My name is Caroline Elliott. I'm a professor teaching in the Economics department, and I'm currently Deputy Head of Department with responsibility for teaching and learning. My role in the university ITLR has been chairing the WMG panel.

I'd probably push back on the question a little bit and say that for me, I thought that it would be very much two-way process. So yes, I could use my experience within the economics department and within a management role in the economics department to helpfully benchmark against what other departments are doing.

But if I'm very truthful, I'd say that part of the reason that I volunteered to be part of the university ITLR was so that I would get insight into what the university were looking for and what's best practice in other departments so I could feed that back to my department. So to some extent, I was thinking that my loyalty is to economics and I wanted the best possible for economics. So having that insight from the university ITLR would help me within economics, but its very definitely become a two-way process where I've been listening to what WMG is doing and thinking, OK, how does that fit with the practices in economics.

But at the same time when I'm asking the questions, I'm thinking how will I answer this from an economics perspective?

When I think about how my work with ITLR will impact my work going forward, I think what's been really helpful is getting that confirmation of what are the key themes for the university, because we get communications about key themes for the university, but anybody can listen to a video or read a web page and then forget it.

But if you're heavily involved in ITLR for about five months, as it turned out, and you're thinking this over at regular intervals, what's happening in terms of interdisciplinary learning, what's happening in terms of student experience, what's happening in terms of education for sustainable development, then it becomes ingrained in your brain and you're thinking, OK, what are we doing? What should we be doing? How can we improve in these areas? And I think that's really helpful.

I think ITLR has been really good for ensuring that we've got positive critical discussion.

And what we've seen in the ITLR meetings has been that we're all used to working online. So we've had some great conversations both online and in person, and they've been fantastic. And its those conversations that have revealed the key strengths and the key areas that need further development.

I think there were two highlights of ITLR. Its actually a great opportunity to meet other people from elsewhere in the university.

Sometimes there are people both on the panel that people have met in meetings who you've got a vague idea of their work and you get to work with them and that's great.

But the most beneficial thing is its a great opportunity to share best practice. And I've talked to people from WMG just now and said that its a pity that we share best practice in these five year ITLR reviews. There must be some way that we can spread best practice more regularly and in very positive sort of environment because we've been hearing some great things.

So the most positive thing is that sharing of best practice and going, wow, they're doing this, can we do this? Or maybe the whole university should be doing this and just having more opportunities more regularly to do that.

I think the advice I'd give to anybody who's thinking of being involved in an ITLR, whether its within Warwick and they're thinking about being involved in their own departments like ITLR, or involved in the review of another department as part of ITLR, or thinking about getting involved in ITLR or the equivalent of ITLR at another institution, is absolutely go for it.

Don't underestimate the time involved. But it will be that great opportunity first and foremost to hear about best practice elsewhere. And then a secondary benefit is its this great opportunity for networking and to find out that there are other people with similar challenges and that you can get to know, but absolutely go for it. I think its, it is genuinely rewarding and you get great insights, but it does take a lot of commitment and the commitment's worth it. But people need to be aware of that.