The Teaching Community: recreating university teaching

Abstract

Over the past 5 years, in two Australian universities, a model for the professional development of university teaching staff has been evolving. In the Faculty of Computing and Information Technology (FCIT) at Monash University and in First Year Engineering at Swinburne University, the Teaching Community approach has resulted in remarkable changes in university teachers' understanding of their role, their teaching skill and, most importantly, their enthusiasm and motivation for the teaching component of their work. At Swinburne the rapid uptake of the model has exceeded expectations, while at Monash FCIT the model continues to grow and evolve years after the initiating project expired. The Teaching Community model has proved effective in bringing educational development and in coping with imposed change. This paper traces the growth of the Teaching Community model, elaborates some of the successes experienced, makes some suggestions as to why it has been so powerful in bringing about change in an area well known for resistance and proposes conditions required for this on-site, low cost approach to improving tertiary teaching.