Crawford School strategic plan
Strategic Initiatives: Education
Education at the Australian National University is research-led, and in the Crawford School students are taught by academics who help shape policy in Australia, in the Asia-Pacific region, and across the world. Our students come from more than forty countries and bring with them great stores of knowledge and experience. Education in the Crawford School encompasses three main areas: coursework, PhD and executive education.
Specific strategic initiatives for education include:
- Renew the Crawford School Education Committee. The Committee will be responsible for developing strategic educational policies and managing operational issues related to education in the School, in addition to providing advice to Management Committee and the Crawford School Director on educational matters. As part of this role, Education Committee will develop a series of education-related policies and standards to encourage integration across the School and ensure the effective and efficient provision of education.
- Organise a regular Crawford School 'Education Retreat'. The retreat will bring together both academic and professional staff from the Crawford School to focus on educational issues. The retreat will also provide a forum to set strategic directions for education in the school, consider results from the Crawford School Educational Experience Survey, benchmark education performance and devise strategies for continuous improvement.
- Administer and respond to an annual Crawford School 'Educational Experience Survey'. The survey will provide an instrument to gauge the educational expectations of our students and the School's performance against these expectations. Creating a cycle of selfevaluation will include administering the survey, compiling results, designing strategies to address gaps between expectations and performance and providing feedback of results and actions to students, staff and relevant stakeholders.
- Develop a set of 'Crawford School Graduate Attributes'. This will provide an overarching framework for education in the School by articulating the attributes that should be displayed by all students who have undertaken a degree program in the Crawford School. The attributes will move beyond disciplinary knowledge to encompass broader skills, abilities, qualities and values that should be obtained by students participating in our programs. The development of these attributes will promote continued integration across the School's programs, provide a basis for marketing the distinctiveness of our educational offerings and form an important tool for engagement with a range of stakeholders.
- Undertake a school-wide curriculum mapping and review exercise. This involves using the Crawford School Graduate Attributes as a framework against which to map existing courses and degrees. This will enable an identification of gaps in the existing suite of courses and degrees, and provide a basis for renewing the Crawford curriculum, in particular toensure our offerings are reflective of the Asia-Pacific strengths within the Crawford School and the broader College of Asia and the Pacific.
- Create an in-house Crawford Teaching Lab. The Crawford Teaching Lab will foster innovation and continuous improvement in teaching practice. The Lab will promote a series of workshops focused on specific issues of interest to faculty and professional staff (e.g. designing assessment items and enhancing teaching skills). The Lab will also develop custom designed teaching materials and assessment types and rubrics relevant to postgraduate public policy students, including a library of resources derived from the extensive policy engagement and research activities of the School (e.g. a multimedia archive of presentations and lectures for use in class and a series of regionally relevant teaching cases).
- Create an interactive 'Crawford School Educational Website'. The website will disseminate educational policies at the School, the College, and at the University level, promote innovation in teaching practice and point to best practice in curriculum design and delivery. The website will provide links to a range of materials for use in teaching.
- Recognise and reward teaching excellence in the Crawford School. This involves public acknowledgement of outstanding achievement in the student evaluation of courses, nomination of exceptional staff for College and University teaching awards and the counselling of staff on effectively presenting achievements in teaching in their performance evaluations and promotion applications.
- Develop 'educational benchmarking' exercises. This involves gathering national and international data in order to compare performance across a range of education indicators to feed into internal and external benchmarking exercises. This process will also connect to the forthcoming CAP and ANU development of educational performance indicators.
- Enhance the experience of PhD students in the Crawford School. This involves investing in a range of activities, in conjunction with the Director of Research and Research Committee to manage and enhance the experience of PhD students in the School, including jointly mapping the milestones of the PhD process (e.g., from recruitment through to alumnus) to ensure proper allocation of responsibility for the management of each stage and the development of improved processes for tracking progress and completion of milestones. In conjunction with the Research Director, this will involve providing a series of functions, seminars, and workshops to enhance the academic and professional skills of PhD scholars, build a collegial and supportive PhD community and encourage publication of PhD research.
- Encourage applications for teaching enhancement and innovation funds. This involves working with Crawford staff to develop and submit applications for CAP, ANU and external sources of funding to finance a range of workshops, materials, or specialist training for staff.
- Actively engage with educational developments in the College and across the University. This involves promoting the interests of the Crawford School in CAP and ANU forums, and working collaboratively with other parts of the CAP and ANU to offer opportunities for student exchange and movement.
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