Achieving HEA Accreditation: Does Working and Writing in the Presence of a Peer in an Online Space Assist Submission? 

The impetus to improve teaching provision in higher education is growing worldwide. The need to evidence these improvements has created an appetite for gaining accreditation both by individuals increasing their chances of further employability by accrediting their practice, and from institutions recruiting individuals whose practice has been accredited. In the UK teaching excellence is recognised and accredited by Advance HE, through four categories of Fellowships of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and using the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF). 

The Open University (OU) runs its own accredited scheme to support staff in teaching and learning support roles to gain HEA fellowship recognition. The scheme is called ‘Applaud’. Despite the support currently available to Applaud candidates, there are still some who do not complete and submit their applications. To improve the existing support and the rate of completion and successful submissions, the scheme is trialling several activities in collaboration with the Faculties. This study is an evaluation of one trial of a novel form of support within one faculty, funded by the FASSTEST scholarship centre.  

This new and additional form of support draws on literature addressing the success of academic writing groups (Soraa et al,2017), and (Kozar et al,2015), phone calls with a colleague to aid writing motivation (Myatt et al (2014) and having a sense of commitment to an accountability partner (Scott et.al, 2019). This form of peer support involves pairing interested candidates seeking the same type of fellowship accreditation (Associate Fellow, Fellow or Senior Fellow of the HEA). They are offered a brief introductory session on arranging regular brief working sessions (one to two hours) with each other via MS Teams or Skype. These working sessions follow a structure that adapts writing retreat approaches of committing to short writing sprints (around 20 minutes) in the virtual company of others and discussing progress and difficulties after each sprint. Scholarship addressing professional accreditation indicates that academics may be driven to achieve professional recognition because of an increasing need to meet certain metrics. This approach doesn’t align with the reflective aspect of the HEA fellowship process (Spowart et al, 2019). However, one unexpected benefit of this form of support has been to provide both the space and support for reflective practice to inform the writing of a claim for accreditation.  

Our study asks to what extent working and writing with a peer in a shared online space assist timely submission for HEA accreditation.  To evaluate this trial, we are collecting feedback from participants on working with a partner and the effectiveness of writing retreat-style structured sessions and writing sprints.  

References: 

Kozar, O. and Lum, J.F., 2015. Online doctoral writing groups: do facilitators or communication modes make a difference?. Quality in Higher Education, 21(1), pp.38-51. 

Myatt, P., Edwards, A. and Bird, F., 2014, September. Achieving greater productivity with a peer writing group. In Proceedings of The Australian Conference on Science and Mathematics Education. 

Scott, C.E., Ritter, N.L., Fowler, R.M. and Franks, A.D., 2019. Developing a community of academic writers: Using social media to support academic accountability, motivation, and productivity. Journal of Literacy and Technology, 20(2), pp.61-96. 

Søraa, R.A., Ingeborgrud, L., Suboticki, I. and Solbu, G., 2017. Communities of peer practitioners. Experiences from an Academic Writing Group. Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies, 5(1), pp.30-37. 

Spowart, L., Winter, J., Turner, R., Burden, P., Botham, K.A., Muneer, R., van der Sluis, H. and Huet, I., 2019. ‘Left with a title but nothing else’: the challenges of embedding professional recognition schemes for teachers within higher education institutions. Higher Education Research & Development, 38(6), pp.1299-1312.