Learning and Teaching Professional Development
Learn about the ways in which we're providing continuous professional development for those who teach and support learning at NTU.
How we're supporting professional development

Our goal at NTU is to provide continuous professional development opportunities for those who teach and support learning for students across the university.
CADQ's Educational Development team bring expertise from a variety of backgrounds, each specialising in a specific area of learning and teaching practice. This allows us to tailor support and enable Schools to deliver positive and impactful educational experiences. Our collective aim is to enhance student engagement and satisfaction and we support these in order to address disparities in student attainment, progression and outcomes.
We are champions of NTU’s Success for All (SfA) initiative and actively promote inclusive learning and teaching opportunities for the benefit of all students through the work that we do.
We also support delivery against strategic opportunities outlined within University, reimagined, alongside other institutional priorities.
Professional Development offer
With Success for All as the focus, our professional development offer has been designed to support academic staff and wider course teams in developing their provision. Our workshops are open to all colleagues who teach and support learning at NTU, and cover a range of specialist areas. You can access these resources using an NTU login. They include:
At NTU, we promote active collaborative learning through the use of SCALE-UP as the preferred inclusive pedagogies. SCALE-UP is an active mode of learning where students learn through solving problems, sharing ideas, giving and receiving feedback, and teaching each other. As an alternative to SCALE-UP, we are piloting Team Based Learning as a structured form of learning with a specific sequence of individual study, group work, immediate feedback and teacher facilitated discussion and debate, to create a motivational framework for student learning. Active Collaborative Learning has a proven impact upon reducing gaps in student engagement and attendance, attainment and progression.
The Curriculum Design offer supports those who teach and support learning by enhancing the design and construction of modules and courses. We provide knowledge and understanding of course design principles, constructive alignment with backwards course design, and learning outcome creation. Success for All beneficiary groups are considered throughout the curriculum design offer and introduction of the creation of student personas, encourages staff to test the robustness and inclusivity of their designs, against course data which is already available to them.
Staff development for Personal Tutoring is a key mechanism for providing personalised academic, pastoral, and professional guidance, whilst meeting the increasingly diverse needs of NTU students. Designed to support colleagues in enhancing purposeful and skilled personal tutoring practice in order to provide students with relevant support that aligns with their academic and personal development goals.
Support for assessment and feedback at NTU focuses upon ensuring that students actively engage in authentic assessment activities that will support them in accessing the careers of the future. Supporting staff to design effective assessment, with learning outcomes that are constructively aligned, academic standards are upheld while shaping learning that supports the development of successful graduate outcomes.
The student engagement and transition offer forms part of NTU’s significant investment to provide advice and support for our staff and course teams who work hard to deliver engaging and positive student experiences. These workshops provide a forum to discuss prevalent issues and provide a supported, collaborative opportunity to generate shared solutions on topics including designing for student transition, re-engaging low-engaged students and working with students as partners. Together, these workshops offer a space to develop an enhanced sense of belonging and community for students at NTU.
Staff development in support of Success for All is structured around aiding colleagues in enhancing the experiences of underrepresented groups at NTU. The Success for All initiative is designed to support academic teams and staff in developing their provision around this important aspect of the institutional strategy. Success for All represents our commitment to ‘improve equality of opportunity for underrepresented groups to access, succeed in and progress from higher education,’ as outlined in our NTU Access and Participation Plan.
Our offer is regularly reviewed and informed by the findings of research conducted by CADQ's ERET team with students and staff at NTU, alongside sector-wide research and practice.
Meet the team
Anita Love
Anita leads staff development for SCALE-UP and supports the NTU Team Based Learning (TBL) Pilot project through delivering workshops for academic colleagues. She is the educational development contact for the School of Arts and Humanities
Jelena Matic
As Senior Educational Developer, Jelena leads on Personal Tutoring practice and staff development at NTU, and is the institutional link representative for United Kingdom Advising and Tutoring association (UKAT). She is the educational development contact for the School of Architecture, Design and Built Environment and the School of Social Sciences.
Melanie Welaratne
Melanie is responsible for supporting schools to address disparities in student attainment, progression and outcomes through equitable learning and teaching approaches. Melanie’s areas of focus and passion centres on race equity, intersectionality and decoloniality within Higher Education.
Diana De Butts
Diana leads on Curriculum Design, and staff development for Assessment and Feedback. She also works closely with Nottingham Law School on the implementation and review of their Success for All Plan.
Stuart Parkin
Stuart supports staff in the development of Apprenticeships and Higher Technical Qualifications and is the Educational Development contact for NTU in Mansfield.
Conor Naughton
Conor specialises in student engagement and transition and works toward increasing the student sense of belonging at NTU via developmental support for schools, courses and their staff teams.
Get in touch
If you have any questions or would like more information, email academicdevelopment@ntu.ac.uk.