Since the establishment of the Office for Learning and Teaching in 2012 Australian universities have benefitted from its awards, grants and fellowship programs and strategic development papers, which have provided resources and support for educational excellence and innovation. This is no doubt one of the reasons why Australian university teaching is well regarded internationally in teaching and learning innovation.
Teaching at The University of Sydney has benefitted from both the national initiatives and the awards and grants awarded to staff at this university: past winners and successful grant proposals.
A petition to save the funding for the OLT has been launched, as there has been no action on the recommendation in the 2015 review of the OLT to create a successor organization. If there are no funds in the Budget then the work will not be continued.
OLT Senior Fellow Sally Kift has published an open letter on the Australian Learning and Teaching Fellows website in which she writes that the government’s “exceedingly modest” investment into research in higher education teaching and learning has generated “massive returns on investment and demonstrable enhancements to the quality of student learning outcomes and their experience of learning.” She asserts, “In a post-OLT world, it will be a struggle for Australian universities individually and collaboratively to maintain a focus on educational innovation and entrepreneurship.”
