ACHE 86th Annual Conference and Meeting - October 14-16 2024

30-Minute Presentations

While technology plays an important role in how university faculty collaborate, research shows that a range of other socio-political and cultural factors shape the success of these collaborative activities. This is especially true in an inter-institutional qualification where diverse institutions offer the programme in partnership. Drawing from interviews with facilitators on such a programme – a postgraduate diploma in higher education offered across three historically diverse South African universities – this presentation will highlight the factors that have constrained and enabled the collaboration. The postgraduate qualification is designed specifically for academics to support the professionalisation of their teaching. Students on this programme are often colleagues of the facilitators as they are mostly drawn from the universities taking part in the partnership. 

In-depth interviews with 10 participants who have different roles on the programme highlight the different levels of negotiation necessary for an inter-institutional qualification of this nature. The presentation will draw on Raelin’s (2016) collaborative agency to frame the study results, highlighting the personal, group and institutional dialogues that are necessary to successfully mediate the challenges of inter-institutional collaborative teaching – dialogues which are only possible through the agency of individuals. The study also explores the role that technology has traditionally played in this space, how this shifted during the pandemic, and what the future role of technology could be with new technological developments shifting the way we think about teaching and learning, e.g., generative artificial intelligence.

References

Raelin, J.A. (2016). Imagine there are no leaders: Reframing leadership as collaborative agency. Leadership, 12(2), 131–158. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715014558076