Teaching support centres can spur innovation

Teaching Support Centres can play a vital role in encouraging innovation in teaching and learning at the institutional level, writes Thomas Carey for Inside Higher Ed. He suggests that many teaching support centres currently include a mix of long-term initiatives, short-term targeted projects, and ongoing base activities. Each of these activities present different opportunities and challenges, as does balancing the mix. Carey states that innovation is often underdeveloped, and that its development requires both serious strategy and a willingness to accept failure. He concludes that “the best approaches seem to include separate institutional initiatives for teaching support and for innovation in teaching, reporting to a common executive … who can build the bridges between those units, … and lead in establishing the Innovation Strategy for Teaching and Learning.” Inside Higher Ed