Resources
Benchmarking Performance of Academic Development Units in Australian Universities
These benchmarks for academic development are the outcome of a major project undertaken by the Council of Australian Directors of Academic Development (CADAD), the predecessor to CAULLT.
CADAD undertook this project for two interconnected reasons:
- Academic development in Australia and elsewhere is changing as universities respond to more competitive higher education environments. This creates the need for identification of the strategic contributions of academic development units.
- Institutional performance in learning and teaching is now more important in the development and preservation of university reputations, and is subject to performance funding. This puts the spotlight on academic development unit performance.
The project has overcome two key difficulties that have hampered benchmarking of academic development. These are the fact that there has always been a great deal of variety in the functions of academic development units, and that models of academic development vary from institution to institution.
The CADAD benchmarks for academic development should help L&T leaders, their units, and their institutions, to understand the strategic potential of academic development, and evaluate and enhance academic development unit performance regardless of their combinations of functions and models of delivery.
This project is now complete and the following resources are:
Domains of Practice for Benchmarking
Scope Statements for ADU Benchmark Domains
Levels of Practice for benchmarking
Benchmarking templates