New Programme Administration (Taught) Community of Practice is formally launched

Building on a strong foundation

Programme administration for taught programmes is a key service in every UCL department and faculty, and affects every student’s experience. Nearly 100 colleagues attended the recent launch of a new Community of Practice (CoP) that builds on a decade of work by Teaching Administrators to develop a strong culture of sharing good practice in programme administration across the university.

A grassroots version of the new Programme Administration (Taught) CoP has grown steadily at UCL in the past ten years, in the form of the Teaching Administrators’ Forum. The group also hosts the annual Teaching Administrators’ Conference, now in its 11th year, where over 150 UCL Teaching Administrators and colleagues from central divisions exchange ideas and experience on a range of topics voted for by the TAs themselves. InEDITA (Induction, Engagement and Development Initiative for Teaching Administrators) is the group’s well-established programme of tailor-made trainings for Teaching Administrators.

Formalising this Community of Practice – with senior management support from Wendy Appleby (Registrar) as a sponsor – will allow the group to broaden their reach; create better cross-UCL solutions to problems; recognise excellent work and inspiring practices amongst the group; and support career development.

New members welcome

Membership of the Programme Administration (Taught) Community of Practice is open to staff from across central UCL, faculties, institutes, divisions and departments. Membership is not limited to those colleagues whose core role focuses on programme administration; it is also open to staff who have an interest in this practice area, including Teaching Fellows and other academic staff.  

New members can join via the CoPs new Sharepoint site (UCL staff only). 

UCL staff can also join the new interactive MS Teams site, TA Talk, which will replace the TA Forum in Moodle as the Community's main tool of communication. It is a forum where you can share information, ask for advice and help, and resources on topics related to UCL programme administration.

Priority projects

A number of projects are already underway to address the Community’s objectives:  

Digital Architecture:

This project will address the need to create a formalised, coherent, broad-reach, inclusive platform for sharing best practice and knowledge, facilitating discussions, and providing support.  

Lead contact: Nidhi Rathod (Division of Biosciences) 

Programme Administrator Toolkit:

Because of the size of UCL, there are widely-varying practices across the institution addressing similar issues. This project will create easily adaptable Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for our most common tasks, and share them on our CoP platform. This will create a more consistent experience for our students and reduce duplication and wasted effort by our staff.  

Lead contacts: Alex Addo (UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology) and Robert Heller (Bartlett School Environment, Energy & Resources)

Induction:

The aim of this project is to create a set induction for Programme Administrators across UCL – one that is easy to adapt to allow for departmental differences, but which allows new staff to get all the information they need to settle into the role quickly.  

Lead contacts: Shibhan Atack (Faculty of Brain Sciences) & Francesca Harrison (Division of Biosciences)

Buddy Scheme:

The group want to create opportunities for staff to pair up and support each other, beyond their own departments. This scheme will allow staff to share ideas and to benefit from the advice of colleagues who have been through similar events and processes.  

Lead contacts: Judith Hillmore (The Bartlett School of Planning) and Jenny Post (The Bartlett School of Planning)

Reflect and Refine:

This project aims to develop an efficient feedback loop, where departmental staff can work closely with central services colleagues to improve processes (e.g. communication between academic departments and central divisions) and review progress.  

Lead contact: Mike Kelly (Department of Chemistry)

Teaching Administrators’ Conference (TAC):

This event has been running for 11 years and has been mostly organised by the same group of people. This project group will build up the TAC committee to include new members, with a view to handing over responsibility to a new team. This will allow new members of the community to benefit from the development opportunity of organising a large event.   

Lead contact: Stefanie Anyadi (Division of Psychology & Lang Sciences)

In addition to hosting their usual programme of events, CoP members involved a project group will meet every four-six weeks. 

Further information

Viist the CoPs new Sharepoint site (UCL staff only) for up-to-date information on the Community's many projects, resources and events.

Join the MS Teams site, TA Talk (UCL staff only), to share and receive programme administration news with the Community.