For many years, academic staff tended to be dropped in the deep end where teaching was concerned. Frequently untroubled by any formal teacher-training, they were required to communicate their learning to young minds whose interest, if unchecked, drifted towards music, daydreaming and young bodies.

Not all of us are natural communicators, destined to strike a deep, resonating chord in the bosoms of our listeners; some of us would have trouble striking a deep, resonating chord with the full co-operation of a symphony orchestra and Mozart himself. Yet third-level academics have generally not enjoyed the same level of formal support in their teaching roles as their second-level peers.

Earlier this month, UCD became the first university to establish a teaching development unit (TDU), to provide support for teaching staff and to act as a focus for educational initiatives.

"It is a new development, but it's also the culmination of what people have been doing on a voluntary basis for some time," says Dr Miriam Kennedy, teaching development officer in UCD. "A lot of issues have been discussed, but there has been no formal training for academic staff or exposure to educational principles, beyond the fact that some people themselves were interested in the area."

Part of the TDU's brief is to identify the pedagogical needs of staff across faculties and address them through courses. At present, these courses include sessions on smallgroup teaching, communication skills as a teacher and the application of technology to teaching. There is also a resource area for staff, including books and videos on relevant areas.

The unit's larger brief is to develop and carry out research into higher education, to share principles of good practice and to establish links with similar units nationally and internationally. Similar initiatives are already under way in other Irish colleges, as the third-level sector seeks to develop formal support structures for its academic staff.

WHILE IT COULD be argued that great teachers are born, not made, support structures can help to make poor or adequate teachers better, encouraging "deeper" learning among students and correcting teaching methods which may reinforce "shallow" learning. Moreover, all academic staff can benefit from staying in touch with new teaching methods, with developments in curriculum and with new educational initiatives. "There are people who are brilliant at teaching, but they are doing it out of their own stream of brilliance, rather than a definite teaching policy," Kennedy says. The unit aims to look at how a teaching policy is being supported within departments, faculties and the university itself.

There are obvious problems in measuring teaching ability, complicated by the reluctance of academics to expose themselves to what are sometimes seen as subjective tests of their abilities and a natural tendency for professionals to close ranks. However, the Irish Federation of University Teachers, in a 1996 survey of its members, found that 72 per cent supported a formal system of evaluating the work of universities - though the federation stressed the need for teacher input and adequate resources to bring about necessary improvements.

"It is difficult to quantify something like that," Kennedy says. "In general, the students go in, the students come out and achieve a quite high standard. They will recognise a good teacher or they will have anecdotal evidence of those who are not." UCD has already made a move towards recognising good practice by introducing a number of president's awards for teaching, the first of which will be awarded on November 10th.

The development of formal support structures for teaching staff at third level is also part of a more general move towards "quality assurance" in the sector. The Higher Education Authority has been pressing for some time for a quality-assurance framework to be established in this State, embracing not only lecturing standards and course structures and aims, but also staff mobility and awards and student satisfaction.

The impetus for such a system comes largely from Europe and is related to the question of student mobility: third-level institutions participating in programmes such as Erasmus and Socrates want to be certain that the other institutions involved are of comparable quality to their own.

SO FAR, the EU is still some way from establishing such a common system. At the start of 1997, only four countries had such a system in place: France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain.

Irish universities are now into the second phase of a pilot quality-assurance exercise, co-ordinated by the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities, and a full report is expected at the end of the year.

"The whole issue is high on the agenda nationally and therefore the staff and training development issues are also involved, because it's the core business of the institution," says Saranne Magennis, quality promotion officer in NUI Maynooth. Magennis provides a range of courses for academic staff, both new and established, encompassing both teaching support and issues such as management development and strategic planning. According to Magennis, Irish academics have generally embraced the opportunities offered by teaching support and development. "People who teach in universities were rarely required to have formal qualifications. It tended to be sort of `learn on the job'," she says. "That said, you are dealing with a fairly select group who are fairly skilled learners, so there are fewer obstacles than there would be with those who are not skilled learners. "You are dealing with people with a huge level of commitment to learning and students."