We’re delighted to share with colleagues the outputs from the projects completed by our Inaugural ITL Fellows, which focused on a range of ways we can enhance teaching and learning for all of our students.  

The reports outline each Fellows’ project objectives, activities, how they collaborated with student partners and what they’ve achieved as a result. Disseminating the findings, outputs, guidance and resources that their projects produced is important in helping colleagues develop their practice and enhance teaching and learning at Manchester. We hope you’ll set aside a little time to enjoy reading these reports and consider how the outputs could help you in your own teaching and learning practice. 

We would also encourage you to discuss areas you think would be particularly useful to explore within your programmes with colleagues. For example, you may wish to use the key principles and guidance around designing assessments or the effective use of discussion boards to scaffold conversations about how you could develop your practice in the future or explore the possibilities of embedding digital capabilities in your curriculum and the potential of working in true student partnership. 

Work is already underway to embed outputs from the projects in order to support staff in developing their confidence, teaching practice and support for students. For example, Fellows have developed resources and are delivering training to colleagues in Faculty settings in the form of teaching academy workshops and across the New Academics Programme. We are thrilled that they will be sharing examples of their excellent practice as part of our workshop series over the coming months.  

Since completing their projects, several of our Fellows have gone on to be appointed to University Theme Lead roles, which provides them with scope to continue to develop and embed their work. What’s more, numerous Fellows are now leading key strands of institution-wide projects in assessment, curriculum development and quality frameworks, building on the impact of their Fellowship work. Where appropriate, Fellowship projects have also evolved or been extended to feed into strategic level change projects such as the Flexible Learning Programme. This is helping to ensure there is meaningful impact for staff and students and reflects the strategic alignment of the projects and the Fellows’ responsiveness to the changeable needs of staff and student since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. For example, the system developed as part of Steve Pettifer’s ongoing project on improving the way information about course units is presented has since been adopted by the University’s Flexible Learning Programme (FLP) and will be used to explore how a move in the direction of online, blended and flexible teaching and learning impacts the way in which course units are managed and represented and will be used to explore how a move in the direction of online, blended and flexible teaching and learning impacts the way in which course units are managed and represented. 

Our inaugural Fellows have showcased the passion and excellence we are lucky to have within our teaching and learning community. We are delighted to share these reports with you and look forward to hearing about the ways in which they inspire you, impact your practice, and support your professional development. 

It has been a real pleasure to feature updates from our Fellows on these pages, and you can catch-up on posts written by members of the 2020/21 cohort which are linked below:  

• John Owen  
• Dr Maria Canal 
• Jennie Blake 
• Steven Broom  
• Sally Hickson  

To find out more about our fellowship programme, and future opportunities, head to the projects page on the ITL website.  

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