Short courses, beyond and beside:What do newly appointed university teachers want?

In many Australian universities there is no compulsion for new academic staff to involve themselves in any form of teaching development; in others any compulsion extends only to attendance at brief introductory programmes. The staff development community seems to favour longer‐term contact. However, even extensive programmes must start somewhere. The question therefore arises: ‘What should a brief introductory programme comprise?’ In late 1995 we interviewed 35 newly appointed university staff, all of whom enrolled for (not all actually attended) a four‐day introduction to university teaching programme. We asked them about most aspects of their lives as academics, and we report here on what they felt desirable in a brief introductory programme and on their feelings as to what kind of support is needed for newly appointed teachers. Most significantly, these staff saw a need for information and skills for survival in the short term, rather than a well‐founded set of knowledge and skills to be built on in the future. Both time pressures and timing issues featured prominently in their decision whether to attend a programme. The staff interviewed have some characteristics in common with US‐style graduate teaching assistants (newness to university teaching) and some in common with newly appointed, often tenure‐track, US faculty (they generally have PhDs and have already successfully chosen an academic career). The applicability of the US literature is somewhat limited in the light of these similarities and differences.