I'm very proud to be part of the amazing National Teaching Repository team and winner of a cross institutional Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) award led by Professor Dawne Irving-Bell and with colleagues Professor David Wooff, Professor Duncan Cross, Professor Brian Smith, Professor Neil Withnell, Dr Nathalie Tasler, Dr Kate Cuthbert, Laura Stinson, Professor Peter Hartley, Dr Scott Turner and Liam Bullingham.
We were one of just 15 winning teams!
The celebration event took place in Edinburgh at Dynamic Earth on 24th September.
Addressing the guests at the special event, Alistair Jarvis CBE, Chief Executive of Advance HE, said, “Congratulations to each and every one of you. You, your institutions and your families should be extremely proud.”
“At this time of year we are beginning to see new cohorts of students arrives at universities across the UK, at the very start of experiences that will shape their thinking, their choices and their future. Excellent teaching sits at the centre of that.
“National Teaching Fellows and CATE recipients aren’t simply being recognised for excellent teaching today; you’re helping to lead the sector’s thinking on how we prepare students for what comes next.
The National Teaching Repository (NTR)
The National Teaching Repository (NTR) is a distributed collective with a simple aim: make excellent teaching practice visible, citable and open access so it can improve student learning everywhere. Working without traditional hierarchies, the team co-leads, co-decides and co-creates with a global network.
Following a pilot, launched in 2020, the NTR was designed as a values-led ecosystem stewarded by a small cross-institutional core-team and hundreds of ‘critical friends’. Together they welcome diverse formats: teaching-artefacts, PowerPoints, infographics, podcasts and datasets and secure recognition through DOIs, Creative Commons licensing, ORCID linking and Altmetric tracking. A ‘kind curation’ model raises quality without gatekeeping, creating a psychologically safe space where colleagues challenge with care, build confidence and share what works.
The collaboration has achieved demonstrable reach and reuse: more than 1,000,000 views and 250,000 downloads; visitors from 200+ countries/territories; and 200+ affiliated institutions working alongside 228 critical friends. Colleagues use repository analytics to evidence the reach, value and impact of their teaching, strengthening cases for recognition, promotion and fellowships. Open access removes cost and registration barriers, supporting educators in resource-constrained contexts and enabling offline use where connectivity is intermittent.
The team’s agility has been especially visible in moments of disruption. During the COVID-19 pivot to online, the NTR mobilised global contributors to share practical strategies at scale; later, in response to the war in Ukraine, it provided open, reusable materials that sustained teaching when power and connectivity were limited. Beyond crises, the NTR has supported sector innovations, from staff development programmes that create first-time authors to student-led collections that amplify learner voice and impact classroom practice.
International recognition has followed, and the team were invited to share its work at the UNESCO World Higher Education Conference and received the OEGlobal Award for Excellence in Open Collaboration. Looking ahead, the team is shaping an AI-supported ‘Global Teaching Repository’ to scale equitable access and multilingual discoverability, while continuing as a non-profit, volunteer-led partnership grounded in openness, equity, generosity and impact for others.
Above all, the NTR shows how shared stewardship transforms visibility of teaching, enriches professional identities and, crucially, enhances student experiences across borders and disciplines, for all learners.
https://advance-he.ac.uk/cate-team/the-national-teaching-repository/
https://ntrepository.com/team/
https://figshare.edgehill.ac.uk/The_National_Teaching_Repository
