Abstract:
Teaching Development Grants (TDGs) have been a key aspect of the University Grants Committee’s (UGC) policies to enhance the quality of teaching and learning in Hong Kong’s higher education institutions. While there are stringent accountability mechanisms to ensure funds are spent appropriately, there is little evidence to indicate the impact TDGs have had on different aspects of institutional development including student learning, staff knowledge and skills or changes in institutional culture supportive of high quality teaching. It is for this reason that the Institute indicated in its report on TDGs for the last triennium that it would undertake a retrospective evaluation of its TDG projects. The purpose of this proposal, therefore, is to meet this commitment to UGC and by doing so to conduct an evaluation that will assess the impact of TDGs that have been awarded at HKIEd over the past decade. This retrospective evaluation will rely on the identification and analysis of relevant documents, participant surveys and interviews with key informants. The expected deliverables are a record of TDG outcomes, an assessment of their impact and the development of an impact methodology to be used for future TDGs.
Code:
T0106
Principal Project Supervisors:
Subjects:
Start Date:
01 Feb 2012
End Date:
31 Jan 2013
Status:
Completed
Result:
Based on the analysis of TDG documents, a TDG model for retrospective evaluation was developed. In this model, a total of four major evaluation themes were identified, named Teaching & Learning Development, Resource Development, Curriculum Development, and Professional Development. Each major theme was composed of 4 to 5 sub-themes. Each sub-theme was illustrated by three aspects: (1) objectives/expected outcomes, (2) activities, and (3) impacts. Based on these key themes and sub-themes, the impact of the TDG projects on student learning, staff development and institutional improvement was investigated.
In addition, this project worked with the Library to facilitate the development of a web-based system, which is extended to the already existing HKIEd Research Repository, to report the completed activities for each TDG conducted in the past years. This TDG repository allows TDG project outcomes to be available both internally and externally with links to the Repository where publications or conference papers are available. Data from interviews were analyzed and results have shown the impacts of TDG projects on student learning, staff development and institutional improvement.
Impact:
The analysis of outputs from the TDG projects made it clear that the focus of these projects was on variables that had the potential to influence teaching (e.g. the development of teaching materials, the use of new technologies, the development of tests) rather than on actual classroom teaching. In research terms, this means the focus has been on distal variables – those at a distance from teaching rather than proximal variables – those closer to the learner.
The interviews showed that for academic and teaching staff the focus was always on ways to improve teaching. This means that in the minds of the recipients of TDG grants, improving teaching was always a goal. The issue, however, is that the mode chosen to do this was always somewhat removed from classroom teaching. There was, for example very little trialing of new materials that was able to demonstrate measurable improvements in learning. The creation of new educational materials or the use of new technologies does not in itself influence learning unless there are deliberate attempts to assess what has been learnt.
A somewhat different perspective on the project is the way it has enabled the outcomes of projects to be made publically available. For many years, TDG reports have been filed away from public sight – but now they can be accessed on the library’s TDG repository. The Library and its staff are to be congratulated for the way they so willingly and energetically entered into this side of the project. This needs to be an ongoing feature of TDG projects.
The project has provide some clear indicators of what a future TDG process should be and to some extent this is reflected in the guidelines for the new round of grants in the current triennium. The focus has to be on learning and learning gains need to be demonstrated from any project. The further production of educational materials and experiments with new technologies are a waste of time if they do not result in improved student learning.
Financial Year:
2011-12
Type:
TDG