Professor Fiona Smart

Visiting Professor: Learning & Teaching
Learning & Teaching Enhancement Consultant

e: f.smart@napier.ac.uk

On her retiral from the position of Head of the Department of Learning & Teaching Enhancement in June 2021, Fiona was made a Visiting Professor at Edinburgh Napier University. It is a role which requires her to support Principal Fellowship at the University and to engage in scholarship concerned with learning and teaching.

Fiona is a Visiting Scholar at the University of Malta and an Advance HE Accreditor and International Consultant, a role she values because it depends on collaboration with colleagues who are also committed to the enhancement of academic practice in students’ interests.

Fiona was the Convenor of the Scottish Higher Education Developers group, a community of practice which brings together the 19 Universities in Scotland to explore and develop the role of the educational developer until Sept 2020. She remains active in the SHED Community, including its Reading Group. When she was SHED’s Convenor, Fiona has forged links with the Educational Developers Caucus in Canada, enabling collaborative learning and debate. More recently she has guided the development of CAPED (China-based Association for Partnership Educational Development) in China.

Fiona is the Deputy Lead of the Scottish Principal Fellow Network and recently completed work with Dr Alison Nimmo co-leading a QAA (Scotland) Collaborative Cluster Fund project focused on Principal Fellows as resilient academic leaders. Together with Associate Professor Celia Popovic, York University, Toronto, Fiona is the co-creator of EDTA and the instigator of its bi-monthly speakeasies.

Fiona has a particular interest in curriculum design, assessment and feedback, the potential of dialogic approaches in professional recognition and arts-based pedagogy. She remains a nurse registrant – adult and child.

Fiona’s CV is available on request​.