Staff who teach or work with first-year students can find helpful support by joining the First Year Community of Practice (also known as FYCoP) – a grassroots community for all academic and professional staff who work with first-year students, helping to put best practice into daily practice.

The First Year Community of Practice team offers support to develop small changes in teaching that can add up to something substantial. It also tackles a lot of pertinent teaching questions. Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed with all the changes you could (or should) be making in your teaching or curriculum and feel as though you are being pulled in many directions? Want to make small changes to how you support first- year learning in a way that also builds towards something meaningful – whether that be expertise, teaching impact or career goals? FYCoP can help to answer these questions.

The focus of this year’s meeting – being held in the Health Sciences Building, Room 1:09, on 22 February from 10am to 11.30am – will address two themes: Supporting student wellbeing and the Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP).

Its aims are to:

• think strategically about your teaching and learning profile and career goals
• identify a key focus for developing your own practice or curriculum that you would like to address or improve
• interact with key resources, people and other practitioners to learn
• disseminate your work with others for discussion, support and ideas
• identify ways to better evidence your teaching scholarship, leadership and innovation for promotion, awards, or grants
• build connections with other staff who work with first year students across Flinders, and be supported in your important (and sometimes challenging) work

The focus of this meeting is “thinking strategically about teaching excellence, leadership and impact”. During this session we will each individually identify an area that we would like to focus on for 2021 related to either Wellbeing or the Reconciliation Action Plan.

After the first meeting we will meet monthly, rotating between RAP or Student Wellbeing related themes, and peer presentations of participant initiatives (for those who opt in to present).

If you wish to join the FYCoP or nominate to make a presentation at the event, contact FYCoP co-facilitators Lauren Sullivan (lauren.sullivan@flinders.edu.au) or Ann Luzeckyj (ann.luzeckyj@flinders.edu.au).