UniSA College, Adelaide, SA
Project: Professional Development
UniSA College has introduced a series of professional development initiatives to address the challenges faced by sessional teaching staff in teaching Enabling Programs, which offer an alternative pathway into university for students who have either not achieved the entry score needed for a bachelor program or who have not completed Year 12.
UniSA’s Sarah Hattam and Tanya Weiler developed and led these formalised professional development initiatives including tutor training and induction, enabling and inclusive pedagogy workshops, teaching squares, regional tutor professional development, action research projects, and a digital teaching and learning resources platform.
These innovations led to improvements in student satisfaction of teaching of all sessional staff, as well as satisfaction of sessional staff about the positive impact of the initiatives on their teaching. The initiatives have also received the 2018 UniSA Citation for Outstanding contributions to Student Learning, and more recently a 2019 Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, as part of the Australian Award for University Teaching (AAUT) program.
