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About the Award

The Lifetime Award for Excellence in Teaching is an annual award given by the Higher Education Academy.

The aim of the award is to "recognise and reward Higher Education Information and Computer Science practitioners in Wales who have made an outstanding contribution to the growth, development and enhancement of the teaching of the disciplines through their work and to draw their achievements to the attention of the ICS community as a whole."

This year, the award was won by Dr. Judith Broady-Preston, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Information Studies.

Biography

Currently Judith is a Senior Lecturer, Chair of the Management Research Group and a member of the Senior Management Team (2000-) at the Department of Information Studies, Aberystwyth University, where she has been employed since January 1990. From July 2000 to October 2007, Judith was Departmental Director of Learning and Teaching. Judith worked originally as a health services librarian and subsequently as an academic librarian before becoming a full-time academic in 1985, firstly as a researcher at Sheffield University and then as an academic at Leeds Metropolitan University.  

During her time at Aberystwyth, they have pioneered a number of developments, including being the first department in the discipline to supply distance education, offering schemes in open learning mode, delivered via blended learning. Of special note in this context, are the Masters’ schemes they have developed. Examples include the off-shore programme delivered solely in Hong Kong (which Judith directed 1991-2000), the first UK Masters’ degree in Archive Administration offered via distance learning, and the first Research Training Masters’ degrees offered in distance mode, which attract government funding and Research Council recognition.  From 1993, Judith has supported asynchronous dialogic learning using various differing platforms

Their undergraduate open and distance learning degree is a pioneering scheme that Judith is particularly proud to have had a hand in developing. Originating in 1993, it was the first such scheme in the UK to give formal accreditation to experiential or workplace learning in this sector. The primary market is library assistants or paraprofessional staff, many of whom are mature, women and/or from ethnic minority groups, unable to study full time for a variety of reasons, and additionally may lack formal academic qualifications, but with extensive practical experience. The challenge has been to widen participation in higher education and offer a route into the profession, without in any way compromising quality or standards. As many of the graduates from the scheme have subsequently become leading figures in the profession, arguably they have risen to the challenge. 

Judith's present research interests cluster around qualitative methodologies as frameworks for investigating concepts of contemporary professionalism, skills, knowledge and CPD within the information profession. Judith is Regional Editor of two international journals, Library Management and Journal of Education, Media & Library Sciences, and a member of the editorial boards of Library and Information Research and Performance Measurement and Metrics. Judith has participated in and organised a wide variety of national and international conferences. Judith also reviews and assesses new monographs for five commercial publishers. 

Judith has been an active member of information professional associations for almost twenty years, and is currently a Member of the IFLA Management and Marketing Section Standing Committee (2009 -) and Honorary Treasurer CILIP UK, effective January 2010.