Meeting the challenge of teaching and learning: professional academic developers v. practicing facilitator?

Changing funding requirements at the national and local university level, coupled with a university restructure, created a challenge for academic managers. One response by a School of Business in a small, traditionally teaching based university was, alnong other strategies, to create the position of Educational Development Facilitator/Coordinator (EDFIEDC). This paper tracks the development of the role of the EDFIEDC and its adaptation to the changing needs of academics both in the fields of research and teaching, and considers this development within the literature on academic development as the EDF/EDC is a practicing academic} not a professional academic developer. This EDFIEDC leads by example, bringing current educational research and personal teaching insights to the role, in an effort to assist academics in the School to face the challenge of enhancing learning and teaching and managing different funding models. Utilizing action learning techniques, where the researchers are also the researched, the authors, one of whom is the EDFIEDC in question, reflect on the role as it has developed over the last four years, identifYing both positive outcomes and negative issues, and highlighting areas of future research.