I’ve heard back about my HEA / Prise application and unfortunately I’ve not yet been successful. With this scheme it’s common to have minor revisions required before you pass, and mine was no exception. Here’s a little bit more about the scheme, my application, and what happens next.
What is HEA / PRiSE?
PRiSE is an internal scheme that allows staff at the University of Leeds to be accredited for Advance HE Fellowship. It means that it’s free for us to apply for three of the fellowship levels Associate Fellow, Fellow, and Senior Fellow, and these are marked and managed internally.
What level were you going for?
I decided to apply for the first level of Associate Fellow (D1). As I don’t teach, it’s harder to provide evidence for the full suite of activities required so this allowed me to apply for the two activities that best matched my work. It also allowed me to see how the whole process worked in case I wanted to apply again for a higher qualification later on.
Did you fail?
My feedback said that I had not yet met the criteria for the award of Associate Fellow (D1) of Advance HE, and that I was strongly encouraged to review and resubmit my application. This is apparently really common for applications and allows candidates to make the minor amends necessary in the next submission point. So I have more work to do and I only fail if I stop trying!
What minor amendment do you need to make?
My application met most parts of the brief, but in one of the activities I didn’t show enough evidence of my impact on other people’s learning. I showed that they responded positively to this blog, and the talk that I gave to new Aurorans, but I didn’t show that this impact extended to helping people improve their learning specifically. This means that I need to seek out people who attended the talk or read the blog and see if they can tell me about things they did differently as a result of my talk/blog.
How are you going to do this?
I have started by reaching out to the Aurora channels that I still have access to to see if anyone remembers my talk or my blog, and then I’ll ask them for feedback that relates specifically to how it helped them with their learning experience. I’m most worried that there will be no response from anyone or that they won’t have anything to say about how it affected their learning.
What happens if you don’t get the feedback?
I’m in a really difficult situation that if I don’t get sufficient feedback on this that I may have to completely re-write this part of my application around a different activity. I only have until the 2nd July to resubmit so the best thing would be for me to find the evidence that I need around my current examples. If I don’t get that I’ll probably have to wait until October to resubmit and they might need me to reapply from scratch to do so.
What help do you need?
If you’re an Auroran from 2024 cohort who read my blog during the programme and it did anything to inspire you I’d love to hear how you might have approached your learning differently as a result. Did you revisit your notes, try blogging or reflective writing, or did it give you a different perspective on anything?
If you’re an Auroran from 2025 cohort who attended the talk from Maria in ODPL on 13th November 2024, I’d love to know if that (or my blog) helped you with how you approached your Aurora experience, or your learning.
I’ve also reached out to my PRiSE mentor again to ask if she can help me work on rebuilding that section to include more emphasis on impacting the learning of others.
If you’d like to help – please get in touch through the comments or by emailing/messaging me on Teams. Thanks so much.