Scottish Higher Education Developers October 2018 | Page 7

March 2008: held at Queen Margaret University
A report from the HEDG spring meeting brought news of the work of the 74 Centres of
Excellence in Teaching & Learning (CETLs) in England, at the time HEFCE’s largest single
funding initiative (£315M between 2005-2010).
The committee discussed the last QE Themes conference, with questions still being
asked about whether the target audience for this conference is practitioners, developers
or senior management. HEA/Academy Scotland were keen at this time to support EDSC
to build capacity across the sector in pedagogic research, following on from successful
sessions held at Strathclyde in 2007 (educational research methods) and Stirling in 2008
(research interviews). The Committee discussed the HEA Strategic Plan, with results to
be collated and fed back to the HEA. When did this last happen? PgCert SIG held its first
meeting in January 2008 with discussion focussing on credits/equivalence for FHEA
recognition and differences between institutional approaches to this.
February 2014: held at Edinburgh Napier University
A landmark meeting following the disbandment of the USEDSC by Universities Scotland
in 2013. SHED now becomes the forum for higher educational development practitioners
in Scotland. Discussions focussed on Equality & Diversity in the curriculum.
Events happening at this time included: ‘Attainment for All’, an event run with the
Equality Change Unit (ECU, now part of Advance H.E.), plus the SEDA annual November
meeting in Nottingham, which this year focussed on ‘Opportunities and challenges for
educational development in a post-digital age’. Seems that SHED has witnessed both the
digital and post-digital periods.
Also on the agenda were events run by ALT, who were repeating their successful blended
learning MOOC. Open badges were also discussed for the first time in the context of
portfolio building
Further discussion took place around the potential changes to the landscape of H.E.
following the recent announcement of the date of the (first?) Scottish independence
referendum. BREXIT wasn’t even a twinkle in David Cameron’s eye at this time.
Conclusion: 25 years on what did and didn’t come to pass?
It’s been fascinating to look back over the work that our group, in its various
incarnations, has undertaken over the past 25 years. While some of the titles and ideas
in this brief overview will be familiar to readers and have rightly grown in visibility and
stature, such as equality and diversity in the curriculum, many others have morphed
into other guises, such as PDP. Others, lauded at the time as the ‘next big thing’ never
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Celebrating 25 years of SHED