'DIY' Approaches and Techniques

This part of the ProDAIT site offers information and guidance on a variety of approaches that can be used for CPD work in Higher Education settings.

The material here will be of interest to self-directed individuals or peer groups seeking ways to enhance and better understand their own professional practice (hence 'DIY' CPD). It will also be useful to mentors and staff development advisors looking for alternative ways to offer CPD activity to staff to more conventional course-based training.

You will find here:

• a range of methods for self-directed and / or collaborative ways that you might interrogate your teaching;

• access to information and resources from external sources such Higher Education Academy (UK) Subject Centres, other universities’ projects or topic dedicated websites (see, for example, Doceo).

Action Learning

Action Learning is an approach to problem-solving rooted in the day-to-day experiences of practitioners. Working in 'sets', practitioners help each other to solve problems and puzzles they are encountering in their work. These pages explain what Action Learning is, and tell you how you can set up and run an Action Learning Set, in order to help each other solve real work problems and at the same time develop as individuals.

Action research

Action Research (AR) is a well-established approach used by professionals to explore their practice. Using cycles of 'plan, do, monitor, review and do again', practitioners gain greater understanding of their practice and develop it further.  These pages give a short introduction to the approach, reproduce some summary reports of AR projects, and suggest sources of more detailed information for those interested.

Co-operative development

Co-operative Development is a way of working with one or more colleagues to develop your practice and research using Rogerian ideas of non-judgemental understanding.

Critical Incident Analysis

Critical Incident Analysis is an approach to exploring and analysing challenges in everyday practice.  A critical incident can be a minor, irritating difficulty or a major problem in a particular context.

Dialogue and reflection

Here you will see how staff in universities can use talking with others to progress their own CPD.

Exploratory practice

Exploratory Practice can be seen as an alternative to action research and traditional classroom research, both of which typically use conventional research techniques.  The aim is to enhance understanding of the processes of teaching and learning.  These pages give short descriptions of some EP projects to illustrate the approach, an eight-step guide to doing EP, and a description of the principles which underlie it.

Mentoring

Mentoring is about a supportive relationship in an organisation to help staff manage their own learning for professional and personal growth.  Its purpose is to help the mentee to develop personal resources and guide them through the complexities of organisational systems and networks of people.

Peer observation and peer review

Peer observation is a collaborative and reciprocal process in which one peer observes another's teaching and provides supportive and constructive feedback. The material we present here gives an overview of peer observation issues, including a clarification of the different reasons for conducting peer observation, as well as providing guidelines on how to do peer observation for professional development purposes. Peer review may include peer observation but will also use other sources of data to provide peer feedback.

Teaching journals

Teaching journals are records of thoughts and ideas on teaching activities. They are more elaborate than a simple diary and often more systematically written. Because they are 'reflective' they become 'learning journals'

If you have material or case studies you could contribute, please email prodait@bham.ac.uk