year. It is envisaged that she will feed this information back to the department and directly to the students during practical sessions and when the bees are studied in student honour’s projects. The 159th Society for General Microbiology Conference, at the University of York, September 2006: the conference, with sessions in environmental microbiology, will be of great value, especially to a new module “Environmental Microbiology”, which is to run for the first time in Sept. 2006. By attending the conference, it is hoped that our technician will gain a greater appreciation of the subject matter, and will allow her to contribute to the development and delivery of the new curriculum.
• Keele: The funding will be used for two activities. Firstly, funding will be used to organise a joint away day to provide a structured opportunity for academic and support staff to openly discuss ways in which we can work together more closely in teaching and curriculum development and provide an opportunity to identify professional development requirements for support staff. Support staff have a vast practical experience of university resources and facilities that has hitherto been neglected in course design, and could open up new insights and directions for course development.Secondly, to buy out support staff time so that they can attend staff professional development workshops relevant to increased engagement in teaching-related activities. Relevant workshops will include orientation of staff within the learning context and curriculum development process, and training in presentation skills.
• King's College London: Departmental laboratory facilities and field instrumentation have been significantly enhanced over the past 12 months as a result of a SRIF-2 award from HEFCE. Technical staff have been closely involved in these developments and are well placed to encourage an increased use of these resources for both teaching and research. To do this, we would like to arrange an ‘away day’ field trip for physical geography academic and technical staff, where they can learn about the new equipment and engage with the support staff to discuss potential teaching and research activities. The away day would be followed by a complementary laboratory session at KCL.
• Kingston: The grant would be used to enable the school to offer training to learn more about modern methods of data gathering and depiction, particularly in relation to fieldwork, to one of our primary support personnel. She has been asked to contribute to the mapping section of a 2nd year module taken by geography and environmental science students entitled “Design and Management of Projects” and, at present, has a restricted knowledge of the wider aspects of the matters involved. Initially, attendance at the “Geographical Information Sciences for Expeditions and Fieldwork” course at the Expedition Advisory Centre of the Royal Geographical Society would allow her to help students preparing to engage in both school-organised fieldwork and individual work for dissertations. Later it would be advantageous to take a GIS short course covering the use of one of the software options available to students. This would enable her to give advice on the subsequent cartographic use of the data gathered in the field and broaden her area of expertise.
• Manchester: The grant would provide the funding to the curator/learning resource manager to extend her professional development in the field of vertebrate palaeontology. The grant will be used for study trips to the Sedgewick Museum at the University of Cambridge to look at their ichthyosaur collections and work with the curator to update my knowledge of vertebrate palaeontology, also to visit the Reserve Geologique de Haute-Provence, France to liaise with the National parks staff on improved access to the renowned ichthyosaur site. The intention of this would be to integrate the 2nd year vertebrate palaeontology course (a new course with a new member of staff and a subject which has not been covered in any detail before) and the study of an important palaeontological site on the 2nd year fieldtrip.
• UHI Millennium Institute: Established in 1989 ICIT is located in Stromness Orkney. ICIT focuses on postgraduate teaching and research in renewable energy and marine resource management.ICIT has recently joined the Institute of Petroleum Engineering (IPE) based on Heriot-Watt’s main Campus in Edinburgh. The integration of ICIT into IPE has required the merging of computer systems and management procedures for teaching and learning. The Orkney unit has one technician (Erlend Leslie) who manages the computer system for both staff and students. We would like to access the small grants scheme to allow our technician to attend a training course in Edinburgh and spend time with IT staff on the main university campus.
• UWE: To support a member of the technical team on a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) training course to update skills from Arcview 3.2 to ArcGIS 9.1; Development of a level 3 module by academic staff in GIS for environmental programmes which will incorporate use of GIS software, via academic and practical sessions together with a mini project. This will require enhancement of technician expertise in the use of GIS software; Dissemination of this expertise to the remainder of the group through a series of in house workshops, resulting in a technical team capability supporting the new module and enabling the integration of GIS tools within the teaching and learning of a wider range of environmental modules; and Further enhancement of the learning within environmental programmes by supporting student projects and dissertations to incorporate GIS as an analysis tool.