The senior university teaching qualification: Engaging in research, design and building community in engineering education

For a high standard of educational quality and success rates, teaching quality is key. Teachers need to be supported in their professional development aimed at achieving the ambitious goals of student-driven engineering education. Moreover, educational excellence is often confined to 'pockets': good practices are confined to one program or department and not shared beyond. Creating opportunities for teachers to collaboratively reflect on, further develop and share knowledge and practice-based research to promote educational innovation is very important. The Senior University Teaching Qualification (SUTQ) is focused on a scholarly approach of teaching and learning (SoTL; Graham, 2018), in which teachers are regarded as researcher and designer of their own educational practice, to collaboratively innovate and improve teaching. SUTQ participants determine their personal learning path and execute their own sub-project (160 hours) to innovate and improve their practice. They are supported by a coach, educational research and design seminars, and peer-feedback from colleagues. After three years of running and adjusting this approach based on the literature, evaluations, experiences and outcomes, this paper shows both the benefits and the challenges of organizing this type of professional development. Although participants feel inspired, appreciate the clarity, usefulness and feedback during SUTQ sessions, some challenges remain both in terms of facilitation (e.g., time) and the approach (e.g., the steps from clear problem statement to innovation design). Additionally, community-building needs more attention, to promote further continuous development in the university as a whole. In this concept paper we set out an agenda for doing so.