SUMEC: Building the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert Programme into HE Staff Development

The Staffordshire University Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert Coaching (SUMEC)Programme is a ground-up staff development initiative to coach colleagues as they develop their teaching practice and digital capabilities using Microsoft technologies. The theoretical underpinning of the programme is the Gilly Salmon’s (2013) 5 Stage Model and the implementation has been influenced by Race (2020) Seven Factors of Successful Learning inHE. First launched as a pilot in January 2021, the programme has been successful in supporting colleagues in applying for and achieving official Microsoft accreditation, but also adding value to this process as reported by the pilot’s evaluation. Benefits of engaging with the programme included (but weren’t limited to) fulfilling bespoke career and pedagogic goals, growth in confidence, competence and empowerment. Findings relating to the coaching and implementation of the programme acknowledged the non-hierarchical, positive, warm and well-designed structure that contributed to the programmes success. The pilot was not without limitations, namely, time and workload. This presentation offers an overview of the SUMEC programme, findings from the pilot, how our University has now invested in the upscale of and research from SUMEC, and recommendations for the future.