One-day symposium poster

Achievements: The original project was shortlisted for the Collaborative Award category at this year's WATE. The presentations were well received at all three conferences, especially at the Breaking Barriers in Sports EDI Conference, whereby the project team was commended by various speakers as well as the conference organisers. With the network built at the conferences, further projects in sports coaching could be conducted, if further funds become available.

Lessons Learned: The topics of the original project (sports coaching within university sports clubs and the need for Inclusive coaching practices) may not be so prominent at Warwick yet but the feedback from conferences, especially the Breaking Barriers in Sports EDI Conference, highlighted that it is very much a topic worth exploring further.

Achievements

• Focus Groups: We successfully conducted five focus groups involving both staff and students. These sessions generated insightful questions that highlight the digital skills required at various stages of academic progression. The discussions helped identify key gaps in digital skills, forming a solid foundation for the subsequent development of the questionnaire.
• Questionnaire Development: A comprehensive set of questions has been developed for distribution to students across various disciplines in follow-up studies. This questionnaire is designed to capture students' experiences and needs related to digital skills, assessing their digital literacy, proficiency with specific software, and the integration of these skills into their academic work.
• Co-Creation: A significant milestone of the project was the active involvement of both staff and students in every phase across different parts of the University. This collaborative approach ensured that the outputs are not only relevant but also closely aligned with actual academic experiences.

Challenges Faced

• Diverse Digital Skill Levels: The focus groups revealed considerable disparities in digital skill levels among students from different disciplines, which posed a challenge in designing a one-size-fits-all approach.
• Resource Constraints: The project heavily relied on the availability of both staff and students, leading to scheduling difficulties that affected the depth of focus group discussions and the scope of questionnaire development.

Lessons Learned & Feedback

• Positive Reception of Co-Creation: The involvement of current students in the project design and decision-making processes was highly valued, resulting in outputs that are more relevant and practical.

Project report

The project was conducted entirely by UG students, with only supervision from academic staff. The students created a bank of information and resources relevant to the topic, and we are now in the process of turning this into an online resource.

Achievements: The project successfully benchmarked the University of Warwick's reward and promotion practices for teaching-focused staff against those of other UK higher education institutions, particularly within the Russell Group. It identified Warwick as a leader in transparency, with its promotion criteria easily accessible online, setting an example for sector-wide clarity. The project also uncovered key insights into the diversity of promotion pathways across institutions, highlighting similarities in teaching and curriculum leadership criteria, but also differences such as research requirements in some institutions. Additionally, it mapped working allocation models and study leave policies, revealing a wide spectrum of practices.

Notably, the project identified gaps in Warwick's support for teaching-focused staff, suggesting potential improvements, such as the introduction of workshops and interactive online tools. The findings provided a foundation for future research, including a sector-wide survey to capture teaching-focused professors' experiences. Overall, the project positioned Warwick to enhance its promotion strategy and support structures, while also contributing to a broader understanding of sectoral practices.

Challenges Faced: During the project, several hurdles and issues were encountered. One significant challenge was the lack of publicly accessible promotion criteria and policies for teaching-focused staff at certain institutions. For example, universities like Durham, Sheffield, and Southampton required internal login access to view their promotion frameworks, which limited the ability to gather comprehensive data. To overcome this, direct contact was made with recruitment teams to request access or confirm the existence of promotion criteria, though some institutions were unable to provide the information externally. Despite these barriers, enough data was sourced from other institutions to ensure meaningful cross-comparison.

Another issue was the varying levels of transparency in how institutions communicated their promotion processes and support structures. While some universities, like Warwick, had clearly documented processes available online, others were less clear, making it difficult to assess their practices fully. Despite these challenges, the project maintained its scope by focusing on the available data and adjusting the analysis to include representative insights across the sector.

Lessons Learned: The lessons learnt which could help us advance this project to its next stage include the following. Firstly, strengthening institutional collaboration is crucial, we do need buy in from other comparator universities interested in tuning their teaching reward and recognition practices. This will facilitate better data sharing and benchmarking across universities. Developing a standardized framework for documenting and communicating promotion criteria can allow for a much better comparison - we have struggled to create such a framework but with more thinking standard comparators could be put together. Incorporating primary data collection through possibly surveys or interviews will provide deeper insights into academics' experiences and challenges with promotion processes. Additionally, creating best practice guidelines based on the pilot project’s findings will offer practical recommendations for institutions.