Higher Education Academy (HEA)

What is the Higher Education Academy?

The Higher Education Academy's mission is to help institutions, discipline groups and all staff to provide the best possible learning experience for their students.

What is the Academy's Role?

How does the Academy Support Learning and Teaching in Higher Education?

Our work on academic practice developmentincludes providing support to academics in subject and discipline areas. This will be led by senior academic staff with responsibility for work across four subject groupings - STEM, Health Sciences, Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities. The Academy provides resources, workshops and support to staff in their discipline areas, including materials and programmes at discipline level for people who are new to teaching, and to support innovation. Grant funding includes the creation of a new teaching development grants programme to fund innovations in university teaching. This is a £1.5 million fund, with the first one third of a million released for individual bidders in May.

Teacher excellence looks at what helps people become great teachers in higher education and looking at how that expertise can be better recognised by higher education institutions. Work in this area include the accreditation of institution's professional development programmes, individual recognition for staff who meet the criteria of the UK Professional Standards Framework and a number of different teaching awards including the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme.

The third focus area is institutional strategy and change. This includes working with institutions to draw on their students' experiences to enhance quality, by using results from the national student survey and the HEA's postgraduate surveys. We also offer a series of change programmes which bring together cross-institutional teams to look at strategic change. These programmes include Change Academy, Enhancement Academy and EQUIP.

Aberystwyth University: Working in Partnership with the Higher Education Academy

Aberystwyth University works in partnership with the HEA Wales on a number of levels. As an Academy accredited centre Aberystwyth University delivers the Postgraduate Certificate of Teaching in Higher Education (PGCTHE). Successful completion of the PGCTHE enables a candidate to be accredited by the Academy as a prestigious Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Aberystwyth University also offers the unique Supporting Students Certificate, which is accredited by the Higher Education Academy. Successful completion of the Certificate enables a candidate to be accredited by the Academy as an Associate of the Higher Education Academy (AHEA).

Professional Recognition can be obtained by other routes. Please contact the Centre for the Development of Staff and Academic Practice on (01970) 622117 or cdsap@aber.ac.uk for guidance.