Project Overview

The Faculty of Business, Law & Politics Research Workflow Project was initiated by the Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research and Enterprise) to understand how effective research time was being used in FBLP, what were the obstacles affecting the effective use of research time and how we could overcome those obstacles. The project was led by the Associate Dean (Research) FBLP.

Task

I was tasked with analysing the workload allocation in comparison with the University timetable, surveying all academics to get their perspective of what the obstacles were to their research time and interviewing postholders to identify recurring patterns and common themes. The output of this project would be used to determine how to arrange Research-domain and Transition-to-Research colleagues’ workload and workflow in ways that makes the most effective use of their 40% research allocation.

Delivery

To kick-off the project, I requested for a list of all FBLP staff in Research and Transition from HR, a formal workload allocation of time for research, teaching and administration for all academics under the Research domain and Transition-to-Research domain, the timetable for academic staff in the FBLP and the staff and student ratio in the FBLP. I designed and circulated a survey among all (107) academics in FBLP using Microsoft Forms achieving a 56% response rate. I interviewed 13 postholders to get a better understanding of the obstacles academics were facing in the faculty, the post holders interviewed included the Dean of FBLP, all Associate Deans, all Heads of Schools and Research Directors.

Results

After an analysis of the survey, interviews with postholders, review of workload allocations, academic staff timetable and staff & student ration in the FBLP, I identified the following obstacles to effective research time.

  • Shortage of academic staff in the FBLP

    • The perception of postholders in the faculty (as expressed in the semi-structured interviews) is that the faculty is significantly under-staffed at the moment. The analysis of the student-staff ratios suggests that in The Law school there are more students per staff member than in comparable institutions. This understaffing has created a ripple effect on most functions within the faculty that has affected the bottom line research activities and production of academics within the faculty (measured in terms of the number of high-quality publications, impact, and external research grant income) as well as damaging the Faculty’s research culture. The shortage of staff within the faculty has led to increased workload for most academics, as they have had to take on additional dissertation supervision roles that would ordinarily be fulfilled by other academics if they had enough staff.

  • Longer academic sessions

    • Academics used to rely on student vacation period to conduct research, but this period has been eroded as the academic sessions have become longer because of resists, teaching admin meetings and programme reviews.

  • Module timetable schedule

    • Timetabling has long been a major obstacle to the effective use of research time in the FBLP. As academics do not have control of their timetable schedule and are often left with scattered days to do research which is not useful enough to conduct research, work on grant applications or foster impact-generating relationships. The timetable schedule is also too short and does not allow academics to plan their research time in advance. The timetable schedule is also exacerbated by increasing rate of staff turnover also affects the timetabling as modules are given to academic staff on short notice when their colleagues leave the university.

  • Academic workload

    • Workload practice within the FBLP does not seem to be working effectively as some academics have more workload than others. This makes it difficult for the academics with over allocated total workload to produce high-quality research overtime.

  • Resource avaiability and support for researchers

    • The Head of Schools do not have enough resources to support researchers in producing appropriate quantity of high-quality research in the university. Unlike other top universities in the UK, Hull does not sufficiently reward research productivity. The resources to support academics are limited which makes it difficult for academics to network if they cannot travel for conferences. By not incentivising research, the University appears not to value sufficiently academics’ contributions to producing high-quality research.

  • Bureaucracy

    • The University has created procedures that slow down processes and introduce avoidable inefficiencies into the delivery of the University’s core business It is widely felt that most of the University’s procedures are not fit for purpose and are too bureaucratic in a university environment that needs efficient and effective processes to resolve issues in a timely manner. These inefficient processes are very time consuming and hinder the use of effective research time for academics.

  • Administrative Task

    • Academics spend a lot their time on administrative tasks that would be undertaken more efficiently by Professional Services colleagues or student interns. For example, academics have to take part in different committee meetings, subject group meetings, student recruitment meetings, being available on open days, getting involved in student experience activities, and teaching administration. Many activities that would be better performed by Professional Services Staff are passed on to academics without any proper provision for these activities in the academic workload model.

My findings were adopted by the project team and submitted to the Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research & Enterprise).

Artifacts

Survey results and project report.