successful collaborative working for postgraduate students ...€¦ · 6. plan the future now...
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Successful collaborative
working for postgraduate
students in food systems –
lessons learnt
Roger Sykes, Environmental Change Institute,
School of Geography & the Environment
Tuesday 27 September 2016
On the menu today• Food systems thinking is important
• Innovative Food Systems Teaching And Learning
• Lessons learnt:
1. Governance – adding value
2. Human Resources & developing teams
3. Finance & forecasting
4. IT and educational support
5. Marketing and communications
6. Plan the future now
Food systems thinking is important
• Food security exists when all people, at all times, have
physical, economic and social access to sufficient, safe, and
nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food
preferences for an active and healthy life. (UN-FAO World
Food Summit 1996, 2012)
Insufficient calsInsufficient nutrscurrently ~ 1 billion
Sufficient calsInsufficient nutrscurrently ~ 2 billion
Excess cals (incl. some with insufficient nutrs)currently >2.5 billion
IFSTAL – goal and rationale
• 3-year HEFCE funded programme (Jan 2015-Sept 2018)
• Voluntary programme outside core teaching
• GOAL: Create a cohort of postgraduates equipped to address
food systems challenges by framing their specialist
understanding gained through their degrees within the broader
social, economic and environmental contexts.
• RATIONALE: Need a workforce trained in concepts and tools
able to implement interventions leading to better food security,
environmental and enterprise outcomes
• Based on understanding of range of food system activities,
outcomes and complexity and equipped with ‘hard’ and ‘soft’
skills
Progress & challenges in year 1
Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for students with 341
signed up (at Oxford through Weblearn)
Launch event beamed across all sites
8 lectures beamed across all sites and captured on VLE
2 stakeholder days for workplace, and away day for
students, summer school
Active students’ face-to-face engagement
× Drop-off student engagement in term 2
× Student engagement on the Virtual Learning Environment
× Less engagement with other departments and course
directors
× Engaging PhD students
× Workplace engagement
1. Governance – adding value
Programme Coordination
• PIs + ECs + Workplace Engagement Lead
• Meets every 2 months
Advisory Board
• David Docherty, National Centre for Universities and
Business (Chair)
• HEI reps
• Industry, NGOs, Civil Society reps
• Student reps
• Meets twice a year
• Ongoing relationship with HEFCE – meetings, staff
presentation
2. Human resources & developing teams
• Shared recruitment for Education Coordinators (ECs)
• agreed job profile across partners
• University of Reading led recruitment – link to
other partner websites
• Team building with ECs early on
• Effective ways of working for ECs
3. Finance and forecasting
• University of Oxford leads - Programme Leader and
Programme Manager
• Different finance systems in each HEI
• Network of finance officers in each HEI
• Workshop with finance officers to explain the programme
– chaired by Departmental HAF
• Financial reporting and forecasting at each meeting
• Consortium funds used flexibly – recruitment,
communications activity
4. IT and educational support
• Virtual Learning Environment – development and support
• Network of education departments
• Network of educational technologists
• Network of careers services - being established
• Educational outcomes for students – Food Systems
Professional
5. Marketing & communications
• Website – hosted and supported at Oxford
• Social media strategy – with input from City, University of
London
• Exhibition stands – each partner use locally
• Promotional video – targeted at students and course
directors
• Marketing materials – leaflets, posters and mugs(!)
• …all takes time to scope, agree and sign-off
6. Plan the future now
• External facilitator to design 2-day workshop of staff
• Reflections from staff on IFSTAL now and what staff
would like it to be
• Reflections on year 1 – highlights, surprises,
disappointments, proud of
• Learning to take forward – educational content,
students, IFSTAL staff, technology, cross-institutional
working
• Vision for the future – students, each university,
IFSTAL staff, each university, funders, workplace
• Actions and plan to secure sustainable funding
IFSTAL – improvements for year 2
• Clear Learning Objectives for students
• Improvements to VLE
• Appointment of Workplace Engagement Lead
• Engage with range of employers;
• Work with careers services
• Earlier face to face engagement with students
• Move from 8 lectures to 4 ‘flip classroom’ units: online
content and face to face activity
• More events – two away days, PhD symposium; Public
lecture, IFSTAL symposium, summer school
Final observations
• Cross-organisational working takes time
• Early team development is important – sustain, reflect,
improve, develop
• Effective leadership is key – take partners with you,
diplomacy, value different perspectives
• Communication – pick up the phone
• Find a solution – can-do attitude
• Create space for reflection – adapt and improve
What the students say…
“IFSTAL is a coherent programme that delivers excellent postgraduate learning on food systems” Titilayo Adebola, PhD Law, Warwick, from Nigeria
“IFSTAL will help me in my career by building a network of people involved in the food system” Kate Jarvis, MBA, Oxford, from Australia
“IFSTAL has given me so much extra to my taught course and has been invaluable to me” Yorick Bruins, MSc Food Policy, City, from NL
“A great way to engage and learn, and you can only gain from taking part” Brooke Watson, MSc Epidemiology, LSHTM, from USA
“I was informed by IFSTAL about an internship opportunity with Defra – I applied and was successful.” Milorad Plavsic, PhD AgEcon, Reading, from Serbia
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