Participants will develop an advice or guidance booklet for staff or faculty team members. The advice or guidance booklet will have a focus on a policy and/or practice from the module programme (100% weighting, 2500 words). Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3, & 4.

The rationale for a website-based reading list is that this course focuses on contemporary and prevailing issues in Higher and Professional education. Recent research reports, media reports and FE agency websites will inform participants¿ thinking. We also hope that participants will continue to engage with these sites and identify relevant information, which goes beyond the modular boundaries.

Agency / professional body websites

Higher Education Academy:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/

Staff and Educational Development Association:
http://www.seda.ac.uk/

Quality Assurance Agency:
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/Pages/default.aspx

Ofsted:
http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/

Lifelong Learning UK:
http://www.lifelonglearninguk.org/

Standards Verification UK:
http://www.lifelonglearninguk.org/svuk/index.html

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills:
http://www.bis.gov.uk/

Media websites

Education Guardian ¿ Higher Education section at:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/

BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk


Extensive use will be made of articles in the Guardian and Times Higher Education Supplement newspapers.

College library for a range of relevant texts and journals
Internet access enabling access to relevant websites

All participants must currently be working in a post compulsory education establishment.

Due to the ever changing nature of the Higher and Professional education sector, the content of this module will be dynamic in terms of content and delivery.

The module introduces a range of institutional and externally driven factors which affect stakeholders in Higher & Professional education. Students will be exposed to a variety of contemporary organisational and legislative issues and are required to consider the impact of these on professional and institutional practice.

A variety of learning and teaching methods will be used including presentations by institutional experts, focus group discussions, on-line activities, seminar debates, case studies and task centred investigations. There will be a strong emphasis on action-focused learning and students will be expected to actively engage in all sessions.

In addition, students will be required to engage in independent study in order to consolidate and build upon learning from the taught sessions. This will take the form of undertaking follow-up tasks, work based self-assessments, and, where appropriate, reading relevant literature.

The module will be delivered in 5 fortnightly 3 hour sessions/workshops.