Overview of 2017

It has been another busy year with all aspects of my work, filled with activity. Many of these have been complex and required resolve to work through. I have learnt much across the year on how to support others in their journey as teachers. In particular, how to bring passion for teaching back into the practice for teachers, with huge teaching workloads and challenging pastoral care of students requiring care and attention.

On the programme development front, there has been three major pieces of work and several as support to other educational developers. The Bachelor of Construction required sustained work across the year. The panel approved this new degree with five recommendations – a good outcome from Ara’s point of view J Things have also been progressing well with the Bachelor of Midwifery and this reviewed degree should be on track for NZQA approval early in 2018. I am still working on the review of the Bachelor of Information and Computing Technology, which was to have been into NZQA in the fourth quarter of 2017. Now working at speed with the department to get it in by beginning of 2018.

My major staff capability and support project across 2017 has been to support Department staff moving into the new Architecture and Engineering teaching building – Kahukura. As with many construction projects, the building was behind schedule. The move into the building in the second semester had to be completed within tight timelines. The whole exercise did provide a very good reason for me to be the ‘meddler in the middle’ and I was able to build some good relationships with teams I had previously not worked intensively with.

 The Eassessment project has been a major focus as well. Each of the 7 sub-projects have made progress. Some requiring more support than others. ½ the teams have now submitted some form of written report. I will be unpacking the data and doing some initial data analysis over the summer.

Two journal articles published this year. And this month, I will submit an article, with another close to submission for early next year. All conference presentations have revolved around the eassessment project. There were two conference presentations overseas. Five eassessment team members also presented their sub-projects at three local conferences.

Overall, a very busy year. I will need to carve out some time in the first half of next year to complete the various reports required for the eassessment project and ensure the Bachelor of Information and Computing Technology makes it to NZQA in early 2018.