Academic Internship for Doctoral Students Program

Introduction:

This program is run each year though the support of a Teaching Innovation Grant. The aims are:

1. to promote and raise the awareness of the importance of teaching and learning in higher education by developing the teaching skills of a select cohort of PhD students who have aspirations to pursue a career in academia.
2. to develop the academic/professional skills required for the participants to become successful academics in both teaching and research.

The program is delivered through a two day intensive workshop followed by eight workshops held through out the year.  Participants are expected to participate for the entire program and are also required to present a workshop based on research into innovative teaching strategies. This teaching program will be complimented by the already established professional development program for RHD students and together these two programs will support the development of high quality teachers and researchers now and in the future. They will foster the nexus between teaching and research and develop required scholarship skills for new academics.

Program Structure:

The program is structured to begin with a two day intensive workshop held off campus at the Belair Country Club.  This allowed the time for participants to get to know each other as well as laying the foundations for the rest of the program.  The rest of the program follows the format of one 3 hour workshop essentially every month (for a total of eight workshops), for the rest of the year.  Each workshop has a focus on an area centred round teaching or research which came from facilitators as well as feedback from participants after the two day intensive workshop.  The program is constructed as follows:

• Assessment
• Presentation Skills
• Teaching research Nexus
• What’s Available to help you in your Teaching & Research
• Working with Groups
• Managing a research Career
• Working with diverse student needs
• Giving Feedback
• Evaluating teaching
• Preparing for the future, CV’s/Portfolios, promotions etc

Graduation late November early December.

Program Requirements:

For participants to successfully complete the program they were required to:

1. Attend the two day intensive workshop.
2. Attend seven out of eight workshops.
3. Work in pairs across faculties to research/develop a teaching idea/innovation which is then presented to the rest of the group during the workshop series.
4. Participate in group presentations to showcase the collective learning of the different Faculty Groups.  The aim was to identify some key ideas/concepts that have had the most impact on the participants of particular faculties