Faculty Development in Blended

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Faculty Development in Blended Online Learning
Communities

• Dr. Norm Vaughan
• Dr. D. Randy Garrison
• Teaching Learning Centre
• University of Calgary

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Overview

• Faculty development in blended online learning
  communities
• Goals
• Strategies/learning activities
• Tools

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Reflecting on Faculty Development
Goals

Faculty Development
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Focus of Inquiry

• Connection and alignment between ones teaching
  practice and student learning
• Potential for a transformational shift in
  approaches to teaching from disseminating
  information to creating learning environments
  where students construct their own knowledge
• Role of technology shift from the packaging and
  distribution of information (content) to being
  used as a tool set to enable students to
  collaboratively construct their own knowledge

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Reflecting on Faculty Development
Goals

Faculty Development
Strategies
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Community in Higher Education

• New faculty want to pursue their work in
  communities where collaboration is respected and
  encouraged, where friendships develop between
  colleagues within and across departments, and
  where there is time and opportunity for
  interaction and talk about ideas, ones work, and
  the institution.(Rice, Sorcinelli Austin,
  2000, p.13)

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Communities of Practice

• A group of people who share an interest in a
  domain of human endeavour and engage in a process
  of collective learning that creates bonds between
  them.
• A community of practice has three primary
  characteristics
• Joint enterprise means that everyone in the
  community is working towards a common goal, such
  as redesigning a course, or simply learning how
  to become a great repair person.
• Mutual engagement implies that each persons
  actions and ideas are equally valued and judged
  within the community.
• Shared repertoire suggests that members of the
  community have similar experiences and
  interactions in the learning and development
  process. (Wenger, 1998, p.2)

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Faculty Learning Community (FLC)

• A FLC consists of a cross-disciplinary group of
  5 or more faculty members (8 to 12 is the
  recommended size) engaging in an active,
  collaborative, yearlong program with a curriculum
  about enhancing teaching and learning and with
  frequent seminars and activities that provide
  learning, development, interdisciplinarity, the
  scholarship of teaching and learning, and
  community building.
• (Cox, 2004, p.5)

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Community of Inquiry Framework
Social Presence The ability of participants in a
community of inquiry to project themselves
socially and emotionally as real people
(i.e., their full personality), through the
medium of communication being used.
Cognitive Presence The extent to which learners
are able to construct and confirm meaning
through sustained reflection and discourse in a
critical community of inquiry.
Teaching Presence The design, facilitation and
direction of cognitive and social processes for
the purpose of realizing personally meaningful
and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes.
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Practical Inquiry Model Phases
Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., Archer, W. (2000)
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Meaningful Learning Activities
Reflection
Garrison Archer (2000)
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Leadership

• Outside the community (but within the
  organization)
• sponsorship and legitimacy is vital (also
  important for removing barriers and hierarchy)
• Inside the community
• nurturing is the key (ecology of leadership)
• need to develop a core group so that the
  nurturing role does not rest with just one person
• people taking on different responsibilities and
  roles within the community
• sign of maturity when others in the community are
  willing to take on the nurturing role (shared
  responsibility)

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Leadership

• Key Dimensions of a Community of Practice
  (Wenger, 2005)

Sponsorship
Domain
Nurturing
Participation
Community
Practice
Support
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Questions

• What does this mean for your faculty development
  program or initiative?
• Where do you go from here?

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Reflecting on Faculty Development
Goals

Faculty Development
Strategies
Tools
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Using ICT Tools in a Blended Faculty COI

• Before FTF (synchronous) session
• FTF session
• After FTF session
• Preparation for next FTF session

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Inquiry Cycle Before FTF Session
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Community Web Space
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Pre-readings
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Social Book Marking
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Macromedia Breeze
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Podcasting
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Self-assessment Quizzes (knowledge probes)
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Triggering Event

• Redesign of an existing course making ones
  implicit assumptions about a course explicit
• Triggering of new ideas and perspectives about
  teaching and learning
• Support community members realize they are not
  alone in experiencing a particular issue or
  concern (importance of participation and shared
  understanding which leads to a sense of trust
  and risk taking within the group)
• Importance of community and face-to-face
  (physical) presence in this stage

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Inquiry Cycle During FTF Session
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Quiz Survey Feedback
Display quiz survey results
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Classroom Response Systems
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Digital Learning Objects/Resources
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Displaying Previous Course Redesign Projects
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Exploration

• Importance of
• experiential learning opportunities being
  immersed in a blended learning environment as a
  student
• sharing experience with other teachers and
  students different discipline perspectives
• sharing of stories (power of narrative)
• online discussion forum to capture the sharing
• faculty mentors people with previous FLC
  experience

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Inquiry Cycle After FTF Session
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Anonymous End of Week Survey
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Announcements
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Community e-Mail List
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Online Discussion Forums
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Group Project Areas
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Virtual Meeting Spaces
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Weblog Reflective Journaling Project Tool
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Wikis Collaborative Writing Tool
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Opportunities for Further Exploration
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Integration

• Importance of
• a project focus forces one to make tentative
  course redesign decisions (reification)
• faculty regularly presenting project artifacts
  and/or issues to the community in order to get
  feedback from other members and to help confirm
  their own understanding
• piloting portions of the projects with the
  student members of the community

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Inquiry Cycle Next FTF Sessions
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Anonymous Survey Feedback
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Archive Survey Feedback
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Resolution/Application

• Importance of
• intentionally engaging in the scholarship of
  teaching and learning process
• getting ethics approval (early) to formally
  evaluate the course redesign project
• collecting quantitative and qualitative data
  regarding student learning outcomes and perceived
  satisfaction related to the redesign
• dissemination of results beyond the community
  departmental, institutional and external
  presentations and publications

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Reflections on the SoTL

• . . .the most important outcome of the
  scholarship of teaching and learning will not be
  any single finding but the sense of scholarly
  community growing up around the intellectual work
  of teaching and learning.
• (Hutchings, 2002)

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Questions, Comments, Discussion

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Contact Information