New in OD&PL this week

It introduces specialist leadership skills and supports you to apply learning to your own context and considers leadership from the perspective of the individual, the team and the organisation. This programme will be relevant to all colleagues who have held leadership responsibilities for at least 12 months.

This new addition to OD&PL’s leadership development provision consists of six modules, each delivered over three online workshops.

The six modules each run twice during the remainder of the academic year and cover the following topics: values-led leadership, leading change, translating and developing strategy, understanding systems and culture, leading and developing teams and optimising a coaching leadership style.

The mentoring experience allows colleagues to share knowledge and skills with others, supporting them to achieve their individual objectives. 

OD&PL provide a series events and workshops for mentors and mentees to support your development and to help you to get the most out of mentorship, including:

• Preparing for mentorship workshops - There are various sessions available for both mentors and mentees to find out how to get the most out of your experience.
• Could you be a mentor? 26 March, 2-3pm - If you've thought about being a mentor but have questions about what that means or the skills and experience you need to be a great mentor, this event is for you.
• Mentor lunch and learn sessions – running until July - These sessions will explore a variety of topics and speakers for these sessions are all active mentors on the University-wide Mentoring Scheme, sharing their experience of mentoring colleagues across the University.

Applying for research fellowships can be a daunting and time-consuming task. With this in mind, OD&PL is launching a brand-new development programme aimed at postdoctoral researchers considering applying for a research fellowship in the next 12 months. You don’t need to have an application ready – you don’t even need to have spoken to the University about applying for a fellowship yet.

The programme aims to save you time and effort, providing you with the support, expertise, and guidance you need to develop your idea.

The deadline for applications is midday on 15 April 2024.

You can find out more about the programme at an online information session on 19 March 2024.

Book your place at the next Teaching and Scholarship Culture Café on 19 March.

OD&PL are hosting a series of café-style conversations in spring and summer 2024 as part of ongoing work to promote a fully supportive institutional culture that rewards and recognises good practice in education.

By getting involved you can contribute to a discussion on the challenges you face, what we are already doing well as an institution and could share more widely, and what a better culture would look like.

The cafés form part of an ongoing project to review career pathways and promote a positive teaching and scholarship culture. The discussions will help to propose solutions for how the institution could change.

How the cafés work 

The cafés are run as small group discussions with a facilitator to help guide and direct the conversation.  There may be some questions used to help get the group started.  Groups will contain a mix of up to 10 people. The facilitator will make notes, but these will be anonymised. At the end of each café, the challenges, examples of best practice and ideas for change will be shared with all participants. The notes collected will be summarised in reports and recommendations to inform institutional decision-making.

The Jisc Discovery Tool is now available to all colleagues at Leeds, supporting you to understand your digital capabilities and identify development opportunities.

Digital capabilities are the skills needed to live, learn and work in a digital world and make best use of the systems and technologies you encounter. Answer question sets designed specifically for staff in higher education to see a detailed assessment of your current capabilities and areas for development, along with suggested learning resources to help you reach your goals.

During the launch of the Jisc Discovery Tool, there will be a series of introductory events to demonstrate how you can get the most from the tool. The tool has been launched in a collaboration between OD&PL, the Library and DES. The Discovery Tool is also available for students, information about this can be found on the Library website.

University of Leeds Teaching Awards

There’s still time to apply for the University of Leeds Teaching Awards 2024, celebrating excellent practice in student education. Open to everyone involved in teaching or supporting the student learning experience, including colleagues from professional services, winners will receive grants of up to £2,000 each. Applications close on 15 March.

You can watch the recording of a recent briefing session to find out more about the awards.