LearnHigher: The Beginning
The LearnHigher story began at London Metropolitan University in October 2003, when the Learning Development in Higher Education Network held its inaugural meeting. A group of likeminded individuals, keen to work together to share good practice and resources, discussed the idea of a web based one-stop shop. HEFCE’s announcement of funding to create Centres of Excellence in Learning and Teaching was perfectly timed to coincide with these ideas. Interested institutions from the network were invited to produce a collaborative bid to become a Learning Development Centre of Excellence: and so LearnHigher was formed.
The original bid documentation identifies how the partnership aimed to ‘share practitioners’ specialist expertise…. providing the highest quality and quality assured learning resources and materials to the sector’ whilst also ‘creating a community of practice to help the development of a deeper scholarly approach’. This website evidences the degree of progress members have achieved in meeting the above aims. It displays examples of innovative, award winning resources for staff and students, high levels of partner collaboration and, through associated projects, it shows how value has been added throughout the sector.
The remaining sections of the LearnHigher Story give readers an understanding of how membership of LearnHigher has impacted on individuals and on the learning and teaching spaces within its institutions. These pages provide an overview of the research activities that have taken place during our five year life cycle and of the development projects which have ensured active engagement with learning development practitioners across the sector. We have also used sections of the LearnHigher story to place our reports and evaluation documentation and to outline what we hope will be the future of LearnHigher, as through the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE) it returns to the community of practice from which it came.
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