Regional Hubs

Connecting to practitioners and tertiary education organisations

Ako Aotearoa has three regional hubs:

• The Northern Hub is based at AUT University in central Auckland and co-hosted by AUT University and Manukau Institute of Technology. It serves the northern half of the North Island (an area bounded by a line from East Cape through Turangi to Taumarunui).
• The Central Hub, based at the Universal College of Learning, Palmerston North and co-hosted by the Universal College of Learning and Massey University, serves the lower half of the North Island.
• The South Island is served by the Southern Hub, which is based in and hosted by the University of Canterbury.

Working with Tertiary Education Organisations

The mandate of the regional hubs is to develop ways of supporting Aotearoa, New Zealand’s diverse range of tertiary education organisations to enhance teaching and learning within those organisations and to facilitate and support collaborative work across sub-sectors in their regions. In all, regional hub staff made over 260 visits to providers during 2009. Many of those visits involved professional development events and/or presentations to key academic and research staff to profile Ako Aotearoa and explain the processes involved in hub-funded projects plus other services offered through the hubs.

A critical part of the hubs’ role is to foster and support small implementation and research projects designed to enhance tertiary teaching and learning. An overview of this significant work, now totalling 92 commissioned projects, is presented on pages 36–42 of the Annual Report, but this represents only a part of what the hubs have achieved.

In total, the regional hubs have initiated or organised 25 regional events in 2009, involving around 590 participants. They have sponsored and supported 34 others, which attracted more than 950 people. The following, along with the vignettes on pages 12, 18, 35, 46, and 67, gives some flavour of the diverse activities undertaken by the hubs.

• Two Creative Teaching Techniques workshops were offered to PTE teachers in Palmerston North and Napier. Both were facilitated by Ako Aotearoa Academy of Tertiary Teaching Excellence member Julia Bruce. Eighty-two teachers engaged in the highly interactive sessions. Attendees positively evaluated the experience and were confident of implementing an increased range of methods within their teaching.
• The Teaching and Learning Conference, hosted for the previous two years by Eastern Institute of Technology, was hosted by the Universal College of Learning in 2009. Ako Aotearoa was the main sponsor, with the Central Hub being closely involved in planning and actively supporting the conference, which was run jointly with eFEST and attracted over 200 registrations. The by-line for the conference was “Teaching for Excellence; Excellence in Teaching”. Each of the 35 workshops was strongly focused on the practice of teaching including those associated with blended learning. The Universal College of Learning has decided to offer the conference again in 2010.
• The Southern Hub coordinator is an active member of the West Coast Tertiary Education Forum and a member of their 2010 conference organising committee.
• The Southern Hub was pleased to support the New Zealand College of Early Childhood Education (NZCECE) through the Regional Hub Project Fund in 2009. The project, Tuakana/Teina, was designed to promote a research culture within an organisation through tutor/student mentoring relationships. As the research progressed, the coordinator was invited to share in the success of the project through attendance at student research presentations and as a guest at the NZCECE graduation ceremony, where Andy Walker, NZCECE director, gave special acknowledgement of Ako Aotearoa’s support in changing the culture of the organisation.
• The Northern Hub has been present at all NZAPEP cluster meetings throughout the region. This has enabled the Hub to meet many private providers and present on Hub funding, the Tertiary Teaching Excellence Awards and strategic directions as well as providing general information about Ako Aotearoa.
• The Northern Hub supported and organised the first Tertiary Academic Staff Developers Education Network (TASDEN) meeting in February 2009. Academy members, the national director and Northern Hub coordinator all presented at the forum, designed to assist staff developers to consider current issues in the tertiary education sector to better support academic staff. More than 90 people attended, from organisations across the tertiary sector. Groups discussed how the network might grow and their own organisations’ priorities. In December, a second networking event was organised by the Northern Hub and the executive of TASDEN, with 33 attendees. Three Ako Aotearoa staff presented, including the Northern Hub coordinator. Attendees discussed possible support structures for staff developers, identified their main concerns about tertiary teaching, suggested skills that would enhance their roles, and evaluated current strategies used to support staff.
• Another Northern Hub-supported staff development event was Te Manuka – kai a te Rangatira, a two-day regional hui for Māori providers. The hui, organised for members of Te Manuka, or PTEs that have identified as Māori training providers with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), enabled people to meet with NZQA, the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), Ako Aotearoa, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa and Māori training establishments to discuss and secure a future for Māori provision within the Te Taitokerau, Tamaki and Waikato regions. It provided an opportunity to identify key strategies and support structures members would like to see on a regional and national basis.

National and International Contribution

While the hubs are separately hosted by organisations comprising the Ako Aotearoa host consortium, we have spent considerable effort over the past two years developing Ako Aotearoa as a single organisation.

Accordingly, the hubs undertook a great deal of work with the National Office in 2009, or at a national level in their own right (with support of three major national conferences listed on page 52). Two staff members have also represented Ako Aotearoa overseas, making presentations on Ako Aotearoa at the Conference of the Journal for Vocational Education and Training in the UK and at the Pacific Circle Consortium Conference in Taiwan.