Programme leaders oversee every aspect of university programme development and delivery. They are critical to the student experience. These higher education professionals develop curricula, support students and ensure quality in programmes of study. Their day-to-day activities could include writing quality assurance reports, liaising with timetabling teams, coordinating markers to ensure assessment deadlines are met, representing the programme at open days and recruitment events or responding to student emails.
They are often the first academic that students meet and are key players in delivering institutional education strategy and improving student satisfaction.
Yet, despite the role’s importance, many programme leaders feel undervalued in terms of their authority, resourcing, development support and recognition. These challenges are widely reported across the sector, including in a 2018 special from the Staff and Educational Development Association from editors Jenny Lawrence and Sam Ellis. Common issues include:
- Mismatch of expectations: The opportunity to lead course and curricula improvements is what motivates many programme leaders. However, the daily reality of the role can often focus on navigating administrative processes and prioritising heavy student support demands.
- Role clarity: Overlapping and poorly defined educational leadership roles in the organisational structure can lead to role conflict and confusion.
- Responsibility without authority: Programme leaders rarely have line management responsibility for the course or module leaders that report to them, creating challenging power dynamics. This can include managing well-established, senior colleagues in the context of the programme.
- Poor resourcing: Programme leaders widely report being under-resourced, and this can relate to time allocated to the role, financial resources and administrative support.
- Lack of formal training: Programme leaders often learn on the job with little formal development support. Linked to this, access to leadership training can be limited due to programme leaders not being line managers.
These challenges indicate a misalignment between the importance of the role and how it is valued and supported in higher education.
Developing peer support for programme leaders
So, how can institutions better support programme leaders in this role that is so critical for the student experience? Peer networks and communities of practice can provide a platform for sharing knowledge and information, a safe space to explore challenges and barriers, and opportunities for peer support. They can also help to break down barriers between academic and professional support roles.
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The Programme Leads Network (PLN) at the University of Southampton has monthly online meetings. Attendance is steadily increasing, and our annual evaluation suggests that the network is highly valued by those that engage with it, due to regular opportunities to take stock, peer-led discussions and the opportunity to foster understanding among those in academic and professional roles.
Effective ways to support university programme leaders
We have developed the network to try to address the challenges of the role. Creating a safe space for discussion is helping us to identify ways that institutions can better support programme leaders and then co-create that support with them. These include:
- Developing clear role descriptors: A generic programme-leader role descriptor can help to address role confusion and resourcing challenges. It provides a tool to articulate the scope of the role to the academic managers responsible for allocating time to the role. The descriptor for Southampton was co-created with the network.
- Creating accessible guidance: Presentations and demos from PLN meetings are all stored on a Teams site and are accessible for reference. Over time, this has built into a repository of guidance helping to formalise training. Future developments will include a toolkit of guidance resources based around the academic calendar to provide support at the time programme leaders need it.
- Offering varied engagement methods: Programme leaders are very busy people and aren’t always able to attend network meetings. Providing alternative ways to engage, such as a Teams channel to ask questions, meeting recordings and a monthly email digest of key information enable time-pressured colleagues to access support on demand.
- Leadership training: The network identified a strong need for leadership development opportunities. Working with human resources, we have developed a tailored version of the university line manager training, helping to address the challenges of leading without line management authority. Moving forward, we are planning to introduce leadership circles to foster small-group peer support for leadership development.
- Valuing the role: Support from university leadership can underpin activities and a sense of being valued. Our vice-president (education) regularly attends the network meetings and advocates for appropriate resourcing for the role with senior leaders in the faculties. This sends a clear message that the role is valued from the top of our educational leadership and this has directly resulted in improved resourcing.
Supporting programme leaders has institution-wide positives
Developing a peer network has provided immediate benefits, including programme leaders feeling more connected to education strategy, identifying available support, and sharing good practice. Evaluation and programme reporting have highlighted numerous examples of the network influencing practice to enable programme leaders to improve the student experience. Future developments will focus on formalising a toolkit of resources and increasing access to leadership development opportunities. Our support for programme leaders is a work in progress, but our experience shows that developing a community of practice can shift how the role is valued by both the organisation and the programme leaders themselves.
Neil Ford is a principal teaching fellow (academic development) in the Centre for Higher Education Practice at the University of Southampton.
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