Moving the University’s Inspiring Learning vision into practical action and effecting cultural change requires cross-institutional collaboration.

The LTA creates space for University-wide conversations, supports collaborative learning communities to realise their ambitions, and facilitates collaborative projects.

Collaboration is also at the heart of our efforts to inspire innovation and creative thinking and action. We will do this by opening space for colleagues to actively engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning, to trial new approaches to inspiring learning, and consider how we can be pioneering and address the ‘big questions’ in higher education practice.

The LTA facilitates learning networks, opening space for staff to share practice, identify common challenges and interests, and develop tailored development opportunities.

This includes networks for staff in particular roles within the University, such as Programme Directors, as well as special interest groups seeking to share and enhance practice in particular areas of learning and teaching.

Staff are encouraged to develop their engagement with the scholarship of teaching and learning, to develop their own scholarly investigations of learning, to share their insights, and to extend the institutional and sectoral impact of their work to benefit the wider higher education community.

The LTA will support the development of appropriate pedagogic research skills and open routes for colleagues to amplify the impact of their scholarship activity within the University and beyond. Our scholarship community will focus its work on key thematic areas linked to the Inspiring Learning strategic focus and priorities of the University.

Working in partnership with our student representative bodies and with the wider student community is central to the Inspiring Learning approach.

The LTA is working across our community to explore ways of co-creating shared visions of Inspiring Learning and co-developing practical routes to learning and teaching enhancement. To facilitate this, the LTA is launching a Collaborative Project Fund to support collaborative projects. The call for participation will open later in the academic year.

As the LTA community strengthens, we will initiate work to explore the trends, challenges and new opportunities that we may be confronted within the coming years.

The think-tank will bring together staff and students from across the university with key thinkers in higher education policy and pedagogy to consider what Inspiring Learning may mean in the next decade and how we can be at the forefront of shaping creative practice in this area.