Academic Development Team

The Academic Development Team (ADT) was established at Wrexham Glyndŵr University in September 2016 and acts as the teaching and learning ‘enhancement powerhouse’ for the University. Originally a team of five, the team was extended during 2020 to include expertise from our Digital Learning Team, reflecting a new emphasis upon digitally-enabled teaching and learning within our institutional strategy. Therefore, the ADT currently has a core membership of six; Professor Claire Taylor (Deputy Vice-Chancellor), Alicia Owen (Digital Learning Manager), Sue Horder and Neil Pickles (Associate Deans for Academic Affairs) and Caroline Hughes and Colin Heron (Associate Deans for Student Engagement from each Faculty). The team works together to drive and support cross-institutional learning and teaching development across the university in an entirely distributed way, co-ordinating learning and teaching enhancement projects via the establishment and cultivation of an agile and innovative network currently made of 58 volunteers (our ADT Associates) organised into small project teams, supported by and reporting back to the core ADT. This agile network gets on with innovative change projects, currently across eleven strands, operating alongside the traditional management structure that ensures that day-to-day ‘business as usual’ happens. The work of the ADT in building a growing ADT Associates Network, with recognised personal value and greater reach in terms of learning and teaching enhancement work, has impacted positively on increased engagement institution-wide with staff development opportunities and a heightened interest in learning and teaching matters. The ADT has been instrumental in establishing a vibrant staff development programme over the past four years which did not exist prior to 2016. The programme includes a whole staff conference twice yearly, a series of monthly Learning Lunches and a ‘pop up’ programme of Bitesize sessions that showcase best practice. The core ADT and Associates support and contribute to events appropriate to their area of interest. ADT Associates personal value narratives report a growth in confidence in relation to activities, outputs, events and networking as a direct result of the ADT’s efforts.