On a sunny Friday on the 25th July, CLT colleagues welcomed a visit by staff from the University of Ghana (UoG). Prof. Kwame Offei, PI, Prof. Samuel Agyei-Mensah, Director and Benedict Fosu Adjei, Project Administrator for the Centre for Teaching and Learning Innovation met with colleagues from CLT to share work each centre is involved with, and to explore ways we might collaborate in the future. It was lovely to meet Kwame, Samual and Benedict, who shared a brief history of their development as a centre and how their university has grown over the years.
In 2014-2024 UoG set out a strategic vision to become a research intensive university by 2024. Under a new strategic plan (2024-2029) they are aiming to achieve global impact through innovative research, teaching and learning, using a technology and people centred approach. The figures behind these goals reflect such an ambitious journey, growing from 6918 students and 3372 staff in 1997 to 73155 students and 6565 staff in 2024. They also strived to increase postgraduate numbers, from less than 3000 in 2014, to 8,700 now. Alongside this impressive expansion, UoG also recognised the need to support staff and so created the Staff Development and Learning Resource Centre (SDLRC) and more recently the Centre for Teaching and Learning Innovation (CTLI), where our visitors are based.
The CTLI was established to build capacity in teaching, learning and research and is guided by the university’s goal to be a research-intensive university. It focuses on enhancing pedagogy, faculty development and student success. It has a range of strategic objectives, including building capacity for innovative pedagogy, strengthening faculty skills for online and blended learning, enhancing academic writing and publishing (faculty, graduate assistants and graduate students) and supporting policy development on teaching and learning. Since 2020, our visitors described a wide range of activities they have delivered, which chimed a lot with our own activities at Bath.
It was great to hear about the development and goals of the CTLI and Kwame, Samuel and Benedict were lovely people to share common areas of work and experiences with. During our meeting we shared examples of our own work and strategic priorities and it was interesting to see how much of our work, challenges and also opportunities overlapped. They shared some key lessons learned over the years such as the need for institutional buy-in, technology adoption and faculty incentives to encourage engagement, not too dissimilar to Bath and more broadly across the UK sector.
It was great to have the opportunity to share our knowledge with an international institution and we found a lot of common ground between us. It was lovely to hear how another institution is developing its own strategy and how their work was quite aligned to our own work in many ways. The meeting was scheduled for the morning, concluding at lunch but such was the nature of the conversation, we could have chatted all day and longer! We feel we have made new friends now, so look forward to finding ways of collaborating in the near future.
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