#Take5 #108 Successful Teamwork Secrets Revealed: An Interview with the ALDinHE Mentoring Scheme Crew

We recently had the chance to sit down with the dynamic team behind the development of the  Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE) innovative and supportive Mentoring Scheme for learning developers – and the Certified Mentor (CeM) Qualification that emerged from it. 

The development of the scheme was essentially collaborative – bringing together many voices from diverse places and institutions across the UK. This group of dedicated LD practitioners seems to have cracked the code for effective teamwork – and we wanted to know how they did it. Here they are, spilling their secrets.

Learning Development is one of those extraordinary fields where its practitioners rarely receive formal training or accreditation before undertaking the role. With routes to LD often wiggly, winding, and sometimes even fortuitous, mentoring can be crucial to professional development as well as competence and confidence building, not to mention career growth. This is why we created a mentoring scheme for learning developers, which is the topic of the conversation we invite you to read below.

Members of the ALDinHE Peer Mentoring Working Group. From left: Sam Thomas, Silvina Bishop-Martin, Ursula Canton, Chenée Psaros, Jane McKay and Alicja Syska

Members of the ALDinHE Peer Mentoring Working Group. From left: Sam Thomas, Silvina Bishop-Martin, Ursula Canton, Chenée Psaros, Jane McKay and Alicja Syska

Interviewer: All right, let’s dive right in! What was the driving force behind this ALDinHE collaboration?

Ursula: Well, we saw a gap that needed filling – there just isn’t enough professional development for LDers.

Jane: And mentoring is such a powerful tool for developing!

Ursula: Yes – and we just can’t resist a challenge. As learning developers, we’re all about helping others see their potential and nurturing it, identifying needs and finding solutions. So we got to work!

Interviewer: I love that proactive mindset. And how did the teamwork dynamic unfold?

Alicja: Oh, it was a sight to behold! Everyone just jumped in and started contributing. 

Ursula: Do you mean we were all talking over each other? (As I’m doing now – sorry!)

Alicja: Ah yes, that happened quite a bit too, haha! In my culture we tend to call it ‘cooperative overlapping’ though, aka too much enthusiasm. I was thinking more about the fact that no one was guarding their territory or trying to one-up each other. It was all about getting the job done and doing it well. And since the job was very tangible – producing a mentoring scheme with very specific strategic outcomes and products – it made all our meetings and communications very goal-orientated.

Interviewer: Sounds refreshingly ego-free and productive. What kept the team motivated and engaged?

Jane: You know, we genuinely enjoyed the process. There was something in it for all of us – whether it was the camaraderie of the meetings or the satisfaction of seeing real results. It was just a rewarding experience all around.

Silvina: Having a meeting in the calendar that you know will be fun and still constructive is just a highlight of any busy working week.

Interviewer: It’s so rare to find a team that actually likes working together and gets things done, especially when it comes to roles that rely on volunteering. What do you think set the tone for such a positive dynamic?

Chenée: I think a big part of it was our shared commitment to making a difference. We all care deeply about mentoring and supporting others. It wasn’t just a task to tick off – it was a chance to truly impact our colleagues’ lives. It allowed us to connect with each other and share our ideas and experience.

Interviewer: That’s incredibly admirable. And how did you manage to avoid those pesky team pitfalls, like inflated egos, communication gaps, and hidden agendas?

Sam: Honestly, I think it was a combination of self-awareness and just genuine care for one another. There was no room for that kind of nonsense. We were all too busy being generous, adaptable, and focused on the greater good. In a way, maybe we tried to set the tone for our mentors and mentees – generosity and adaptability are such important parts of mentoring!

Interviewer: Wow, you all sound like unicorns of the HE world! 

Ursula: Maybe we waited until this moment to let our egos out and congratulate ourselves. Or perhaps seeing great results is just much more enjoyable than stroking your ego directly?

Interviewer: So what was the secret to your collaborative success?

Silvina: I’d say it was the sense of openness and trust we cultivated. We created a space where everyone felt safe to share their ideas without fear of judgement, and the work just evolved organically, with everyone contributing equally.

Alicja: Sorry to bring it back to earth, but let’s not forget about the magic in finding a space in everyone’s calendars so we could meet regularly, and all the planning involved in creating this magic.

Interviewer: Well, that’s something. And that psychological safety sounds like the secret sauce. Any final thoughts on what made this collaboration so special?

Jane: Well, you know, a lot of it comes back to our shared values as learning developers. We’re all about empowering others, being proactive, and putting the collective goals before individual ego while also appreciating every little contribution. We want to cultivate these traits in our LD community, and I think this initiative really celebrates the unsung heroes of higher education: mentors – the ones who quietly make a huge difference.

Interviewer: Mentors in learning development, the unsung heroes inspiring successful teamwork. I love it! Thanks for sharing your insights with us today. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more of these teamwork success stories from the ALDinHE crowd! BUT – and this is important – I wouldn’t be doing anyone any favours if I didn’t ask you some more about the Mentoring programme itself. What is the philosophy behind it? How does it work in practice? And if anyone reading this wants to find a Mentor, or become one, right now, what exactly do they need to do?

Chenée: They just need to tell us they’re interested to start with!

Sam: The ALDinHE website has a lot of information and anyone interested can fill in a form to get the ball rolling. Our guiding principles are included there too.

Ursula: When we receive a request from a mentee, we give them a partner, identify a suitable mentor, introduce them and ask the mentee to arrange a first meeting. If the chemistry is right and they want to go ahead, they are given their own online mentoring space and continue.

Silvina: It’s really flexible from that stage. They can decide how frequently and in what way they meet – we’re indicating the level of engagement we’d expect if mentors want to use this experience to apply for CeM.

Interviewer: CeM?

Silvina: Certified Mentor recognition from ALDinHE. We want our mentors to be recognised for their great work!

Jane: Mentoring can be a great learning experience for mentors as well, so it seems important that ALDinHE recognises their commitment to self-reflection in the process and to developing others!

Alicja: But that’s entirely optional. They can apply for CeM based on two mentoring experiences (at least one of them through the scheme) or not. Some of our mentors find it a useful goal – to be able to add this recognition to their signatures; others don’t mind.

Chenée:  Yes – it’s meant to be as flexible as possible, as long as it supports learning and professional development for mentors and mentees. 

Alicja: I guess in that sense it’s similar to our collaboration: we’re focussing as much as possible on our mentoring pairs to develop together and to give them as much freedom to do this as possible.

Ursula: You’re right – that’s a bit like the brief ALDinHE gave us – a clear goal, a mentoring scheme and recognition but we had a lot of freedom to decide together how we got there. Maybe that’s another important ingredient to good collaboration: enough freedom to make it interesting?

Interviewer: I’m starting to see what you mean when you describe your collaboration. I haven’t asked a question for a while but you all added your bit and we ended up with a good introduction to the mentoring and some more reflection. Nice!

We hope that this conversation sheds some useful light on the origins and rationale for the mentoring scheme, along with a few crucial details on how to get involved. To find out more, please visit our website, and:

If you have mentored before and would like to be recognised for your service, apply to become a Certified Mentor! Such a recognition says volumes about who you are as a professional and how your practice aligns with the values of LD.

If you believe in the value of mentoring others, developing meaningful relationships, and building your leadership skills, fill this form to become a Mentor! As LD keeps expanding, both nationally and internationally, many new and established learning developers would benefit from your experience and insights.

And if you are interested in expanding your networks and benefitting from the wisdom of others, please ask us to pair you up as a Mentee! you will be surprised at how much can be gained from meaningful mentoring conversations.

Get in touch! We will gladly facilitate a journey of self-discovery for everyone.

Ursula, Silvina, Sam, Jane, Chenée, and Alicja

Biographies:

Alicja Syska is a hybrid academic, combining the roles of Learning Development Advisor with lecturing posts in Education and History at the University of Plymouth. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Saint Louis University, USA, is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA) and an ALDinHE Certified Leading Practitioner (CeLP). She has been a Co-Lead Editor at the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education since 2019 and she co-hosts the Learning Development Project podcast. Her research interests include writing, community building, and researcher development.

Chenée Psaros is a learning developer, an artist, and a walker. She uses creative approaches in her teaching and is always looking to innovate her practice. Her primary interests lie in learning beyond the campus and exploring how walking fosters creativity. She has an MSc in Digital Education from the University of Edinburgh. She is currently a member of the ALDinHE Mentoring Working Group. She is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and a reviewer for the Collaborative Award in Teaching Excellence for Advance HE.

Jane McKay is a learning developer and Senior Lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, where she has worked with health and life sciences students since 2008. She is an Advance HE Senior Fellow, an ALDinHE Certified Leading Practitioner and an accredited sport psychologist. She enjoys supporting individuals to reach their potential and has mentored colleagues and contributed to the development of mentoring schemes for learning developers. She joined the ALDinHE Peer Mentoring Group in 2020. In addition to teaching academic literacies, Jane uses her psychology background to embed psychological skills, self-understanding and positive mindset in practice. She has a particular interest in how individual characteristics, most notably perfectionism, influence learning and student wellbeing and she is undertaking research in this area.

Sam Thomas is a Senior Academic Skills Tutor at Arden University. Prior to this she worked at the University of Northampton as a Learning Development Tutor and Mentor Manager. She is a Fellow of Advance HE, an ALDinHE Certified Practitioner and an active member of ALDinHE. Her focus is to provide support and services to those with additional needs, including improving the accessibility of online resources, and supporting the needs of non-traditional and distance learners.

Silvina Bishopp-Martin has been a Learning Developer at Canterbury Christ Church University since joining the institution in 2012. She is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an ALDinHE Certified Leading Practitioner. She has worked on the development of online learning materials, peer-mentoring schemes and embedding academic literacies in academic courses. She has research experience in academic literacies, critical EAP, critical pedagogies, collaborative writing and Learning Development scholarship, professionalism and identity.

As a Learning Developer, Ursula Canton works with STEM students, arts students and education students at different universities and under different titles (Senior Lecturer / Glasgow Caledonian University; Effective Learning Tutor /Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Associate Tutor / University of Glasgow). In all of these roles she draws on her experiences from her first academic life (MA Language and Literature; PhD in Theatre Studies) and current research interests in evaluating writing interventions, writing process(es) and academic and professional literacies. She is keen on contributing to the development of Learning Development through formal and informal routes, including taking a leading role in developing ALDinHE’s mentoring programme, co-chairing of ScotHELD (Scottish Higher Education Developers) and sharing her insights through informal chats and mentoring, as well as publications.

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