Knowledge translation and dissemination

Teaching squares

Abstract

This presentation will outline the implementation and dissemination of a Teaching Squares approach with a focus on enhancing academic learning (sessional staff and continuing), collegiality, and networking across all seven academic units within the University of South Australia (UniSA). We identified that the Teaching Squares approach was a safe and valuable approach for continuing staff to view, meet, reflect, and ideate on their teaching while observing their colleagues from the same academic unit. Based on these positive findings garnered through questionnaires and focus group interviews, we now wish to extend this study to include sessional staff, a cohort of teaching staff that are under-represented in the literature concerning Teaching Squares support. We will outline how we developed a community of practice to include staff across all academic units. We then purposely connected a maximum of four staff from different units so that we can further determine the benefits of staff learning and networking while viewing and interacting with colleagues from distinct and unique disciplines. Through a combination of pre-and post-questionnaires, we collected data on staff perceptions, experiences, and learnings through the Teaching Squares approach. More detailed data was then obtained through focus group interviews. The outcomes of these findings and this project has the potential to greatly enhance sessional and continuing staff belonging, reflective practice and networking, which will result in enhanced teaching practice and student learning.