Sessional Lecturers Engagement and Responsibilities
Purpose: This page outlines the expectations of lecturers who are engaged to deliver Higher Education with Eva Burrows College. This will include the academic administration and attendance at specified quality assurance meetings, preparation, delivery, associated marking and engagement with students.
Supports
We appreciate that if you are new to the University of Divinity (UD) and/or online delivery that the requirements described below may appear a little overwhelming at first. We have various supports for sessional lecturers including online resources, templates, online support staff and the appointment of an experienced faculty member to support you.
A list of support personnel and their functions is available here.
Responsibilities
Sessional lecturers engaged by Eva Burrow College prepare and deliver accredited units under the auspices of the University of Divinity (UD).
Sessional Lecturers:
- Are required meet UD accreditation requirements.
- Deliver units as per the approved UD unit records, meeting the learning and graduate outcomes and unit requirements.
- Use the relevant resources of the UD for delivery (ARK, Turnitin, Library HUB, EBC ebooks etc).
Sessional Lecturers delivering and developing units for EBC:
- Are responsible for the delivery (including developing learning materials) and assessment of units which they agree to deliver (responsibilities listed below). Predominately EBC delivers via online mode. Our standard approach is based upon a 12-week teaching semester or equivalent in other modes such as intensive or extensive.
- Ensure that the learning design and learning materials address EBC curriculum values and EBC graduate capacities.
- All materials (including class/online notes and supporting learning materials) produced by the lecturer for the purpose of delivery of the assigned unit will be the property of Eva Burrows College.
Multi-streaming
Many units share substantial content across undergraduate and postgraduate level. In terms of delivery these units are ‘multi streamed’ together and have a common meta unit (the shared location where all delivery and learning materials are located in the learning management system (ARK)). The learning design of the respective levels is differentiated by additional content, supplemental learning tasks/activities, different and/or additional readings, differentiated assessment tasks.
The undergraduate and postgraduate versions of a common unit are also often differentiated by different and/or additional learning outcomes in the unit record.
Prior to semester commencing lecturers must prepare and submit proposed detailed assessments for approval and attend the moderation of assessments meeting in which this is discussed.
Responsibilities associated with unit delivery
Prior to the commencement of a unit sessional lecturers are responsible for:
- Development of the ‘supplemental unit guide’ as per the standard EBC template.
- Documenting the overall learning design so that students have a clear understanding of how to engage with learning materials, assessments, and planned synchronous engagements.
- Preparing introductory information for week 0 (to be available to students the week prior to commencement date).
- Development of unit content in ARK (according to any standard templates)
- Learning/Lecture/teaching materials (appropriate to delivery mode)
- Learning tasks
- Assessment tasks (as per unit record which will be supplied)
- To support student self paced learning, lecturers should aim to have the learning materials available in ARK for students at a minimum of 3 weeks ahead of when the content is notionally programmed to be delivered.
- Preparation of bibliographic materials
- Any set texts must be available to students as eBooks via either the EBC catalogue or the UD library Hub.
- Communication of new and updated materials to the librarian
- Ensuring reading lists engage current scholarship with attention to diversity.
- Ensuring reading materials comply with copyright requirements in conjunction with library staff
- Setting up ARK for unit delivery
- unit resources /reading materials (in meta unit) (as per the EBC style in ARK – for further assistance see the Online Learning Team Lead .
- The online team will set up the assessment tasks in Turnitin for you (as approved at the assessment moderation meeting). Each lecturer must check the Turnitin assessment tasks have been correctly set up under the Assessment tab in ARK.
Online modes
At EBC online delivery is more than simply making available written materials (lecturer notes) to students. As previously stated, each unit delivery should have a carefully considered student centred learning design that considers:
Learning materials
Student cognitive load (staged introduction of complex or confronting ideas)
(provide access to necessary readings links to ebooks or pdfs)
Learning activities
Integration and scaffolding learning and assessments
Multi-streaming: differentiation of postgrad and undergrad
Video, audio, problem solving, creativity, scenarios, input from practitioners, forums, surveys, quizzes, learning tasks/projects
Synchronous engagement with students and peer to peer engagement (establishing ‘teacher presence’). Provoke discussion and interaction between students.
Regular contact with students (follow up lack of activity -in ARK, or lateness of assessment task submissions)
Skills development
Rich in real world application (contextual)
Be aware of time commitments (student load)
Sessional lecturers are responsible for:
- Setting up learning materials in ARK (with support from the Online Learning Team Lead)
- Ensuring there are opportunities for regular student engagement with lecturer and other students, through setting up appropriate opportunities for synchronous online engagement (zoom or teams for instance).
- Granting and monitoring any lecturer extension requests and communicating these to the Registrar as they arise (see XXXX for extension application process)
- Maintaining general communication with the Coursework Coordinator as any issues arise.
- Reporting any concerns to the Coursework Coordinator regarding student performance
- so that appropriate early interventions/supports can be set in place.
- Lecturers should initially check student engagement by end of week 2 of semester (early intervention with regard to ‘census date – last date for student withdrawal without penalty)
- Ongoing monitoring student engagement in ARK to ensure early interventions to support struggling students.
- Forum comments (if applicable)
- Access of resources
- Assessments
- Regular communication with students concerning their progression through the unit.
- Being appropriately available to students.
- Ongoing marking of assessments including comments and corrections (via Turnitin accessed via the relevant child unit in ARK) within UD timeframes, giving timely feedback throughout the course.
- Assessments less than 2000 words – 2 weeks
- Assessments 2000 words and greater – 3 weeks
- Ensure academic integrity compliance (seek advice from Academic Dean as required)
After a unit concludes
Sessional lecturers are responsible for:
- Finalising marking of assessments within set timeframes
- Reviewing unit in light of formal Student Evaluation feedback collated by UD, EBC feedback mechanisms and professional reflection upon practice.
- Producing recommendations for quality improvements for the next iteration of the unit delivery, discussed at the ‘Lecturer Review of Unit Delivery’ meeting.
- Attend grade moderation meeting.
- Attend lecturer review of unit delivery meeting.