4. Organisation

• Centrally managed
• Centrally run
• Departmentally run
• Centrally run but Departmentally supported

Centrally managed

It is common in the UK for staff development to be run from within a general personnel department which does not have special expertise in teaching. Programmes for new lecturers in such contexts tend to be managed from the centre but actually delivered either by a variety of staff from within the institution - whoever has relevant expertise - or by external experts bought in specially. The University of Hull offers a programme co-ordinated by the central staff development unit but delivered entirely by members of an 'Educational Development Team' made up of lecturers within departments. The London School of Economics personnel office manages a programme delivered entirely by a variety of external consultants. Centrally managed programmes tend to be less coherent, both socially and intellectually, than programmes run by a specialist team. Some institutions, such as Warwick University, have bought in entire programmes from one supplier, achieving coherence despite not running the programme from the centre.

Funding may be allocated to the central mangers but sometimes the centre merely acts as an agency and charges departments for each participant and uses these funds to buy in consultants either internally or externally to run sessions.

Centrally run

This the most common form of organisation - where a centrally located team or individual, usually in an educational development unit of some kind, runs the programme themselves. This makes it easier to create coherence than is possible for centrally managed programmes but may still leave the focus and style of the programme somewhat isolated from the priorities and culture of the participants. Funding would usually be allocated directly to the central provider who may be answerable to a Teaching Methods Committee

Sometimes the provider is an academic Education Department, the course leads to a qualification and funding is through normal course fees. Control may be lost to the Department and academic criteria rather than being retained by the centre with pragmatic criteria related to the institution's mission. Chester College runs a series of linked modules leading to Certificate, Diploma and Masters qualifications, based in an Education Department but quite clearly oriented to the institution's needs.

Departmentally run

It is rare for there to be enough new teachers within a department each year for anything other than a mentoring or 'buddy' system to operate at departmental level. The University of Hull runs a programme for new lecturers that is taught by experienced lecturers from within Departments but co-ordinated and run centrally.

There may, however, be enough Graduate Teaching Assistants or even part time lecturers, within a Department to justify a Departmentally based programme and many GTA programmes in North America operate partly or wholly within Departments.

Centrally run but Departmentally supported

However well conceived and run, central programmes leave new teachers with the problem of translating generic principles and practice into disciplines and idiosyncratic local cultures and organisations. The likelihood of this translation happening effectively (or at all) can be greatly improved with a little departmental support. Many programmes, while initially centrally run, eventually have built into them support from within departments. This may take the form of departmental induction, a 'buddy' system which attaches a new teacher to a slightly more experienced colleague, a mentor system involving supervision by a more experienced colleague, attachment to a course team or involvement in a departmentally based teaching group or seminars on teaching within the discipline.

The GTA programme at Nottingham University has both central and departmental elements but is co-ordinated centrally.