The Higher Education Academy Supporting New Academic Staff (SNAS) Enhancing support for the disciplinary focus on professional courses 10th November 2005

Supporting New Academic Staff (SNAS) The SNAS project arose from a desire expressed amongst Accredited Course Tutors and Subject Centres to share discipline-specific resources and guidance to complement generic learning and teaching theory and practice. First project team meeting October 2003 SNAS database piloted January-March 2004 and revised in response to feedback SNAS expands to three strands of activity

SNAS Online database A team of Course Tutors and Subject Centres have worked collaboratively to: Identify topics covered on initial courses in Learning & Teaching for new staff for which discipline-specific resources would be useful Develop succinct lists of discipline-specific and generic resources to provide a starting point for new academic staff Involve experts, Subject Centres and Course Tutors in choosing and annotating the resources Establish an online database to make available theses resource lists in an easily searchable format

SNAS Online database Each database entry contains the following information: Title: Author: Resource Type: Subject: Chosen by: Topic: Topic Description: Resource Description: Publisher: Publication date/edition: Price: Web Site: Contextual Information about learning and teaching in your discipline:

Case Studies

What can SNAS do to help you? Topics or issues that you would like to see addressed in the database Feedback form

SNAS Enhancing support for the disciplinary focus on professional courses Community of Practice (reference group) Building on the existing group of subject centres and course tutors Strand 1 Discipline-specific resource and guidance Sue Burkill Yolande Knight Strand 2 Mechanisms for staff engaged on programmes to share discipline specific pedagogy Rowland Gallop Phil Gravestock Strand 3 Linking teaching with research and scholarship Alan Jenkins Mick Healey Cross-cutting ENSURING INCLUSIVITY OF ROLES Bland Tomkinson Cross-cutting SUBJECT CENTRE PERSPECTIVE Yolande Knight & Nigel Purcell

Strand 1: Discipline-specific resource and guidance This strand is intended to maintain the quality and increase the range of discipline-specific resources and guidance available through SNAS by:  Continuing to develop, enhance and evaluate the quality of the discipline-focussed resource database with reference to the National Standards Framework.  Developing easy access for all members of staff in HEIs to the contents of the database

Strand 2: Mechanisms to share discipline specific pedagogy This strand is intended to develop mechanisms to enable staff participating on accredited programmes to share ideas and experiences by:  Designing and piloting an on-line forum to provide a community of practice for new staff to address issues of subject-specific pedagogy.

Strand 3: Linking research and teaching This strand is intended to provide support for course leaders and participants in making pedagogical links between teaching and discipline-based research through:  Developing a set of discipline-based resources, including case study and review essays, for linking teaching and research in partnership with a number of Subject Centres.  Developing and populate an Academy website on linking teaching with disciplinary research for new academic staff and continuing professional development.