Leader & co-designer input to develop & refine
To initiate the project draft designs for development pathways were created based on the current offerings from within each member institution. Draft designs were produced to share with faculty and leadership to help them provide input to the reward process and the Faculty Development (FD) Passport space. Co-designer input also helped to beta test the FD Passport, in order to assure its ease of use, and value to both parties (faculty and their institutional leaders).
The process of leadership involvement
Including senior leadership from the teaching and learning centres created the opportunity to ensure that institutional perspectives were included in the space design, as they identified key priorities and alignment with strategic objectives common among universities. They also assisted in creating and embedding appropriate language to support and reflect the institutional perspectives, while aligning with and being accessible to faculty users. Importantly, they also Identified potential barriers to faculty participation and engagement related to contractual obligations and the comprehensive nature of faculty positions.
The process of co-designer involvement
Faculty as co-designer
A set of 12 faculty co-designers were identified from across all 4 universities within the alliance. An agreement was set up to make transparent their expected contribution to the project. Three tasks were asked of each co-designer;
- Share their current state of practice, and their prior knowledge/expectation around reward and recognition,
- A 2 hour small group discussion, guided by design documents, in order to gather detailed feedback about their current practices for professional development, their expectations of their institution for assistance, their thoughts about the proposed design/goals of the system, and
- Use of the FD Passport in its beta form in order to refine the space prior to it being made accessible to all NOUA faculty.
Faculty co-designer Badge in recognition
Initial feedback was provided by co-designers in the form of a questionnaire, and as a follow-up a focus group discussion was implemented to gather detailed feedback. These elements helped to build the initial space for reward and recognition of faculty development activity.
Once co-designers utilized the space, the final feedback mechanism was implemented (built into the space). Each co-designer shared their response to a series of questions through the platforms ‘badge application’ functionality. These answers formed the final co-designer feedback element: their perceived value of the space they explored. Based on the completeness of their answers, by review from an Alliance Lead, a badge was issued for their contributions.
Co-designers prompts in the badge application, as a method of collecting final feedback data, and reward members for their contributions:
- Describe your favorite map/pathway. Why are you interested in it? In attempting to connect to it did you have any barriers [something that did not work as you expected]?
- Please share the perceived impact that you expect following this map/pathway will have on you/your teaching.
- Share one challenge you have identified, and any suggestions you have to resolve it, that the space presents in helping you to develop new/novel teaching and learning strategies.
Insight in to favorite pathways
Theme: Growth in confidence, knowledge, and tools
“Most of us don’t know what the heck we’re doing [in relation to decolonizing learning] but we want to be doing it and doing it well.”
“Decolonizing learning . . . is something that I have always wanted to focus on and learn how I can incorporate new practices that embrace the different ways of being and learning.”
Thoughts on perceived impact
Theme 1: Improving the learning experience for students
“Better classroom learning environment … feel welcome and appreciated … I can see that will improve my teaching practice … create more effective digital assets (ie videos) that my students will love”
Theme 2: Clear, manageable workload
“Small doable action items … make a small change to my courses on a yearly basis … [still needing] clear guidance and progress tracking for what “bite size” pieces I can complete when I have the time.”
In response to challenges they faced during the beta phase:
Theme 1: Help me understand the WHY
“Helping the faculty member understand WHY they would pursue particular pathways would be a good starting point.”
Theme 2: Design and functionality
“There isn’t always consistency in how these are displayed. I would like/prefer them all to look like the Online Facilitator Star OR at least say to click on the badge.”
Faculty as critical friend
Once faculty co-designers had completed the tasks outlined above, and after initial changes were made, additional university faculty were called upon, in order to incorporate alternative perspectives of those who would experience the space.
The process involved an initial meeting with the faculty member to discuss the basics of badging, and the project goals. The faculty member was then invited to the space where they were asked to utilize the guidebook, and the space to ‘embed’ themselves into the NOUA passport community. Another meeting was then held to review critical friend journal notes, in order to make final revisions to the guidebook, revisions to the pathways (mainly the way that they were viewed and interpreted by faculty). This step helped with final changes and identified some (previously unknown) just-in-time training that could occur, for areas needing further support/tutorial.
Indigenous curriculum specialist, and EDI team as critical friend & pathway developers
The Lakehead University Indigenous Curriculum Specialist and EDI team were called upon to conduct a review of the Faculty Development Passport space. This review, as critical friends, helped the project team to consider some very important questions that directly impacted the experience our faculty have when seeking/participating in faculty development.
Changes made the to space resulting from this review;
- Navigation of the space makes explicit the types of learning experience (self directed, collaborative, etc) that each event/offering provides. This will help indigenous faculty learners see experiences that the prefer, and those that precede/follow. This will also benefit all faculty who are drawn to specific type of learning and development opportunities.
Longer term discussions/tasks resulting from this review;
- A review of all offerings will will be done to identify covert and overt elements of each offering that support i) indigenous faculty learners ways of knowing and being (groups work, storytelling, etc), and ii) embed content and resources that work to decolonize the experience (eg. example of digital storytelling changed from bobby on the bus to fern calling the circle).
- A review of offerings to offer a wider compliment of chose between self-directed and facilitated offerings to caters to the widest possible set of preference and constraints faculty may have and any time.
Other contributions to this project were the creation of development pathways which could i) guide faculty to instill decolonizing practices, and ii) guide faculty to instill inclusive practices.
This is a much larger task than this project allows for but with the space already built, and guidance already provided, the implementation of this pathway can be aligned to all other pathways already implemented. The pathway design template (see mapping pathways section for format), will be utilized to speed up the pathway design prior to its’ implementation within the FD Passport.
The impact from leader and co-designer involvement
Once other university members were provided access to the space direction needed to be provided to aid in the navigation of the eCampusOntario space. A meeting with all co-designers to introduce them to the space was helpful in this process. Alongside this a draft guidebook was created for use by the co-designers. The feedback provided by the co-designers about their use of the space was affected by the completeness of the guidebook provided.
After initial use a review of the guidebook was also completed by critical friends to help with this documents completeness. It is now hosted on the homepage of the NOUA Faculty Development Passport space, to serve as a critical new member’s ‘orientation’ resource.