The University Context

It is imperative for the University of Sydney, as an international research intensive university, to have a rigorous academic culture that values learning and teaching. This commitment to a culture of excellence in learning and teaching is supported at Sydney through a variety of initiatives:

• The Scholarship Index rewards staff who complete qualifications in higher education teaching, publish scholarly papers about teaching or who receive awards either within the University or external to it for outstanding teaching.
• The Teaching Dividend allocates funds to faculties on the basis of meeting various standards relating to teaching criteria (i.e. Teaching Performance Indicators).
• The Teaching Improvement and Equipment Scheme (TIES) allocates money to develop innovative practice across the University.
• The University's Values and Principles of Learning and Teaching guides practice in learning and teaching across the University in its many and varied forms.

The Institute for Teaching and Learning (ITL) works with the University community to improve and enhance the quality of the student learning experience. A number of strategic working groups, with membership from across all faculties, are focussing on specific learning and teaching initiatives. These include:

• eLearning
• Evaluation and Quality Assurance
• Diversity Working Group
• The First Year Experience
• Generic Graduate Attributes
• Postgraduate Pedagogy Working Group
• Research-enhanced Learning and Teaching

As part of the University's commitment to excellence the ITL runs a suite of programs including those for Post Graduate Supervisors and the Graduate Studies Program in Higher Education.

An indicator of the University's international recognition for excellence in learning and teaching is its membership of a network of 13 international research intensive universities coordinated by Professor Graham Gibbs at Oxford University. Of the University of Sydney, Professor Gibbs observed:

Sydney is a highly valued member of the Oxford network for developing teaching in research-intensive environments that includes MIT, Princeton, Stanford and ten other world-class universities. In this network Sydney is matched only by Utrecht in terms of the scale and comprehensiveness of its strategic approach to the development of teaching. It has a coherent conceptual framework underpinning its strategy and a growing range of mutually supportive policies and practices, with real muscle behind them, that could hardly fail to make an impact on teaching quality and to show up in a range of performance indicators concerning student experience and learning outcomes. At a time when both reduced funding and an emphasis on research threatens teaching quality, Sydney appears to be in a good position to not only retain the standard of its teaching and learning, but to improve it, and to be able to demonstrate that it has done so. Our network can learn a great deal from Sydney's leadership of teaching, and the pedagogic research that comes out of Sydney that underpins its strategy has already had an international impact. Oxford is striving to emulate elements of Sydney's strategy but we have some way to go.