Teaching Unit Developer role profile
(This role profile is intended to cover hourly paid staff recruited to design and teach a unit because they can contribute deep research and/or professional expertise and authoritative understanding. The sections in italics below are the main differences from the role profile for hourly paid Teaching Unit Organisers.)
Overall job purpose
- To contribute research/professional expertise and authoritative understanding to the delivery of the Department’s teaching programme by designing and teaching, through lectures and/or small group teaching, a new academic unit within an established degree programme.
Responsibilities
- To take responsibility for designing and planning a new unit within an established degree programme.
- To take lead responsibility for the delivery of a new unit within an established degree programme (under the ultimate guidance of a senior academic).
- To organise the teaching of the unit and to recruit other teaching contributors as necessary.
- To discuss, with the senior member of academic staff leading the degree programme, the broad content of the unit and the methodologies for/purposes of that teaching.
- To produce necessary course documents including reading lists.
- To provide expert lectures and or teaching in small groups.
- To prepare for the teaching sequence by drawing together relevant expertise from their research/professional experience.
- To prepare for each teaching session by selecting and preparing the content, deciding upon any exercises/materials to be used and planning their approach to the session.
- To ensure that content, methods of delivery and learning materials will meet the defined learning objectives for the unit.
- To contribute additional knowledge/expertise to the unit(s) which they design and teach and the degree programme based on their research/professional knowledge.
- To help students absorb knowledge imparted in the unit, build upon it and help them to overcome any problems they encounter in understanding and applying knowledge.
- To promote depth of learning by providing clarification of material taught, responding to student questions, facilitating discussion in classes, providing any supplementary explanation/material required and introducing them to new and difficult issues raised in recent research and/or current professional practice.
- To provide individual academic advice/support to students, including advice on appropriate reading and recent developments.
- To provide formative feedback to students in class.
- To set assessment tasks, mark formally assessed work, and take overall responsibility for assessment of the student’s learning from the unit.
- To undertake the organisational and administrative tasks required to deliver the unit.
- To provide support, as required, to other contributors teaching on the unit.
- To deal with any problems which might affect teaching on the unit.
- To review the outcome of their own teaching, the unit and participate in the review and forward planning of relevant teaching activity.
- To maintain academic and/or professional standards and work in accordance with university policies (eg regarding equality of opportunity, health and safety).
Line managed by
- The member of academic staff responsible for the degree programme.
Line manager to
- Not applicable but may provide advice and support to other people contributing to the unit.
Relationships and contacts
- They will be line managed by the academic responsible for the degree programme.
- Contact with other academic staff involved in the unit(s) they organise.
- Contact with students, involving delivering lectures and/or the leadership of learning activities, passing on expert knowledge, providing advice/support and requiring the ability to engage with and enthuse students.
- Contact with other members of staff as required.
Qualifications, skills and experience
- A degree (or equivalent) in a relevant subject and a research and/or professional qualification and experience.
- Expertise and authoritative understanding in the discipline which adds value to the content of an established degree programme.
- Deep expertise in the part of the curriculum to be taught in the unit and the scholarship associated with it.
- Experience of delivering teaching and/or training.
- The ability to organise and plan an academic unit.
- The ability to communicate complex knowledge clearly, both orally and in writing.
- The ability to stimulate and encourage the commitment to learn in others and to promote depth of learning in complex subject areas.
- Ability to work effectively with colleagues and students.
- Ability to organise and plan effectively, so as to meet deadlines and manage competing priorities.
- Good analytical skills and the ability to respond to problems which arise in learning situations.
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