September 2009 — Volume 3, Issue 5

Universities collaborate on cross-institutional GCTE

In an Australian first, five universities have developed a shared graduate certificate of tertiary education (GCTE).

In just two years the Developing our staff project, funded by ALTC and led by the University of New England (UNE), has developed and implemented a collaborative GCTE in partnership with CQUniversity, University of Canberra, University of Ballarat and Edith Cowan University. Project officer, Dr Deb Vale said the idea for the project came about as a way to address low enrolments.

“Staff development programs like GCTEs have very low enrolments in a lot of universities. It was getting to the point where universities won’t fund such low enrolment courses so [project leader Professor] Belinda Tynan had the idea of creating a collaborative project so that each university only had to develop two units and we could still offer our staff a full graduate certificate,” said Dr Vale.

Students will enrol at their home institution where they will complete the core unit, specific to the teaching needs of each university and moderated by one assignment across all five institutions.

Each university has contributed one elective unit to the program. Students must complete their own university’s elective unit and any two others, thus giving students more alternatives in elective choice than just one university could offer. All elective units are studied online.

Instructional designers were employed in the development of all units to ensure they exemplify the teaching methods that the course is hoping to instil.

Three universities began offering the program this year – UNE, CQU and Canberra – while Ballarat and ECU will start in 2010. Dr Vale said 11 universities have been involved in the project at various stages but institutional policies
and funding challenges forced some to withdraw before its conclusion.

Members from each participating university will meet once a year to oversee the ongoing governance of the program and look at questions of how to bring in other universities.

Dr Vale said the project has raised the profile of the GCTE in the participating institutions and hopes it will spread to other institutions as they have already had many enquiries
about participating in the program.