Developing Sustainable Resilience in Higher Education

Over the course of the 2020-21 member benefits year, our Connect Benefit Series will address current HE themes via a range of outputs including webinars, Twitter chats, publications and blogs.

September's theme focuses on Developing Sustainable Resilience in Higher Education. Since the outbreak of Covid-19 the collective spirit that has been displayed in the sector response to moving teaching online, designing alternative assessments and supporting individual student needs, has been nothing short of extraordinary, and has probably saved the day in terms of community wellbeing. Overcoming the initial hurdles takes one kind of energy, the resilience needed to remain engaged with the continuing changes and uncertainties is quite another challenge. This takes sustainable resilience, which requires conscious attention and commitment to develop.

During the webinar on 24 September, Chair Cindy Vallance, Advance HE's Assistant Director of Knowledge, Innovation and Delivery, along with Prof Martha Caddell, Director of the new Learning and Teaching Academy at Heriot-Watt University and Prof Nael Alami, Provost, Modern University for Business and Science (MUBS), Beirut, and Doug Parkin, Principal Adviser for Leadership and Management, Advance HE will explore:

• Individual resilience - The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress” (Building your Resilience, 2012).

• Team resilience - described as “a team’s capacity for positive adaptation which refers to a team’s collective potential to innovate and change to meet the demands of a difficult or novel situation” (Soon and Prabhakaran, 2017)

• Organisational resilience – described as “the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to incremental change and sudden disruptions in order to survive and prosper” (British Standards Institute, 2019).

Ahead of the webinar Doug has written a blog, which can be read here. We will also be publishing additional follow-on blogs covering 'Resilience and inclusion', 'From being to resilience’, 'The art of the resilient teaching team', and 'Resilient organisations and higher education'. These can be accessed via the News + Views section of the Advance HE website.

Following the webinar a Twitter chat will take place on 29 September from 08:30 to 10:00 BST which will consolidate upon the webinar and be an opportunity for the community of participants to share their own tools, tips, techniques and experiences for developing sustainable resilience. The chat will take place from the Advance HE Twitter chat handle @AdvanceHE_chat.

At Advance HE, we want our member benefits to be accessible to as many of our members as possible. All webinars in the Connect Benefit Series are recorded and available to watch at your convenience via the member benefits group on Advance HE Connect. All member benefit webinars from the 2019-20 membership year are also available to view in this group.