As part of the UniForum data collection exercise happening this November, the University has an opportunity to take part in the Teaching Effort Benchmarking pilot, also being run by the UniForum suppliers, NousCubane.

Like UniForum, it will enable us to benchmark across comparable universities within the UK and internationally, allowing us to learn from others. It will look at numerous factors including understanding workloads, capacity and the ways we deliver teaching and assessment across the University.

The pilot is an excellent opportunity for us to build on our existing knowledge of teaching commitments and workloads, complementing other data sources such as the Staff Engagement Survey, National Student Survey (NSS) and Research Education Framework (REF). Several initiatives are underway to review and address workload challenges, including reviewing the academic calendar and the Workload Principles project. The UniForum Project and Teaching Effort Benchmarking exercise will provide valuable data to support these initiatives, as well as providing us with insights on how we can innovate and develop, and ensure we continue to grow in a sustainable way as a University.

What does this mean for me?

The UniForum data gathering exercises will provide some of the data that will be used for the basis of this benchmarking, with additional information on areas such as delivery and assessment types, and module information provided by central teams, so there is no additional action for academic colleagues, further to the asks to complete the UniForum data gathering exercises to help provide the information on resource allocation and workloads.

Professor Phillip Wright will be hosting two optional Q&A sessions over the coming weeks for teaching colleagues who may wish to understand more:

Q&A Sessions

7 November 13:00 – 14:00 Please follow this link? to find the meeting link and save to your calendar

11 November 14:00 – 15:00 Please follow this link? to find the meeting link and save to your calendar