CTImusic
News

Spring 1999

Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN)

Summary of the invitation to bid for funds for subject centres.

The full document was published in March 1999 and can be found on the World Wide Web. What follows is a much-condensed compilation of the sections relevant to the Centre for Performing Arts, which will serve the Dance, Drama and Music communities and is defined as a 'standard' sized centre.

This document describes the new UK-wide learning and teaching support network for higher education, which aims to promote high quality learning and teaching by providing subject-based support for sharing innovation and good practices.

UK higher education institutions are invited to apply for funding to host one of the 24 subject centres. The application process has two stages. First stage bids should be sent to Richard Townend at the HEFCE no later than midday on Friday 28 May 1999.

Overview of the LTSN

The purpose of the LTSN is to promote high quality learning and teaching in all subject disciplines. It will support the sharing of innovation and good practices in learning and teaching, including the use, where appropriate, of communications and information technology (C&IT).

The LTSN will consist of:

We have established a subject-based structure for the LTSN in recognition of the substantial subject-specific element in most issues relating to learning, teaching and assessment, and of the fact that academic staff tend to think about such issues predominantly in terms of their own discipline.

Funding for the LTSN

We will initially support the LTSN for three years from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2002. We expect to provide funding for a further two years beyond 2002 but this is dependent on a positive outcome from an evaluation of the network, which we will commission in 2001-02. For the first three years we will provide £6.2 million annually broken down as: For funding purposes we have classed each subject centre as either standard or large based on the size of the constituency to be covered. We measured the size of each centre's constituency as the number of UK HEIs actively providing for undergraduate and post-graduate taught students in a particular discipline. For the purpose of this funding model we defined an active institution as one with 30 or more full-time equivalent (FTE) undergraduate and postgraduate taught students in a particular subject discipline.

We have not used total UK-wide FTE student numbers in each subject discipline as an indicator of the size of a subject constituency because the cost to a subject centre of working with a single department should not vary significantly with the size of that department.

The total annual funding from the UK HE funding bodies for individual subject centres is:

A programme director will be appointed to manage the network as a whole. Both the subject centres and GLTC will be accountable to the programme director who will have executive responsibility for the programme. We will establish a service-level agreement with the new Institute for Learning and Teaching (ILT) in Higher Education to appoint the programme director and undertake co-ordination on our behalf.

Subject centres

The 24 subject centres will have a common remit, reflected in a set of principal functions and activities. The precise balance of each centre's activities should reflect variations in learning and teaching practices across different subject disciplines. The principal functions of each subject centre will be: Each subject centre's principal activities will be:
a. Supporting academic practitioners in the subject disciplines by maintaining (and, where appropriate, establishing) networks and effective contacts with relevant higher education institutions (HEIs) throughout the UK.
b. Collating and promoting information on good practices for all aspects of teaching, learning and assessment in the centre's subject disciplines.
c. Promoting C&IT-based approaches to teaching, learning and assessment including, for example, the use of the World-Wide Web and materials to support distance learning.
d. Providing opportunities for professional development in learning and teaching through, for example, workshops, institutional visits, roadshows, swopshops, and consultancy, including an advice service to support practitioners.
e. Maintaining effective liaison with relevant professional bodies and subject associations, both within the UK and internationally.
f. Ensuring that practitioners in the subject disciplines are aware of current and potential future pedagogic developments, including the use of C&IT.
g. Collaborating with cognate subject centres to support inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary learning and teaching activity.
h. Collaborating with the GLTC to ensure that subject centre staff are aware of pedagogic and technological issues that are generic to all or many subject disciplines.
i. Reviewing, advising on and encouraging discipline-based research and development on learning and teaching, including the use of C&IT, to meet the needs of the disciplines supported by the subject centre.

We expect subject centres to:
a. Tailor their work to meet the needs of the constituent disciplines. Many subject centres will have responsibility for supporting more than one subject discipline. Many of the principal activities set out above will provide support to all the disciplines within a single subject centre. However, we expect that each subject centre will need to provide some support that is specific to each of its constituent disciplines - as a minimum we would expect each centre to support some form of practitioner network for each discipline that wishes to maintain a separate network.
b. Promote employability and key skills, as they relate to the centre's subject disciplines.
c. Take full account of the diverse learning needs of the range of student groups that make up the HE student population, such as students with learning difficulties or disabilities.
d. Collaborate as appropriate with activity supported through other appropriate HE special funding programmes.

The 24 subject centres will support learning and teaching at all levels in the subject disciplines covered by the 42 standard subject units, as defined by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). The choice of 24 centres reflects our view that, to be effective, each centre should have enough resources to employ a critical mass of staff.

Management and monitoring

We would expect each subject centre to be led by a director who is a senior academic with a proven track record of leadership and pedagogic development, drawn from the subject communities covered by the subject centre. The director will be responsible for the delivery of the centre's activities and outputs.

Operational models

We would normally expect bids for subject centres to be made by a single host HEI (a unitary centre) that will manage the centre's activities across the UK. A unitary centre would provide a critical mass of staff in a single location to allow more efficient co-ordination of a centre's activities, although this may be supplemented by expertise drawn from outside the host institution.

However, in a limited number of cases it may be appropriate for a collaborative grouping, for example two or more institutions or one or more institution working with a subject association or professional body, to bid for a subject centre (a distributed centre). Any bid to establish a distributed centre must provide a strong rationale for doing so, and set out clearly the strategy for managing the relationship between the partners.

Within a distributed centre we would not prescribe the allocation of resources to, or the management of relationships between, the collaborating partners. However, we would contract with only one of the partners (this must be an HEI) which would act as lead institution for the purpose of allocating funds. The lead institution would then be responsible for sub-contracting the activities of the subject centre to the other partners.

Which institutions are eligible?

All higher education institutions funded by the HEFCE, HEFCW, SHEFC and DENI are eligible to bid to host a subject centre. We expect a wide geographical spread of centres to reflect the UK-wide nature of the LTSN.

Although professional bodies or subject associations are not eligible to bid to host or lead a subject centre they could play a prominent role. They would need to secure a partner HEI through which funds could be routed. In other cases, we would expect host and lead HEIs to demonstrate in their bid that they have the active support of the relevant professional bodies and subject associations.

The application process

Evaluations of previous special funding programmes have concluded that a two-stage application process improves the quality of funded projects:
a. In stage one we invite UK HEIs to submit a detailed bid to host a subject centre, against the assessment criteria.
b. The LTSN Advisory Group will consider stage one bids and respond in one of the following ways:
i. Where the Advisory Group takes forward to stage two only one bid for a particular centre, we will provide feedback on the stage one bid to allow it to be fine-tuned. In such cases we would expect minimal adjustments to be made to a bid at stage two.
ii. Where the Advisory Group does not wish to take forward a bid to stage two, we will provide the bidder with feedback on the reasons for this decision.
iii. Where the Advisory Group wishes to take forward to stage two more than one bid (multiple bids) for a particular centre, we will encourage the bidders to work together to produce a single stage two bid that has the broad support of the appropriate subject disciplines.

The timetable for establishing subject centres is:

Friday 28 May 1999 Stage one bids submitted to the HEFCE

Early July 1999 The funding bodies will either:
* invite the bidder to submit a stage two bid and provide feedback to help them do so
* not invite the bidder to submit a stage two bid and provide feedback on the reasons for this.

Friday 20 August 1999 Stage two bids submitted

End of September 1999 Bidders are informed of the final outcome of the bidding process

October - December 1999 Institutions begin work to establish the subject centres

January 2000 Official launch of the subject centres

CTImusic News is © 1999 CTImusic, Lisa Whistlecroft. All rights reserved.

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