MEDEV

School of Medical Sciences Education Development

Supporting New Academic Staff (SNAS)

Most UK institutions now offer PG Cert (HE) courses to support new academic staff. The SNAS project arose from a desire expressed amongst Course Tutors and Subject Centres to share information about subject specific resources to support new academic staff.  The main SNAS website is at http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/supportingindividuals/newacademics.

In response the Higher Education Academy (York) formed a team of Course Tutors to work collaboratively with Subject Centres to:

• identify topics covered on initial courses in learning & teaching for new staff for which discipline-specific resources would be useful

• develop lists of discipline-specific and general resources to provide a starting point for new academic staff.

• involve experts, Subject Centres and PG Cert L&T Course Tutors in choosing and annotating the resources.

• establish an online database to make available these resource lists in an easily searchable format. This can be viewed at http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/supportingindividuals/newacademics/snas

The Subject Centres suggested that many of the resources in the database can be used by experienced practitioners. We hope that you will be able to use the database in your continual professional development and in support of your pedagogic research/publications.

Once you have clicked on the online database above you can access the MEDEV resources directly, including topics such as:

• Assessment

• Communication Skills

• Curriculum Design

• General medical education

• Group work

• Pedagogic research

• Problem based Learning (PBL)

There are now three strands to the project, each co-ordinated by two staff from the core SNAS project team with mutually supportive relationships being built into the strands. They are:

• Strand 1: Discipline specific resources and guidance focused on maintaining momentum whilst developing new themes.

• Strand 2: Mechanisms for staff engaged on programmes to share discipline-specific pedagogy: examining ways of developing discussion forums for staff on Postgraduate Certificate programmes.

• Strand 3: Developing a research-led teaching environment with the overriding rationale of pulling academics into learning, teaching and research territory through a discipline-led approach.

There is a case study by Karen Lee entitled Linking teaching to research which can be downloaded as a Word document. You may also find this useful Linking Teaching & Research. Another case study has been submitted by Mary Jane Platt entitled Critical thinking module which can also be downloaded as a Word document.