Raising the profile of Learning Development: thinking forwards

Following an article comparing ‘study skills’ provision to J.M. Barrie’s Tinkerbell (Richards and Pilcher, 2023), discussions – and emotions – were stirred again this year regarding how Learning Development is understood among academic and third-space colleagues. Inspired by White and Webster’s (2023) session at last year’s ALDcon, the Study Advice service at the University of Reading, in collaboration with Dr Helen Webster from the University of Oxford, decided to run an ALDinHE regional event to address this very question: how do Learning Developers promote a better understanding of what we do, and raise our profile in our institutions? This presentation reported back from this regional event, sharing both the barriers and proposed solutions to raising our profile. But there is still work to do. Together we hope to create a useful action plan from this work. We discussed whom we need to communicate with, what we feel these messages should be, and how we claim our expertise. Finally, we considered what we can do as a cross-institutional collective to ensure that we are seen as a profession with our own expertise and identity.