This paper describes a collaborative project to offer a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Education across eight Australian universities. Graduate Certificates are an increasingly important ‘signal’ of the quest for quality teaching in Australian universities; however, it is difficult for smaller, regional universities to offer high quality programs with limited resources and staff. Academic staff participating in the national GCTE will study a ‘Core Unit’ offered by their own institution, and then will be able to choose three elective units from the offerings of the eight collaborators. Collaboration is seen as a means of increasing efficiency in small universities. In this paper we discuss what we have learned from the literature and what we have learned during the collaboration. Although the amount of literature on collaborative programs is increasing, we found that a collaboration project such as the GCTE requires much goodwill and flexibility to achieve its aims.

Keywords: Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Education, collaboration, teaching and learning