In our study, all 11 policy-maker interviewees acknowledged that the TRN was an important issue in their university. Several acknowledged that the links were more tacit and assumed than they should be, while others commented that teaching-research connections should be made explicit. All agreed, however, that teaching and research activities should complement one another in a successful university, as summarised in the following statement:

…you can’t have a successful research enterprise that is completely divorced from a successful teaching enterprise

Room for improvement
Some policy-makers openly admitted that there was room for improvement in how institutional policies and strategies supported and enabled the TRN in their university. Areas for improvement included

• trying to build bridges between teaching and research portfolios of the university from the ‘top down’, i.e., from the DVC(Academic) and DVC(Research) level to the classroom level;
• adjusting promotion policies to reward and recognise teaching-research linkages;
• reviewing academic staff recruitment policies to ensure that these valued staff who effectively made connections between research and teaching in their practice.
  See Recognising and Rewarding the TRN for more on these topics.

Having identified gaps in current institutional policy-making, interviewees also gave many examples of ways in which university policies and practices were enabling and supporting effective teaching-research linkages. These enablers are operating in four broad areas:

• institution level policies and practices
• faculty/department/school level policies and practices
• curriculum level activities
• academic professional development activities

These enabling factors represent the views of policy-makers across a range of university types. They may not all be appropriate for every university. The key to success is for institutions to determine the model that best suits their university mission and goals.

Institution Level Policies and Practices Enabling the TRN

• Be systematic about the TRN across the university and seek to engage staff from across the university in agreeing on the core principles of the TRN. The TRN may be applied differently in different disciplines, but engagement with the key issues should be shared.

I think we need to … come to some sort of consensus across the university about how we do [the TRN]…we’ve got rather isolated pockets of this around the place and it would be great to bring the various players together and see if we can come up with a few guidelines.

We don’t sit down and talk about it intellectually, about what we actually think the links should be.

• Ensure that institutional policy is mirrored in faculty/department/school policy and practice. For example, if the university policy values the TRN, this should be reflected in annual performance review meetings for academic staff at faculty/school level and in individual staff academic work plans.
• Look for opportunities to enable DVC(Academic) and DVC(Research)  to present a united front on the subject of the TRN, for example
  • co-present at relevant seminars and fora
  • where appropriate, emphasise the teaching background and achievements of the DVC(R) and the research accomplishments of the DVC(A) to present a balance between teaching and research
• Review academic staff recruitment criteria to ensure that, where appropriate, new academic staff are able to demonstrate research-teaching connections in their work.
• Articulate expectations for academics pursuing different career trajectories i.e., specify research expectations when the role is more teaching focused, and clarify teaching expectations when the role is more research focused

We’re beginning to put other performance criteria around our research centres to say if you want university level support, part of that may well be conditional on how you engage back into the teaching.

• Ensure that there is overlapping membership of senior Teaching and Learning and Research Committees with the goal of:
  • keeping a watching brief on research and teaching connections
  • making the TRN a standing item to be revisited at least annually
• Emphasise the importance of scaffolding and vertical integration of the TRN in degree programs across year levels by including TRN criteria in annual curriculum reviews.
• Monitor the extent to which the TRN is embedded in curricula across the university. For example, Griffith University has identified the following institution-wide target: 70% of Griffith’s degree programs will comprise a research-based learning component by 2010.
• Develop strategies for ongoing monitoring of the TRN. For example, evaluate the TRN from student, academic and management perspectives as part of ongoing cycles of review and improvement.
• Review the university research ethics approaches to ensure that there is a simplified or expedited ethics approval procedure for student research and research involving class-room based and other low risk data collection. This is particularly relevant for those involved in SOTL.
• Be explicit about rewarding and recognising the TRN
• Include evidence of TRN accomplishments as one of the annual academic staff performance review criteria
• Include evidence of TRN accomplishments in academic staff promotion criteria
• Establish a Vice-Chancellor’s excellence award (or equivalent) for outstanding achievements in linking teaching and research
• Click here for more on institution-level policy-making.

Faculty/Departmental/School Level Policies and Practices

• Establish local communities of practice in which academics are encouraged to share their strategies for linking teaching and research
• Provide mentoring and peer-review to support academic staff as they integrate the TRN into teaching and curriculum
• Convene teaching seminars where academics present examples of good TRN practice
• Support a team-based approach to the TRN, including cross-disciplinary teams, who can work together on strategic TRN projects
• Support early career academics to make connections between their research and teaching activities
• Mentor postgraduate research students by gradually introducing them to  lecturing, offering guidance and support along the way, so they have teaching skills when they complete their research and are more likely to be able to make connections between teaching and research. This may also make them more employable in the academic context.
• Where appropriate, promote SOTL as an opportunity for teaching-focussed academics to build a pedagogic research profile. It may also be a way to engage ‘time poor’ academics in good quality teaching and research synonymously. For example, by writing up and publishing teaching, assessment, and curriculum initiatives (scholarship of teaching) academics obtain two outcomes from one activity.
• Consider creating staff positions that have responsibility for advancing teaching-research linkages at Faculty level.
• Encourage collaborative activities and presentations between Associate Dean Research and Associate Dean Academic (or equivalent) at faculty level in order to model the importance of teaching-research connections.
• Click here for more on department-level policy-making.

Curriculum Level Activities to Support the TRN

• Curriculum design provides a powerful tool for enabling the TRN. In some universities, certain discipline areas have made research courses compulsory for all undergraduate students, as illustrated below:

We have made all our research courses compulsory. So all students who do our program now do the first year research methods, the second year stats course and the third year qualitative methods course.

• Offer courses/units of study that relate to Research Centre specialisations and involve Research Centre experts in undergraduate teaching and curriculum design
• Include the TRN in annual curriculum review and monitoring
• Evaluate the ways in which students are engaging in research-based learning through regular student evaluation
• Design research-based assessment tasks that capitalise on TRN linkages
• Develop curriculum structures that are sufficiently flexible to allow academic staff to integrate relevant ‘cutting-edge’ research content and methodologies, as appropriate, for illustrative purposes.
• Design ‘talent spotting’ courses/units in second and third year to identify and inspire students who would be potential Honours students/researchers
• Give PhD students first option on sessional tutorial teaching as these research students bring fresh TRN perspectives to their teaching.

Academic Professional Development Activities to Support the TRN

• Encourage academic staff to participate in TRN workshops and activities hosted by teaching and learning centres
• Incorporate the TRN into new staff induction programs [see example Policy-Maker 7: mandatory seven-day Foundations of Learning and Teaching course for new academic staff: encouraged to think about how to build teaching-research links in the context of student engagement]
• Share good TRN practice across the university
• Provide academic staff across the disciplines with information about education journals in their discipline area. This may provide them with helpful ideas about the TRN in their discipline.
• For academic staff engaged in pedagogic research, provide strategies for recognising SOTL as a viable research alternative to discipline-based research, if appropriate.