Academic Leadership

Chapter 8 – Monitor

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Developing the Monitor

When using the Monitor role, as an academic

leader you will regularly collect and distribute

information on teaching/learning performance and

continuously monitor the performance of your

program.

When using your Monitor role you will be:

• taking an overview of processes and systems


• taking time to get to know process, people and systems


• identifying critical points/junctures in processes and systems


• identifying critical people whose performance needs monitoring


• determining how and when monitoring of critical junctures/and performance will be
  done


• identifying and consistently monitoring signals that indicate “all is well” or “something
  is fishy”


• engaging in continuous, consistent monitoring


• understanding that systems/processes and networks change thus monitoring of
  these will need to change accordingly


• managing information


• measuring performance of your program/course


• ensuring quality of teaching and learning


• familiar with your student populations


• aware of your market


• familiar with all performance measures of your program/course.

When you overuse or inappropriately use your Monitor role you will be:

• obsessed with facts and figures (trivial rigor)


• neglect possibilities.

As with other roles you may need to:

• Develop the role:
  
  
  • critically review your own behaviour and its impact in different contexts over a
    period of time;
  
  
  • develop strategies to assist you in becoming better at reading the external
    environment;
  
  
  • find ways to better utilise the knowledge you have gained from previous
    experiences as an academic leader in new contexts.