The Institutions
The partner universities for the two project reflects the eclectic mix of the Australian higher education sector. They cover several university sub-groupings, a mix of urban and regional onshore contexts, and on-campus and distance learning and teaching delivery modes. All have undertaken leadership projects focused on distributed leadership.
(Synergies in distributed leadership and Benchmarking distributed leadership)
RMIT University has more than 60,000 students at campuses in Melbourne, regional Victoria, Vietnam, online, by distance education, and at partner institutions. This mix of locations and delivery modes creates the opportunity for informal leadership to add value to formal leadership in the implementation of a range of issues designed to enhance student learning and teaching practice.
(Synergies in distributed leadership)
ACU has six campuses, with 16,000 students, and offers programs on campus, online, mixed mode, and by distance. Distributed leadership is of interest to ACU as it operates across many States and the geographical separation between formal leadership and staff creates opportunities for informal leadership to develop.
(Synergies in distributed leadership and Benchmarking distributed leadership)
Macquarie University is a Sydney metropolitan university with 30,000 students, offering programs on campus, online, mixed mode, by distance and at partner institutions. The 'Lessons Learnt' project at Macquarie provided an opportunity to consolidate and build upon organisational outcomes. In terms of evaluation, it provides an avenue for the further application of the Indicators of the effectiveness of participative action research n a project developed by the Leadership and Assessment: Strengthening the Nexus project. These indicators specifically evaluate the efficacy of the role of Action Research in an ALTC project.
(Synergies in distributed leadership and Benchmarking distributed leadership)
The University of Wollongong is a multi-campus regional university on the south coast of NSW and has approximately 23,000 students and 800 full-time staff spread across 7 campuses, including one in Dubai. This project provided an opportunity to integrate what has been learnt in previous projects and examine further opportunities for developing informal leadership capacity more broadly and expanding it beyond the current central campus initiative.
